Back in 2003, I purchased my first Porsche in the form of a 944 Turbo (952). My purchase was purely by accident whilst attending a classic car auction at Universal Salvage’s Sandy in the UK whilst planning on purchasing a lightly damaged project TVR Griffith 4.3 BV (big valve).
The TVR Griffith exceeded my bidding expectations and armed with the objective of leaving the auction with a car, I started bidding on a car which previously I had not given any thought.
The car in question, the Porsche 944 Turbo’s (right hand drive 952) 1987 220bhp number was up and bidding commenced. It was a great example having only sustained extremely light front end damage and at £2,175.00 the hammer dropped and the car was mine.
Until that day I had never owned a Porsche before having always opted for what the ‘Best of British’ had to offer and I remember my first car, a TVR 350i V8 which lead me to owning several different TVR’s up until the age of 26. I always lusted after the power that TVR had to offer but after driving a friend’s 1991 Lotus Elan SE M100 I became hooked on chassis dynamics and started to look for other alternatives to TVR.
In 1996 I moved on to owning a grey import 1995 Mazda RX-7 FD3S which again proved to be an accidental purchase and the car in question turned out to be a ‘lemon’ as the American’s say. After only seven days of ownership the car’s engine let go resulting in a full engine rebuild (luckily under warranty) – But even the early problems would not put me of the handling this car provided matched with what is now known as one of the great cars of the 90’s.
But after thousand’s spent on my FD3S over an 18 month ownership period, I simply could not extract out of the car what I was looking for in terms of handling. The car would wag it’s tail under hard breaking and the lift-off oversteer proved to be a little unnerving at times – But as for the engine, well this gave me everything I was looking for in a car … responsive, free revving, near 50/50 weight distribution, a lightweight and compact package plus much more which I could go on and on about but in the end the unreliability and extreme running costs had me looking for something else.
To cut a long story short, over the next 4 years I was to own a Nissan Skyline R33 GTR, Nissan Pulsar GTiR, Honda NSX, Lotus Elise S1, Lotus Elan SE Turbo M100 and a few daily runners which we shall not mention.
Since my purchase of the 87 Porsche 952 I have added a few more Porsche’s to my ownership belt which have included a 1991 964 RS, 1994 993 Carrera 2, 968 Club Sport (CS) and a 1999 996 Carrera 2 Cab (oh and a few other transaxles to throw into the mix).
The 996 I sold after a summer of fun and an expensive £7k gearbox problem, The 964 RS lightweight became more of a garage ornament so had to go and the 968 CS, well I was offered good money for from a friend so she departed my company as well so this now leaves me with the Porsche 993 and Porsche 944 Turbo (952).
My Porsche 993 has become more of a daily driver which I find hard to fault and bar a 993 Turbo brake conversion and several RS cosmetic changes the car remained barely unchanged but the same for my 944 Turbo cannot be said and this formed the foundation of DEUTSCH NINE and the reason you are reading this!
There are two kinds of car/vehicle enthusiasts that I have met over the years and this follows suit with all car/ vehicle marquees … Those that cherish originality and a concourse appearance and those that lustier for more than the original manufacture provided – After all we are talking about cars which were intended for the road here.
Once my Porsche 944 Turbo (952) was repaired and back on the road I found a new experience which offered a mix of everything I had driven or owned previously. Don’t get me wrong, the Porsche 944 Turbo is an old car by today’s standards but in principle the original design offers the perfect platform to work with if you want to compete on a budget against today’s exotica.
Front engine, rear-wheel-drive as a platform goes back to ‘day dot’ in car manufacturing terms and exists to this day in abundance amongst the performance car manufacturing sector but Porsche went one step further when they introduced the Porsche 924 also known amongst the ‘not so intelligent’ or ‘pocket heavy’ owner as the ‘Poor Man Porsche’ – how wrong were they!!!
The early Porsche 924 offered customers something different, something cheaper, something radical and that something was known as the transaxle – Front engine with the gearbox at the rear connected to the differential providing near perfect 50/50 weight distribution in a lightweight package which could have ‘at the time’ completely dominated the field.
Over the life of the transaxle Porsche’s which came in the guise of the 924, 944 and the final incarnation namely the 968 very little changed in terms of the cars chassis layout – Ok, so the body was widened during the introduction of the 944 and the rear wheels got wider when Porsche introduced the 944 Turbo and cosmetically the cars evolved with age but as a basic platform the cars remained very much the same and the changes reflected the increase in performance the cars sore over the years.
But back to my ownership and the pleasurable experiences enjoyed by so many other owners which is testimony to the cars reliability and Porsche’s 100% parts availability… Our transaxle cars have outlasted the tests of time but has time outlasted them?
This is a question DEUTSCH NINE is here to answer and I hope why you are reading this page today.
