Loss of drive 996 C4

I wonder if anyone can offer some suggestions for the following incident that occurred on my old C4 which now belongs to my son-in-law. The car is a 1999 C4 manual with 150k on the clock now and it was running perfectly up until this moment with no prior warning of anything amiss. When pulling out of a side road there was a sudden thump/bang and all drive was lost. Keen to get the car off the road and into a bus stop he found that when selecting a gear he did get a very small amount of drive. As he wasn't far from home his got a tow home from my daughter and mentioned that there was a 'rotating knocking' sound like something hitting something as it rotated. This sound came from the back. he says the engine runs fine and the clutch feels OK and gears appear to select normally. When he got it home he tried to reverse it into the garage and whilst he got some drive it was not enough to clear a slight lip into the garage. the knocking noise only appears when the wheels are turning. I don't think this is anything to do with the clutch and sounds more like a driveshaft problem or worse something internal in the gearbox. Would a broken driveshaft result in total loss of drive? This is a C4 remember. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Sounds like you have an idea of the failure. Not heard of this before, but would get the car on a ramp. It could be one of the universal joints have failed or for some reason the bolts have come loose on the forward prop shaft. It could be the gearbox support bracket. Hence the thumping. Had you had any major work done to the car in the past?

Snap on the 1999 Ocean Blue 996 C4!! No major work recently. At the last service the clutch was reckoned to have plenty of life. Would a failed CV joint result in no drive? I have suggested that my son-in-law get under the car and get hold of the rear driveshafts to see if anything noticeable play wise.

Sorry for your problem. It's not quite the same, as my car is a 120k 1998 C2 tiptronic but when turning a corner I suffered a complete loss of drive and it turned out to be the main drive shaft had broken. Unfortunately the debris also got into the tiptronic box and so that also had to be rebuilt. As your car is a 4 wheel drive then perhaps the drive to two of the wheels has gone leaving a small amount of residual power going to the others hence the small amount of drive. Obviously this may not be anything like the problem with your car but if it is an engine/gearbox out job then the one suggestion I do have is to get a garage to d/w it who are prepared to do the complete job and guarantee it all, so there is no arguments as to who is responsible if there are any future problems. I don't know about the manual but for the tiptronic the whole engine had to come out. If you are near the Northampton area then DW Performance at Wellingborough https://en-gb.facebook.com/dwperformanceltd/ did mine and gave a 2 year guaranteee on the complete job.