The Porsche 924 Turbo folks are unhappy....

http://www.924board.org/viewtopic.php?t=32023

I haven't read the article yet, and I don't own a 931 (924 Turbo) so I can't comment much past what I have there.

Just curious if any of the staffers or message board members have any insight to offer.

the parts are expensive, and very difficult to find... I would love one, but for the uninitiated, a 944 or 924S is the better bet.

Honestly, they don't seem too upset--I see some back-and-forth discussion which is always good. Paul might have put it best: Bottom line, IMO, 931s are fun when they are running, but most spend more time being repaired than being driven. (And for what it's worth, our 924/944/968 article was put together by two fans of the model.)

I kinda thought you guys were being a bit kind- like time and distance fades memory of pain. Its the same reason women can be convinced to have a second child.

I thought that was one of your better car summary articles in recent years.

IMO, that's because they have 924 Turbos. They're worth saving as a archeological find, but anyone who thinks they can build a world-beater out of one should reconsider. I remember when those cars came out...we all wondered when Porsche would finally design a decent normally aspirated motor for the damn things.

Which they eventually did, of course...

If you like Porsche, you LOVE Porsche. Plain and simple! Some guys just maybe love em a little too much.

Streetwiseguy wrote: I kinda thought you guys were being a bit kind- like time and distance fades memory of pain. Its the same reason women can be convinced to have a second child.

Quote for the Mag...

If a magazine writes anything even remotely uncomplimentary about any car, it will piss off that car's fans. GRM could write "the Ford Tempo didn't sell as well as the Taurus for numerous reasons" and Tempotopaz.com would be in an uproar: "The Tempo didn't sell as well as the Taurus because Ford spent eleventybillion dollars advertising the Taurus and only $3.12 advertising the Tempo. Why didn't the magazine write that? Everyone here knows that the Tempo is the best all around 4 door car ever made." Unless you heap the highest praises onto a car, you'll upset the fanbois. At least the 924 site has people trying to clue in the superfans there.

Bob

I very rarely complain about the magazine, in fact I normally jump to it's defense when I see the 'GRM isn't Grassroots' posts, but for the first time in a very long time I was seriously disappointed in the 924/944/951 article. I felt it was very light on technical information that should have been included. A quick, but not exhaustive list is:
Use the later water pumps when replacing.
It mentioned the different dash designs, but no pictures and no mention of the lower steering wheel or poor heating control with the early one.
No explanation of the early narrow Vs late wider track and different offset.
Issues with rebuilding the 16V engines.
Useful options such as LSD, M030 suspension, wheel sizes.
No real comparison with it's obvious price point competitor in today's market, the Miata.
Available classes for autocross etc.

Overall I felt it was a bit of a fluff piece, I pulled out the last 944 detailed review from 2000 and I think that was a far far better article, much more information. Also the Porsche Vs Porsche (84 944 Vs 83 911SC) from 2002 etc. Both far better and more informative pieces.

Overall it read like the kind of high level glossy piece you would find in other magazines, not GRM.

As an aside I know that a 944's did well at last years Nationals, I have to wonder if the cars Stock class autocross time is coming. While it is bigger and heavier than Miata's, it has similar power to weight and better low end torque. Best of all the fully adjustable (read can be lowered legally in stock) M030 suspension and up to 16x7 front and 16x8 rear wheels available stock. That's a huge advantage in stock class. How about something along those lines, or some details of what you can do with Spec 944 etc

Please note, I'm not complaining that the magazine was favorable or unfavorable about the car, just that it was very light on information, especially compared with what I've come to expect from GRM.

Schmidlap wrote: If a magazine writes anything even remotely uncomplimentary about any car, it will piss off that car's fans. GRM could write "the Ford Tempo didn't sell as well as the Taurus for numerous reasons" and Tempotopaz.com would be in an uproar: "The Tempo didn't sell as well as the Taurus because Ford spent eleventybillion dollars advertising the Taurus and only $3.12 advertising the Tempo. Why didn't the magazine write that? Everyone here knows that the Tempo is the best all around 4 door car ever made." Unless you heap the highest praises onto a car, you'll upset the fanbois. At least the 924 site has people trying to clue in the superfans there. Bob

holy jeebus, best post ever!

