I went to college in the mid-1990s in a small town in Arkansas, where the most exotic car one might expect to see was an IROC-Z, or maybe my roommate's Jetta. As a committed car freak with a taste for high-end sporting machinery, there wasn't much driving around town to stoke the fires of my passion.

Except.

There was a heart surgeon at the regional medical center who had gotten his hands on one of the 1,500 Porsche 964 Turbo 3.6s ever produced, and he found it entirely practical to use as a daily driver in the pickup-clogged avenues of Russellville, Arkansas. It was a gorgeous thing to behold, what with its fat fenders, polished rims, and paint-to-sample anthracite finish. To say it made an impression would be an understatement; once, I bumped into the doctor at the photo finishing place (when people used to shoot film!) and, after expressing my admiration for the Porsche, asked him to adopt me. I was only half-kidding.

The sight of that incredible automobile carving its way through that rural town was a reminder that there were good things out there in the world for young car enthusiasts like me, and that all I had left to do was hit the books and ride out the college grind...my time amongst the exotica would come.

So, twenty-something years later, Spark Models has released their 1:43-scale resin replica of the 964 Turbo 3.6, and all those old feelings have come rushing back. Every facet of the Turbo 3.6's aggressive beauty has been faithfully recreated here in scale...it's about as realistic as they come. We deal in a wide variety of scale model cars here at Model Citizen, but with this one, I might have to siphon one out of inventory and hang onto it myself. The college kid within demands it.

 (If you demand your own copy of Spark's 1:43-scale Porsche 964 Turbo 3.6, click here.)

Leave a comment