Books specific to the 964 are quite few and far between.

Without doubt THE book for all 964 owners has to be Adrian Streather's tome entitled "Porsche 911 - Enthusiast's Companion (Auftragsnummer 964").
ISBN 0-8376-0293-9 published by Bentley Publishers. Printed initially around 2004 it is still available from some sellers and is about to be reprinted in updated form.
Corrections to the original pages 387 & 388 can be downloaded here and an updated Appendix A can be obtained here.

Also quite useful is "Porsche Carrera 964 - Technical Data without Guesswork", also published by Bentley. ISBN 0-8376-0292-0

Although not specific to the 964, Wayne Dempsey's book entitled "101 Projects for your Porsche 911" contains many items very relevant to the 964 and contains "how to" instructions on many jobs. ISBN 0-7603-0853-5.

For a detailed history of the 964 specifically, Tony Carey has produced a book entitled "Porsche Carrera RS -The Fifteen Year Rise of a Track Day Icon" available from the PCGB book shop and other selected outlets. ISBN 0-9547169-3-0.

The Vehicle Identity Number has, since the early Eighties, been standardised throughout the World and it contains coded information about the manufacturer of the vehicle, the place of manufacture, the model year of build and various other facts about the car itself as well as a unique serial number for the particular vehicle. In the case of Porsche the format is as follows:

WP0 bes mm x y f t Bnnnn     WP0 = the WMI manufacturer code b = Z= ROW,A= US Coupe, B=Targa,C=Cab e = Z= ROW, A=T3.3, B=N/A, C=T3.6 s = Z= ROW, 0=Seat belts,2=Air Bags mm = 96, the first part of the type number x = Z =ROW, fill char for US y = the model year letter K=1989, L=1990 etc. f = S, the manufacturing factory, Stuttgart t = 4, the last digit of the type number Bnnnn = the first digit (B) represents the body style   and the remainder the serial number for each car within each model year

There are literally hundreds of production codes used for the options available on Porsche cars. Most consist of a three digit code, e.g. 650 for sunroof. Country specific codes start with a C, e.g. C16 for the UK. A decoder for many of the options can be found on Charlie Kindel's web page here

Alternatively, there is a list of Option Codes known to us here. Some Exclusive Option Codes are here and Country Codes are here.

A spare DME relay is a must. A spare fan belt is advisable as are spare bulbs.

Other than that it's unlikely that anything more complex will be repairable by the side of the road.

The official Porsche Electrinics Parts Catalogue is now published in PDF format for individual models. There are seperate catalogues for the US and ROW cars and they are available for download directly from Porsche's web site.

The US 964 catalogue is here.

The ROW 964 catalogue is here.

BEWARE - the files are LARGE, i.e. 16MB+

There is a considerable amount of debate that often ensues regarding the actual numbers of cars produced by the factory. Much of this debate is fuelled by the fact that many of the factory records are no longer available. In his book, Adrian Streather published a set of figures which were later amended on his web site as a downloadable revised Appendix A (download here).

There is a tablular presentation of these production figures available here.

As with any car, the basic price was just the starting point. Numerous options were available across the model range, some options applying only to some derivatives, some to all. For more details on pricing there is a copy of the 1992 price list, including options, here.