The Porsche 944, introduced for the ’82 model year, was widely seen as a legitimate Porsche, which was something questioned of the 924 on which it was based. Those flared front and rear fenders weren’t just for looks – they were necessitated by wider tires and wheels. The most significant difference was under the hood, where a Porsche-designed, four-cylinder “heart” displacing 2.5 liters heart rated at 147 horsepower (in non-turbo form) had replaced the 924’s Audi-sourced 2.0 liter four. The 2.5L was basically one-half of the 4.5L V8 found in the 928 grand tourer, but slightly bored out. Weighing in at about 3,000 pounds, the naturally aspirated 944 was able to do 0-60 miles per hour in the mid eight-second range. Per a license plate search, this example was originally built in Neckarsulm, Germany, and had a base price of $28,905, which is $82,500 adjusted for 2026.
I’m a Generation X-er who had grown up mostly in the ’80s, and there are certain familiar, comforting touchstones from that decade that will always bring me joy on some level. I have long since learned that when I search for things online (perhaps maybe even when I merely think about them), my social media news feeds will then be populated with not just advertisements related to said search topics, but also related shorts and clips. Aside from the general creepiness of this (which I’ve long made peace with, and I love social media much more than I hate certain aspects of it), I enjoy seeing posts showing what the typical ’80s living room had looked like. I get a kick out of seeing old pictures of the loaded cassette cases of peers. Pictures of ashtrays on the tables at the local McDonald’s. You get the idea.
I also just can’t get enough (Depeche Mode reference, there) of discussion threads of favorite movies from that era, which will often veer into singing the praises of the late, great John Hughes and his impressive filmmaking legacy in which he had so beautifully and near-universally captured the zeitgeist of ’80s teendom. Many of his films had been set in Chicagoland, my home of over two decades, which has endeared me even more to his body of work at this stage of my life.
The elephant in the room is that there will sometimes be moments during such a screening when something in one of his films is undeniably cringey. Mr. Hughes, may he rest in immortalized teen-angst peace, will never be cancelled by me simply because even though he pushed certain aspects of his plot lines, character development, and dialogues a bit far, he had done so with a discernable love for his subjects and protagonists that his work had portrayed.
With all of that said, Sixteen Candles from 1984 remains one of my favorites in Hughes’ canon of teen-themed pictures and, at least in my mind, the red ’83 Porsche 944 driven by the character of Jake Ryan is easily one of the most iconic movie cars of the ’80s. The 944 was available in fourteen colors for ’83 (and in sixteen for ’87, the year of our featured car), but the color I most associate with these cars is red, without question. In fact, four of the ’83 colors and three for ’87 were in some variation of red. The whole red Porsche thing seems even more such an ’80s phenomenon especially when contrasted against this make’s current offerings. Off the top of my head, I can picture some red 911s, but zero Panameras or Macans – the latter two of which, of course, are not sports cars.
The other connection with that decade that’s present on this car are those iconic rotary phone dial wheels which, interestingly enough, were not present on Jake Ryan’s car. I’m trying to remember approximately the last year I can remember having dialed a rotary phone at my parents’ house. If my memory serves me correctly, this might have been the early ’90s, after which the Dennises were exclusively a touch-tone family. I loved calling my friends back in the day, and I find it fascinating today just how much of my mental bandwidth I had committed to memorizing so many phone numbers. I suppose this is really no different than how I have now internalized myriad passwords out of necessity, but I can still remember so many of those old phone numbers even as I type this – my own, and also those of my family of origin and of many friends.
Some years back, a friend and her then-adolescent daughter were visiting my home. As a fun experiment, we asked the daughter, Addison, to attempt a fake phone call using the rotary phone (which is still in my living room – inoperable, of course). Addison, a very bright young lady, had managed to pick up the receiver and position it correctly between her shoulder and her cheek, but her mom and I (this probably sounds a little mean, I know) were barely able to suppress laughter as Addison tried to figure out what to do with the dial. Don’t worry. We showed her. I suppose this would be no different than a member of the Greatest Generation asking me to work a victrola, or something. Yes, we’re old, but that’s only a state of mind. Just don’t tell my joints on some days. I’m thankful for rolling reminders like this red 944 S with the rotary phone dial wheels of how great it was to grow up in the ’80s.
