1991 Porsche 944 Turbo

“ This is a much used and much loved example of the German legend. ”
If ever you needed a reminder of just how substantially built and precisely engineered some cars used to be, this is it. Even aged 35 and with plenty of miles under its various belts, it feels as if it’s been milled from billet steel or hewn from granite.

Background
Having concentrated most of their prodigious engineering talent on one car - the 911 - since 1964, the meister technikers of Zuffenhausen went a bit crazy during the late 1970s and starting bringing out new models and designs faster than you could shake a stick at them.

First came the 924, which was really a Volkswagen but nonetheless sold well enough to people who desperately wanted something - anything - with a Porsche badge on it.

A year later saw the arrival of the mould-breaking 928, which was more complicated and over-engineered than the Space Shuttle and only marginally slower.

Perhaps realising that the bracketing of those two cars was in danger of looking like a short hop from the ridiculous to the sublime, they then introduced the world to the 944 in 1982.

Thankfully, the 944 was, and remains, a proper sports car.

With near-perfect 50:50 weight distribution thanks to its front-engine, rear-transaxle layout, it garnered fully deserved praise from press and owners alike - even if everyone agreed that the chassis was easily capable of handling more power.

Porsche, sensitive to criticism and with more than half-a-mind on the bottom line, introduced the Turbo in 1986.

Mindful that the car could handle even more power than that, they introduced the beefier 247bhp Turbo S in 1988.

With a top speed of 162mph, it could hit 60mph in 5.5 seconds.

Those are respectable numbers even today.

In 1989, they dropped the ‘S’ designation from the Turbo, as all Turbo cars going forward would have the ‘S’ specification.

No, we don’t entirely understand it either.

Available as both a coupe and a convertible, the range came to an end in 1991 after selling around 163,000 cars in total.

That made it, at the time, the most successful model Porsche had ever made.

Overview
This fabulous example was brought to us by the family of the late owner, a man known to us here at THE MARKET.

The first and most important thing to tell you about it is that it is in really very good condition indeed.

The second but equally important fact to convey is that it hails from an era in Porsche’s starry history when everything they made was massively over-engineered, built to the hilt, and designed to withstand thermonuclear events.

Walking around the car, opening and closing the doors, appraising the materials, pressing buttons and flicking switches – it all adds up to a powerful and somewhat poignant reminder that modern cars just aren’t built to anything like the same standards.

We keep having to pinch ourselves to remember that this car is now 35 years’ old, because everything about it suggests that it’s a fraction of that age.

We’re finding it equally hard to believe the odometer reading of 189,000 miles.

We’d believe it if it read 18,900 miles.

When Gunther and Wolfgang waved this one goodbye from the end of the production line at Neckarsulm, they must have been very proud of themselves.

It’s an absolute corker.

The car starts, goes, presses on, handles, grips and stops with all the pedigree poise, panache and performance for which the 944 Turbo was rightly lauded and applauded.

At the time of writing the battery is struggling to hold a charge, but that will be rectified before the auction concludes.

Estimate: £12,000 - £16,000

View The Current Bid Price HERE