Tim put this man on the staff NOW

Okay, I might sound a bit harsh here, but theres no other way to put it.

I found the article to be full of inaccuracies, poorly researched, and lacking important information. Now I am not attacking anyone, not GRM, not the author, and I fully understand that the article offers opinions which the reader can choose to agree with or not. I also understand there are allot of different information sources and even Porsche has different spec for the same car in different publications at times. i only use service and tech spec info, and have found those (factory publications) to be most consistent and accurate.

First and foremost, this was not a "buyers guide" it primarily focused on the 944, with a bit of info about other models in the line.

Ill start with the 924: out put was listed as 110 hp, was this an average? the early models had a 95 hp output, the latter had 115 hp in US spec'd cars. euro models boasted 125hp, i don't know what the euro spec early models had, but i do have that info in my books someplace. Not mentioning the CIS (common failure point) and parts availability (or lack of) are critical points potential buyers need to know about. I love my 924 but anytime someone asks me, i tell the truth, yes its an awesome car, but its not a rocket and some parts are hard to find, and it loud on the highway. the four speed creates a racket and at highway speeds you often wish for a 5th gear, but man is it fun to drive! By the way, they were ALL completely galvanized after 1978, and partially before that. you will find rust in body repair areas, lower front fenders on occasion, and hidden in the fender seams on late model cars that the fender will have to be removed to find(bad sealer at the factory). If you find rust anyplace else, there has been another issue that effected the galvanization at some point.

924 Turbo: rated in grm as 143 hp, actual rating by Porsche, 150 for 79-80 and 156hp for 81 and 82 my. euro models are 170 and 177 respectively. that's a pretty significant difference. the author states " never caught on due to high service costs and questionable reliability" generally a true statement but no explanation as to why? Ill tell you why, because the owners didn't read the manual, particularly the part where it says to make sure you let it cool down after hard runs otherwise oil will coke in the turbo and render it useless. He further states " costs more to maintain while offering less performance and investment upside" more to maintain? more than what? a 924 n/a? sure, its got a turbo. more than a 944? no frickin way.. a t-belt for 931 costs oh, ten bucks and can be done in 20 minutes. water pump? $50 bucks, and uses the same exact one as the 924, change it along with the t belt, do the whole job along with a new tension-er for under $100, in an hour including a beverage break. blow out a turbo, yes, its going to cost, but less than a proper front end service for a 944 n/a. the rest is identical to the 924 n/a, thus cheap and easy. In my opinion the author has taken the horror stories from owners who did not understand the car or read the book, and escalated that into "few redeeming qualities." the 931 easily outpaces 944's, and many times, with a five minute installation of a boost controller, early 928s and 911's. it also gets better gas mileage and is easier to upgrade. 200 plus hp is not out of reach with a simple intercooler and boost increase. I ran mine at 3x the rated psi with no other upgrades, for close to 20,000 miles with no adverse effects. thats 17psi, with spikes over 20 (fuel cutoff engages at 21.5 psi) on an engine that already had over 100k on it. i finally wore out a valve seal at almost 140k and decided to rebuild the who car, my decision, she'd of gone another 100k no problem at the factory tuning specs. Id say those are some fairly decent redeeming qualities. If the stated reason to stay away was the lack of parts availability, or the complicated nature, id of been okay with that, because it is true to a certain extent, but money pit compared to a 944..no way... BTW- my 82 924 turbo has the exact same suspension, ventilation system, fuel pump, interior, and most other parts sans the 2.5 liter engine, even the transaxles are identical except for fifth gear, so again ill ask, where the money pit part comes in? 80% of the car is the same as the early 944..