Wrigleyville, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, February 22, 2026.
I love the rotary phone – but it looks naked without the little paper label in the middle of the dial, with your phone number typewritten on it. This reminds me of how I was elected to go to the phone company to get a telephone installed in a college apartment in probably 1980 or 81. We were trying to save money and I asked for a black dial phone. The lady at the counter tried telling me that I could pick a color for no charge. But really, just how decorative can a dial phone in color be?
There are few cars that say 80s to me more than a red Porsche. At that price, these were pretty irrelevant to my car-buying life at that time, but they sure made a statement.
A black rotary phone just sounds so industrial. And your recollection reminds me I had totally forgotten about the process of setting up utilities. I remember first doing that when I was a college junior – I remember that being a big step toward adulthood.
And yes, that was some serious coin. I was shocked at the result of the inflation calculator.
I was able to tell my Mom’s mood by the harshness of her dialling. She could rip out the numbers if she was irritated, especially for a customer service call.
Also when I was a kid, if a family had a touch tone phone I assumed they were rich.
LOL about that last thing – probably same. I always think about the feel of slamming down the receiver, but yes – the harshness of the dialing could definitely be a clue that something was wrong! I had forgotten about that, in my own experience.
Today, esteemed CC community, I’m going to let you in on a secret:
I’ve always considered a 944 or even a 964 more desirable than a 911. That hasn’t changed to this day. By the way – in my opinion, the quintessential color for these cars is silver metallic.
And now, lead me to the gallows…
Well, before you’re off (or “your off”), it’s gotta be intrinsically better to put the motor in the front where god intended (or perhaps in the middle, where he wavered), and to have 50:50 weight, instead of smuggling an engine in the boot, which was so very fascinating to engineers of 1935 but a bit meh by ’75, surely?
Though the original from Butzi Porsche has to remain the prettier – if, perhaps, only those pretty ’60’s originals, discuss – of the two, and the engine noise winner would remain with the oldie.
But I’ll not hang you. I will watch, though…
Do you mean a 968? Because a 964 is a 911. I agree that just about any Porsche looks great in silver! Although they offered some really nice shades of green, blue, and even brown, in the ’70s and ’80s.
Oh yes, you’re right. What horrible typo! I ment the Über-944.
Thanks for the hint.
I like that you mentioned silver, because in my mind, that would be probably my second choice as most popular Porsche color. Actually, between that and white.
The radio, the cinema, the television, computers were all in their time presaged to be the end of civilized man. And for sure, all had a propagandist element, in that certain outlooks were privileged. But they were not carefully engineered to guide and move the user in a hidden, deeply personal interaction toward and end, such as outrage, which social media has most certainly does.
The demonstrable madness of our times is partly the result of us all living through what will be seen as history’s revolutions, this one, of the sprint to on-lineness (I hope the word the historians find is better): barely being able to discern which way is up happens in all such times, and there is much to go yet.
But none of this means that social media is an identifiable social evil, one that has led to the excesses of awfulness we’re living through. And it’s engineered, and I’m as susceptible as the author, but I still try not to, and condemn it for the destruction it has unleashed and the wealth and power it has given to so few (and so mad).
The 944 was satisfying development of the 924. It looked like the finished product, as intended, and they are indeed very ’80’s – one had to have red braces and a red filofax to be allowed to buy one, which is why so very many were red. If one were able to use the wheels as a phone, I think it would be to ask why Porsche didn’t pop this out in the first place (and yes, yes, I know the answer).
As a meander, what exactly DOES half a V8 mean? Same transfer lines for the bore drilling, etc, but surely the casting itself is not a half of the whole? Or is it?
