Art Of Class

Successfully fitting a brand-new windscreen to your Porsche – in this case a 993-model 911 Carrera – is hardly a DIY task but, even so, it is invaluable to know how it ought to be done, if only so that you can be sure your car will not subsequently suffer the consequences.

- Chris Horton

It is easy to under-estimate the importance of your Porsche’s windscreen. It is, after all, entirely transparent. Or it should be, anyway. Something that you spend your many hours behind the wheel looking through rather than directly at. Whether it qualifies as the single most important part of the car is open to debate, but you won’t be going very far (or fast) without it. Even if you could withstand the wind in your face above about 30mph, modern cars depend on the presence of their bonded-in glass, front and rear, for their structural integrity.

Your windscreen is also vulnerable to damage – but at the same time resistant to complete destruction. There can be few drivers who have never heard a loud bang and/or witnessed the appearance of a characteristic starburst on the glass in front of them, the result of a piece of gravel flung up by the vehicle ahead. This writer’s VW Passat has half a dozen such scars (small enough to pass an MOT); one of my 5-series BMWs has a crack across the lower right-hand corner (ditto, because it is just outside the area swept by the wipers); and even though the 944 has only a few bigger stone-chips, it looks as if the entire surface has been sand-blasted.