944- despite the authors obvious affinity for the 944, the specs robbed it of 3 hp, but he did include the late model spec of 162 hp here also, why didn't he do that with the 924 and 931? skipping over to the "things to know" $600 for a timing belt? possible, using a rebuilt pump (gotta replace the water pump while your in there) and the $308 kit from pelican, and maybe a kricket tensioner tool. But if you want to do it right, youll need that $600 tensioner tool, a new water pump (another $308 minimal, you can spend twice that if you prefer) manuals, etc. if you want to pay someone else to do it, because it IS a pain there went $1500 minimum, and youll be out of service for a week or more probably. Also- "Porsche interiors wear pretty well" find me a car that hasn't had split seams in the seats and the dash hasn't cracked to some extent, and ill show you a car that hasn't been driven much and hidden inside most of its life. All cars in the series from the 924 to the 968 are notorious for those items, as well as rear interior sail panels buckling, and other issues. A bad interior does not equal a bad car, 90% of them have worn interiors.

there's more, but this will go one and on if i don't stop. my hp ratings come from the Porsche technical specifications book, 1st edition, 1991 print date. the rest is from a combination of hands on experience, reading just about every book that has been published about the series, and owning several 924's, 924S, 944, 924 turbo, and even a 928.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Please note, I'm not complaining that the magazine was favorable or unfavorable about the car, just that it was very light on information, especially compared with what I've come to expect from GRM.

The harsh reality is that if we went into huge depth on every incarnation of the 924/944/968, it would have been a fairly huge article. Then someone would surely complain that we spent too much space on one make/model of car.

As you noted, no, it wasn't one of our usual buyer guides. It wasn't even branded as such. It was basically a piece to let the readers know that there's probably a Porsche out there with those less than $10,000 to spend.

Schmidlap wrote: If a magazine writes anything even remotely uncomplimentary about any car, it will piss off that car's fans. GRM could write "the Ford Tempo didn't sell as well as the Taurus for numerous reasons" and Tempotopaz.com would be in an uproar: "The Tempo didn't sell as well as the Taurus because Ford spent eleventybillion dollars advertising the Taurus and only $3.12 advertising the Tempo. Why didn't the magazine write that? Everyone here knows that the Tempo is the best all around 4 door car ever made." Unless you heap the highest praises onto a car, you'll upset the fanbois. At least the 924 site has people trying to clue in the superfans there. Bob

Yes, welcome to our world. By the way, my wife had a Topaz when we met. She now drives a Civic Si. I'd make a comment, but that would send someone's panties into a wad.

Many people are devoted to one particular make and model, and somewhere there is a story in there. I think there's also a psychological exercise in there. Are they so devoted because the car is so great, or have they passed a point where they have to stay devoted in order to save face?

Adrian_Thompson wrote: I felt it was very light on technical information that should have been included. A quick, but not exhaustive list is: Use the later water pumps when replacing. It mentioned the different dash designs, but no pictures and no mention of the lower steering wheel or poor heating control with the early one. No explanation of the early narrow Vs late wider track and different offset.

I believe this was in fact all detailed several years ago when they did an article on the 944. Rehashing the same article over and over again gets old.

At least, I remember reading about all of that stuff in a very GRM-like magazine and the only other GRM-like car magazines I know of would have no Porsche articles. Unless you were swapping a Buick 455 or a pair of Dana 60s in one, that is.

Oh, speaking of the 924, don't think that we hate them. In fact, Andy and I have been looking for one. We basically want to find the best example out there. We have plans for it. Brumos had their 924 advertised for $3500 (seriously) but it's no longer on the market. I have seen the car. It's mint.

Horsepower figures for older foreign cars are always tricky. There are many ways of expressing horsepower: DIN, SAE Net, SAE Gross, PS; to make matters worse, those figures aren't necessarily consistent from year to year. Remember back around 2006 when the SAE changed the scale slightly and the S2000 went from a nice round 240 horsepower to a slightly less round 237? The engine didn't change, the scale did. There's also the chance that the poor sap in charge of translating the technical data from German to English doesn't know the difference between a DIN figure and an SAE one. Sometimes we get lucky and find a golden source, other times we to make a judgment call. It becomes a matter of show me a number, and I can show you a different one. They're all in the ballpark, and it's hard to say that one Porsche source is better or worse than another.

The 924 numbers we went with came from a Porsche brochure; here's an example. http://coochas.com/brochures/Resources/924-LimEd.pdf

The 924 Turbo numbers are SAE Net figures from one of the sources in our library, "The Great Book of Sports Cars," and backed up by a few of the author's sources. Every dynoed a turbo car? They rarely make the same power between pulls...

We do agonize a bit over these figures, but in the scope of this story where we couldn't spend page after page explaining model year differences, we had to pick our specs and pull the trigger. If we ever do a full in-depth profile on a 924 or 924 Turbo, we'd get into the nitty gritty.