I couldn’t edit this. ” ONE of history’s revolutions”: “doesn’t mean that social media is NOT an identifiable moral evil”.
Nothing like some missing words to say the opposite of intended!
“Onlineness” as an adjective works just fine with me, regardless of the squiggly line under that word that WordPress is giving me right now.
I think that social media, like anything, can be used or abused to ill effect and that it, by itself, is pretty neutral. That’s my feelings as I type this, anyway.
I had assumed the engine was literally 1/2 of the 928’s engine block, but apparently per Wikipedia (there ya go), few parts between the two engines were interchangeable.
My comment’s a mess, a draft really, unedited, and sounds disappointingly aggro to you as a result, but my point was that I do think social media is a space that – for base ends of profit – uses us, rather than us, it, and that we have little control at all.
The V8 thing is really curious to me, because it’s come up before. Things such as that oddball 3.2 litre Pontiac Tempest four in ’62, and the Triumph Stag V8 (from their four) in about ’71. There’s probably others.
Btw, anyone who wants to be aggro to you can deal with me first. I won’t allow it!
“Half of a V8” generally just means the inline-4 design was derived from the design of an existing V8, sharing significant dimensions such as bore center spacing and drilling patterns for head bolts etc., perhaps even interchangeable cylinder heads, pistons, connecting rods, etc, and typically able to be manufactured on the same production line using the same tooling as the V8.
Typically they don’t just cast an entire V8 block and cut it in half or cut off one bank, but I think I might have seen one where they did just leave one bank unmilled (or maybe I’m thinking of an inline block that left one cylinder unmilled?).
The Triumph Stag V8 was the other way around of course, starting with an existing slant-4 and doubling it up into a V8, tho’ Lewis Dawtrey had designed the slant-4 that way in the first place anticipating the potential to make a V8 out of it.
The Tempest 4 was in many respects a Pontiac V-8 minus one bank. The missing bank wasn’t cut off, of course, but the blocks for the four were even cast using most of the same cores, just subtracting the left-hand cylinder barrels. It was about as close to half a V-8 as you’d really get in series production.
It rarely is – building half a V8 is a very expedient way of prototyping a four, but a lot of detail needs to be changed on the way to production usually.
Boring/honing machines tend to be one of the most cumbersome and expensive bits of the transfer line, which is why manufacturers often retain the same cylinder spacing. This however might mean an overly-long and heavy four, or a V8 with too narrow crank bearings…choose your poison. A V8 is better-balanced and doesn’t need to be as hefty as a four-cylinder block. That’s also true of making a straight-six from one, mind.
It’s more usual to retain one cylinder head – unless the installation angle isn’t 45°. then you need to reconsider oil and water flows.
But sharing all the reciprocating parts saves a lot of time and effort. And the porting and all the other remaining difficult calculatory bits.
I seem to recall that Cincinnati Bell made you rent the phone from them. Then one day we could just go to KMart and buy our own, it was a revelation. I associate Porsches from the 80s in Guards Red or that metallic taupe color like the Risky Business 928.
Shockingly for this pop culture fan, I have never seen Risky Business. Is it going to make me want to jump up and down on a yellow couch?
The whole “you need to rent a phone” thing seems like such a racket in 2026 when one thinks about being able to purchase an “unlocked” phone from a department store and just be on one’s merry way.
Thank you for the John Hughes connection this morning. I love much of his work, and films such as Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Breakfast Club are absolutely in my relatively short deck of “rewatchables”. Hughes definitely had a thing for cars…particularly of the red sports car variety. Maybe a rewatch of Ferris Bueller is in order for today.
