Background
Ben Dimson remembers his first day at Porsche in September of 1981 pretty vividly, despite the intervening years. He was picked up from Stuttgart Airport by Dr Heinz Rabe. Although Rabe was nominally head of Porsche’s personnel department, Dimson would later learn he was also one of the company’s longest serving executives and the son of Karl Rabe, Porsche's original chief designer.
Dimson recalls “On the autobahn en-route to Porsche’s Weissach research centre, we conversed about the basics of life in Germany and my Filipino background... all while doing 270 km/h in a 924 Turbo,” said Dimson. “The fastest I had ever driven beforehand was about 130 mph or just a little over 200 km/h, this was my welcome to Germany. I became so amped up and so excited to be in my new environment built around the need for speed and covering great distances in a matter of seconds.”
Dimson’s first task, or possibly “test,” was to redesign the Porsche 928 under the watchful eye of the car’s original designer, Wolfgang Moebius. Despite that inevitable jeopardy and added pressure, it was Dimson’s design that was approved by the board, including Dr Porsche himself. His 928 redesign got Dimson noticed and soon he was working on plum projects including the 944 Turbo, 959 and the first Speedster interpretation of the 911. His biggest challenge was to come, however, when he was asked to head up the design of the 964, the first fully new generation of the 911 since the model debuted in 1963. In design terms this was a task akin to herding some cats to stack water in a poisoned chalice whilst unpicking a Gordian Knot with the sword of Damocles perilously hanging over you. Obviously Dimson said “yes,” and the rest is history.
Dimson’s design did a fine job of preserving the 911’s priceless DNA whilst being a fundamentally different, and better, car that its G-series predecessor. It is a matter of record that the 964 carried over only 16% of its constituent parts from the earlier car. The headlines for the 964 were full time four wheel drive in the Carrera 4, optional Tiptronic for the first time and some self-steering suspension elements which all but quelled the lift-off oversteer of the early 911s. The car became a great success and today is revered in the classic 911 firmament. It also represents the rarest of the 911’s iterations. Compared with over 196,000 G-series cars to be built, the 964 clocked up just 63,762 units before its demise in 1994. This relative scarcity and its “first brand new 911” status all add to its increasing star power today.







