The RS badge in Porsche’s language stands for RennSport — racing sport. It has appeared on a handful of 911 variants since the original Carrera RS 2.7 of 1973, always denoting a road-legal car shaped by motorsport priorities: lighter, sharper, built in smaller numbers than the standard production cars. Every generation of the RS has been produced with a clear purpose — to bring circuit engineering to the road, and to do so without compromise.

The Porsche 993 Carrera RS 3.8, produced in 1995, holds a specific position in this lineage. Porsche built 1,014 units. It was powered by a 3,746 cc air-cooled flat-six engine producing 300 brake horsepower — the same basic architecture that Ferdinand Porsche had established with the original 911 in 1963, refined over three decades to its ultimate naturally aspirated form. The weight savings were systematic: aluminium bonnet and doors, thinner side and rear glass, deletion of the rear seats, reduced sound deadening. The suspension was lowered and stiffened. The result was a car that weighed approximately 1,270 kg and could reach 100 km/h in 5.0 seconds.

The 993 generation was the last of the air-cooled 911s. When Porsche moved to the water-cooled 996 in 1998, it marked the end of a mechanical lineage that had defined the company since 1963. The 993 Carrera RS therefore occupies a unique position: it is the final air-cooled RS Porsche ever built. For collectors, this is not a detail — it is the entire point. Air-cooled 911s, particularly the RS variants, have appreciated dramatically. The original list price in Germany was DM 147,900. Today, values for well-documented 993 RS examples regularly exceed €300,000.

This specific car was photographed at the Grand Palais in Paris during Bonhams’ Les Grandes Marques du Monde à Paris auction in February 2025. The Grand Palais — now officially the Grand Palais restored after a four-year renovation — is one of the most extraordinary settings in which a car can be displayed. The glass nave floods the interior with natural light, and the architecture transforms any vehicle beneath it into a museum piece. This 993 Carrera RS, finished in deep black, was displayed on the auction floor before selling for €345,000.

The photograph captures the rear haunch of the Porsche 993 Carrera RS — the point where the rear wing meets the widened rear quarter, where the flared arches accommodate the wider track, and where the design language of the 911 is at its most muscular. In black, the bodywork carries the reflections of the Grand Palais glasswork across its surface, creating a tension between the static car and the shifting light above it. The wheel hardware — the centre-lock nut, the spokes, the rivets — stays crisp and technical against the flowing lines of the body.

The Porsche 993 Carrera RS is collected not for what it promises, but for what it represents: the end of an engineering philosophy. The last air-cooled flat-six. The last RS before water cooling. The last time Porsche built a car like this. What makes this photograph significant is not the car alone, but the place — the Grand Palais, one of the most important architectural settings for automotive display in Europe — and the angle, which isolates the detail that separates the RS from every other 993.