Your article also reminds me that I really ought to check and see if the rotary dial phones that I have still work to dial. I still have two, but both are wired without the modular jack…so they sit on a shelf pending my attaching the proper jack (so many things to do….). The touch tone one though (pictured below) absolutely still works and I use it regularly. I should wire up one of the rotary dial ones and check. My guess is that they’d work just fine since I still recall moving into my current house (26 years ago) and being told by Verizon (which wasn’t called Verizon then) that I needed to pay an extra 75 cents/month for “touch tone service”. Without that, I could ONLY use rotary dial phones. Anyway, I do still use the red Bell System touch tone desk phone. It has a nice pink receiver (because this is the phone I originally rented from the phone company in college…and back then in the early 1980s, the receiver just looked prettier in pink).
I like what you did at the end there.
Jeff, the modular jack – wow. I have been without a landline for… I don’t know, probably seven years now. I was late to eliminating it, probably one of the last of my peers.
Seventy-five cents extra for touch tone service? That’s like having a silverware rental charge at a buffet. Something about that seems so wrong.
When I was decluttering last month, I had a few more rotary phones that I chose to part with. I chose the one I liked the best, and that’s the one pictured in this article.
There’s a quick way you can check if your rotary phone dial would still work:
With your touch-tone phone, pick up the handset, then rapidly tap the hang-up button as many times for each number (use 10 for a 0), separated by a brief pause — e.g., to dial my area code 520, you’d tap it quickly 5 times, then 2 times, then 10 times, and so forth for the other numbers.
This is literally what the rotary dial mechanizes automatically, with a rotating cam in the center of the dial that break-makes the connection the corresponding number of times (very similar to how distributor points work).
Back in the day, we could use this trick to dial out on inbound-call-only phones that just had a blanking plate where the dial or touchpad should be.
I doubt it.
For one thing, it only receives power through the bell wire (IIRC, yours are also 80V) so it won’t ring. I disconnected my bell wire a looongg time ago as it sometimes used to cause router problems.
I doubt the phone network no longer recognises pulses, only digital tones. And with no power, your analogue phone is as utterly useless as the write-only memory chip.
whooops, forgot the attachment.
(this one also still has the paper label…as do both of the rotary ones I have. Because where the heck are you going to get one of THOSE nowadays? 🙂 )
Nice! Thanks for remembering. I may have to see if I can find a template from which to make and print a slip-in label for my phone, because after reading JP’s comment above, I can’t unsee the bareness of my white rotary.
Am I alone in thinking that German cars should never be red? They should be silver or black.
Molly Ringwald was extremely over rated in the looks department.
Black is another good car for these. I think any German-engineered car looks good in an austere, no-nonsense color.
I love Ringwald, but these days, Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club is the one who commands my attention.
The phone is very similar to the one left behind in the old house in 2013, though having the letters on their looks ‘old fashioned’ to me; in the UK we went over to all numeral phone numbers at the end of the ’60s and as we didn’t get a phone until about 1980 it just had the numerals in the dial.
https://telephonesuk.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/741R_ivory-1.jpg
I am probably in a minority in preferring the look of the 924 over the 944 (or the 928 for that matter), just looks neater without the blisters.
The 924 has a clean, modern athleticism about it relative to the 944, so I see that. It’s like the difference between the 1967 – ’68 Mustang and and 1969 – ’70. One has more obvious muscle on it. I like both.
I think we kept the letters on the dial and then touch-tone buttons here in the US, long after we gave up dialing the relevant exchange by the first two letters of its name (e.g. PEnnsylvania 6-5000), because so many businesses and even some gov’t agencies got custom phone numbers allowing them to tout letters as a mnemonic to dial their number.
I have to bring up my favorite John Hughes movie, Weird Science! And it also featured one of my favorite Porsches, the 928S. A schwartz one, alongside a red Ferrari Mondial convertible.
A little FYI — a Google search revealed that there are some Android and iPhone apps that supposedly give you the vintage rotary dial experience.
I love that there’s a cell phone app that replicates the rotary dial thing! I feel that. And again surprisingly, I have never seen Weird Science all the way through, only bits and pieces. That one has always interested me.
Still have a landline (!) and WE Princess, Trimline, 500 desk, and wall phones in various colors, both rotary and button models.
