Imagine it’s the early 1990s. You’re in a Tercel on the way to return some videotapes. The blower motor is squeaking. The stereo goes to the AM band for a moment when you hit a pothole. The serpentine belt squeals like it's begging for retirement. The power windows gave up years ago. The AC hasn’t worked in months, and the vents only blow dust. You think to yourself, "At least the thing still runs." And then, off in the distance, shimmering through a cracked windshield in the heat of another too-hot afternoon, you catch a glimpse of something blurry just above the asphalt. Something you’ve never seen before. A mirage, maybe, of something that doesn't belong.
In modern times, Dubai is a mirage of its own. A strange backdrop, carved out of dust by two incredible human levers. It took sheer will and incredible wealth to build a city like Dubai. The Turbo fits here because it also feels built from contradiction. Overpowered and imperfect. Built on a compromised engine layout, flawed in exactly the right way. The Turbo doesn’t really belong anywhere in particular. It’s compromised, flawed, and hard to place, built for conditions that rarely exist. But Dubai is the same. A contradiction surrounded by nothing. Defiant in its presence. The car fits here not because it matches, but because it clashes. Ironically. Perfectly.
Built by Manufaktur 964, a Porsche 964 specialist in Germany, this particular 964, owned by Mirko Müller is all flow, beauty, and turbo lag. “I just love the rear end,” Mirko says. “Standing back and having that view, it’s priceless. The flow of the rear wing, tapering to the front. To me, that’s elegance and power.”
In 1990, the 964 Turbo came out carrying old bones. Porsche hadn’t finished developing its new turbocharged flat-six yet, so it recycled the 3.3-liter engine from the outgoing 930. Internally, it was known as the M30/69, the same basic layout, but tweaked with improved engine management and a larger intercooler. It made 320 horsepower and 332 lb-ft of torque, enough to launch it to 60 mph in under five seconds. Still, it wasn't what people expected. The chassis was sharper than the 930, but not sharp enough. There was still lift-off oversteer. There was still turbo lag, enough to catch the unaware.
The press at the time didn’t quite know what to make of it. It was quick, yes, but carried the DNA of something older. Porsche purists were mixed. Some saw it as a placeholder until the proper 3.6 arrived in 1993. But that in-between-ness, that refusal to be new or old, is what gave the car its identity. It didn’t care about being the right answer. It just was. The last truly analog turbo Porsche ever built. And one of the most misunderstood. Three decades after it was built, the car's still out there. Still a mirage. Still having the same effect on people that it did all those years ago. This one shimmers through the outer edges of Dubai, past the glass spires and sunburnt overpasses. It doesn't cruise downtown or flex outside the valet line. It rips down desert roads that feel forgotten. Blacktop dusted with wind swept sand, curling away from the pointed skyline.
There’s no one out here. No cell signal. Just heat, horizon, and the sound of a single flat six finding its rhythm. “It is weird driving this car in the desert,” Mirko says. “On roads, obviously, not in sand. It's such a pleasure sitting in it. Bringing it here was absolutely the right call.” To Mirko car makes sense here in a way it never could in the city.
“Aside from that, I lived through the Bad Boys release,” Mirko says. “That left an everlasting impression on me. That black Turbo 3.6, the sound, it was a pure dream. Owning this one, I now know that sound was right.”
If you’re lucky enough to see one coming at you across the desert, it’ll feel just like it did in the 90s: like something you shouldn’t be seeing. Like something you might not see again. Like a flash of the future in the wrong decade. A fever dream on four wheels.
A mirage you can drive. Watch the film here.