Knurled wrote:

Adrian_Thompson wrote: I felt it was very light on technical information that should have been included. A quick, but not exhaustive list is: Use the later water pumps when replacing. It mentioned the different dash designs, but no pictures and no mention of the lower steering wheel or poor heating control with the early one. No explanation of the early narrow Vs late wider track and different offset.

I believe this was in fact all detailed several years ago when they did an article on the 944. Rehashing the same article over and over again gets old. At least, I remember reading about all of that stuff in a very GRM-like magazine and the only other GRM-like car magazines I know of would have no Porsche articles. Unless you were swapping a Buick 455 or a pair of Dana 60s in one, that is.

Agreed with your comment in bold, but the article was 10 years ago! I bet there's been a massive turnover and or influx of new readers in that time so a full rehash wouldn't have been out of place.

David S. Wallens wrote:

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Please note, I'm not complaining that the magazine was favorable or unfavorable about the car, just that it was very light on information, especially compared with what I've come to expect from GRM.

The harsh reality is that if we went into huge depth on every incarnation of the 924/944/968, it would have been a fairly huge article. Then someone would surely complain that we spent too much space on one make/model of car.

Well, you can't please everyone, but I think the complaint here is "not enough depth." To avoid the huge article problem, you limit scope. But you knew that.

Overviews have their place. Maybe in today's world that's what we can expect more of from print media. After all, when I'm done reading and I want more info, all I have to do is google it, right?

Otherwise, I'd love to see an in-depth on a 931. GRM shines when it takes on bastard-children. The end result is either that myths are debunked, or we find out precisely why an acquisition might be ill-advised. Either way, it's a good read.

Well, not that my opinion really matters much I'll just say I liked reading it. I'm not in the market for a 9XX (can't seem to afford any car that starts with a 9, why is that?) so I found it to be an interesting read and had some info I already knew and quite a bid I didn't. If I were in the market for a 9XX it would have been sorely lacking in technical info and specs, but then again, every magazine article would be. If I were in the market I would be totally engrossed in the marque.

Scott is correct on the HP rataings.

The 2.5L 8valve 944 motor has rating from 143 hp to 150 hp. All for what is he the same spec.

What I have come to realize a big part of is is DIN vs SAE ratings.

As for me.. I was hoping for more meat in the article as well. I guess it is hard to cover 20 years of model in only few pages. Especially when there are some 6 or 7 variants depending on how you count.

I could probably write a 30-40 page article coveing the 924/944/968 cars and stil get alot wrong. Of course only a few guys would even care.

I guess the good thing about the article is that if you knew nothing about the 924/944/968 at least now you have some idea that 1) they were all based on the same car, 2) they inexpensive to buy 3)have big range of desirablity and performance.

Good article. I was able to get though it in one sitting.. . Wait, Can I say that??? Tim does not like that. . .. .

My new means for judging things

Scott Lear said: The 924 numbers we went with came from a Porsche brochure; here's an example. http://coochas.com/brochures/Resources/924-LimEd.pdf

That explains allot. Porsche is notorious for intentionally understating performance stats in their marketing materials. When the buyer later finds out they got more for their money than they expected, they are happier, and Porsche now has a repeat customer (in theory.)

on the flip side, if they have a few cars that are under performers, they are still performing to what Porsche has promised, so few complaints. its their cushion, win -win for them, confusing for the rest of us.

fortunately most of their cars usually exceed even the factory stats by a few ponies, but they ALL meet or exceed the marketing stats.. clever bunch those Porsche people are... .

I thought maybe the 968 people would also be a little angry about this article. I've been unable to figure out why a good 968 runs around the same amount as a Boxster. I'd love to have a 968, but the value just isn't there in my mind.

DrBoost wrote: Well, not that my opinion really matters much I'll just say I liked reading it. I'm not in the market for a 9XX (can't seem to afford any car that starts with a 9, why is that?) so I found it to be an interesting read and had some info I already knew and quite a bid I didn't. If I were in the market for a 9XX it would have been sorely lacking in technical info and specs, but then again, every magazine article would be. If I were in the market I would be totally engrossed in the marque.

I will keep an eye out for a 929 for ya Boosty