I’m one of these silly people who’d go back to 1958 if I could (I was 8 and life was simple), 3 TV channels and ETV. Never have had TV cable or streaming, never have used any social media (well, except FBM to buy cars, if that counts! lol). I am thankful for the ‘net and CC though, it must be said. Such a hypocrite, eh? Make my Porsche a 356… in dark green!
I see nothing wrong with going back to these touch-tone touchstones (see what I did there?) as a reminder of times that seemed simpler. How you relate to 1958 is not that dissimilar to how I’d relate to some year in the mid-’80s, though I also realize that problems simply change as we age.
I was joking with a friend this past weekend who I’ve known since the third grade about how one day we’ll be thinking about how young we were in our 50s. And it’s the truth.
A dark green Porsche 356 would be a stunner. Suddenly, I’m imagining a foggy morning drive in a car like that with the windows down…
A rotary phone will not work, at least the dial part in the US. All phone companies implemented digital only switching equipment many years ago. And supporting the old dial phones required phone companies to keep extra equipment for many years. I think the last area on the east coast with operator and dial support was along the Massachusetts Connecticut border and that was decades ago. There were limits on the number of phones allowed on one line due to the current loop wiring design and each phone added more resistance to the loop. And the operator had to connect you to call anywhere and everywhere other than local.
I remember an aunt that had an early desk phone that had a place for a dial but had a blank circular disk instead. That was back in the early 1950s when there were still operators at every local phone company, as well as party lines where several homes shared one pair of wires.
Seems hard to believe we survived without carrying a phone with us at all times. In the summer kids played outside all day, came home at noon for lunch when the firehouse siren went off and came home for dinner when the siren went off at 5 pm. Mom would ask “what did you do today?” Nobody had a Porsche, they were only seen in magazines.
This is fascinating – thank you, Scott. Before reading this, I would have bet that a rotary phone would have worked as plugged into any working landline wall jack.
Our phones are more like mini computers. You make a great point about how much a part of our lives they are these days. I liked just coming home for dinner when it was dark out. I’m sure I might have broken or lost a phone as a hard lesson if I had to carry one as a kid.
Even older smartphones will no longer work on most U.S. networks, which phased out 2G and 3G support several years ago now. (The 2G/3G sunset is apparently slower in Europe, but is coming.) The companies don’t want to keep supporting legacy equipment, and claim they need the bandwidth for other things.
I hadn’t even thought about this. What are we up to now, like 5G? I just looked it up and it appears that 6G is on the horizon. Or Verizon. Or whatever.
Sixteen colors offered in 1987? Wow – I wonder what the proportion of red or black ones were? It was rare to see a 944 in any other color.
The wheels make the car here. It just wouldn’t be as iconic without them.
I love the story about your friend’s daughter. Every generation has its list of everything things that have simply vanished with time. My wife and I recently inherited her parents’ 1997 F-150, which is now my daily driver, and it has manual windows. I showed my kids how to “roll down” a window, because it’s not intuitive if you’ve never seen it before.
I’d be curious to know the breakout of ’87 944 production by factory color and might have researched this if I hadn’t felt like I was done writing this after 900 words or so. To your point, I wonder if black was the No. 2 color that year, or if it was white, silver, or…?
The 924/944/968 never quite looked or felt like a proper Porsche to me; the Boxster finally did.
I remember when you were supposed to rent your phones (although we, like many others, had bought a phone from a third party and connected it – undetectable by the Bell System if the ringer was disabled). For a few years in the early ’80s, instead of paying a monthly fee you could for a one time charge pay about $75 and never pay a monthly fee for that phone, and still get lifetime service and repairs. That offer was only available on the Princess and Trimline phones, with the Princess being the less expensive of the two. So we got a baby-blue Princess phone with Touch Tones, which had a dial and base that glowed softly when not in use, and brightly when making a call. Somewhere I also obtained a rotary-dial Princess phone which we used the last few years of college, when rotary dials were already quite retro by the late ’80s. As for figuring out how to use a rotary dial, the Bell System prepared this 1940 film on the subject, taking a whopping 40 minutes (!) explaining how to use one (before rotary dial phones, you placed a call by picking up the handset and asking the human phone operator to connect you to a number). I can only imagine how long they would have taken to explain how to use a smartphone…
Thank you for this. That whole idea of what kind of phone one would lease or rent from the phone company being tied to how much one could pay for certain services just seems so extra.
