From the earliest days of the Porsche 911, the main complaint from reviewers (other than ‘why does it want to put me in the scenery on corners?’) concerned heating and ventilation. Beyond seasoned owners, few could fathom how to set up the in-dash sliders for the optimum blend of hot and cold air, causing suboptimal comfort and invariable unhappiness.

Owners loved their 911s for their quirky and idiosyncratic ways, heating and ventilation being one of them. The mainstream rejected what we called charm and stuck with commonplace front-engined, water-cooled cars with predictable heating systems. Bah.

The 911’s sliders were part of a two-piece system. Controls between the seats modulated heat. Controls in the dash largely directed cold air. If you had A/C, a switch in the centre console turned it up and down. It was a challenging cognitive exercise akin to trying rub a piglet’s head and pat its porky little belly at the same time, while driving.

Fast forward to today and the original system remains frustrating. The dash vents in anything before the ’86 Carrera are an exercise in futility. Finding a way to control the heat can be challenging if anything is off with the system, such as rusty heat exchangers, broken flapper boxes, seized cables or a broken central controller. Even when it all works, it is rarely perfect, but can be endured.

Step forward Classic Retrofit, whose electric A/C has changed the game since arrival and made these cars fun in the sunshine. Now a new Classic Retrofit product blends 12v air conditioning and heat and comes with a brand new digital dash controller that mimics the original slider panel while deleting all the hard cables, and the compromise. Instead the system oversees servo-controlled blend valves either side of a high-power modern blower box.

The system is an evolution of Classic Retrofit’s original A/C, but swaps out the compressor for a heat pump compressor. This can run in reverse, allowing the system to cool air when warm and warm air when cold. It is another game changer and includes some hard lines reminiscent of the oil lines on early race cars. As a diehard Jonny enthusiast, I am excited to try it. Recent enquiries from the very (very) top of the classic Porsche food chain should see this on several significant builds next year.

I have mild anxiety about the retail price for this system when it launches in Q2 2025 but other than that it looks mega. The big advantage may be the ability to finally delete heat exchangers and just run headers on a backdated exhaust without being frozen as a result.

My challenging four-year divorce recently settled and the 1976 911 Carrera 3.0 I’ve had stored for twelve years may come home before Christmas. This is just the kind of thing I would love to put in the car to celebrate, albeit I have some bigger jobs to do first – more on that later. Follow the updates at classicretrofit.com. I’ll update Carrera 3 travel times as and when.