The idea of color-coordinating one’s phone to the home decor does make sense to me, especially given the their sheer size and visibility in a room.
I remember when the Boxster came out and even though it was a completely new design (I don’t even recall having seen the concept), it immediately and intuitively looked like a Porsche to me, unmistakable for anything else.
The mind tends to bury trauma, so we forget how expensive phone service used to be! Especially long distance. It was still pretty bad even into the ’00s, and on an inflation-adjusted basis, that was nothing compared to the murderous cost of long distance or international calling in the ’40s.
If you’ve ever seen the 1942 movie adaptation of The Man Who Came to Dinner, with Monty Woolley and Bette Davis, one of the points of contention between Sheridan Whiteside and his unwilling hosts is that he keeps using their telephone to call his famous friends, and has wracked up a $784 telephone bill. If you assume the story takes place in 1939, that’s the equivalent of over $40,000 in today’s money.
Aaron, I’m a classic movie fan, so thanks for putting that on my radar. Reading your comment reminds me of what a big deal it had been to call “long distance” and how expensive it was. I can already see Bette Davis rolling her iconic eyes in my mind.
la673: Thanks for the great, if uber long, video. There are brief images of the stepper switches that formed the core of the central office switch. Each number digit dialed moved a stepper switch and it’s wire contacts to the position just as in the lighted board in the video. Then the next number digit moved the next stepper switch. When all digits were dialed the switch contacts connected your call to the correct line (wire pair) of the phone number you were calling. A massive amount of wiring in those switching centers. And an incredible amount of noise. The buildings regardless of exterior design were frequently made of masonry to keep the noise inside. And all phone line wire pairs had to go to
That’s because it was an Audi NSU!
Yes, it was a better car than the torture-chamber 911, but a VW LT engine, Beetle 1303 front end and Transporter transaxle gave the game away a bit. But then I also liked the 914, in spite of or perhaps because of its awkward styling and (like the Boxster) real Porsche chassis.
I’m very minded of how close in dimensions/proportions/oily bits and utility a Toyota GT86 is to a 924/944. A real spiritual successor, but of course less serious/up itself than the Porsche.
As a Generation Jonser, I laugh at the 1980s as an era being ~80% bullshit and ~20% reality. So I’d suffer the 924 and a real drum kit, thanks.
The 924 really spoke to me. The styling is really modern and elegant. The 914 caught my eye, as it was Motor Trend’s Import Car of the Year. It wasn’t a beautiful car, but it seemed so logical. I even went and test drove a used one. However I passed and got a ’77 Coupe de Ville instead. The 944 and 924S, seemed like the perfect combination between economy and performance. I checked out a lot of 944s at used car lots, and they all had the same problem; the bottom of the steering wheel would rub the tops of my legs. Porsche worked on this issue over the years, but they never got it right for me. I moved on to early Datsun Zs, and those were an ergonomic triumph, they had a spacious drivers cockpit and everything fell easily to hand. Performance and economy still speaks to me. My ’06 Mustang GT outperforms the 944, handles great, and it gets slightly better gas mileage. The 914’s spirit has been resurrected in the Boxster, only with more power and better air conditioning.
A 944 still appeals to me, but I wonder how well they have held up over the years. Except for the fuel injection they are pretty simple cars. No ABS and a manual transmission. However as an 80’s car they would have to be able to pass the California smog check, which could be a constant worry. Does anyone out there daily drive a 944?
Jose, I hope some with firsthand knowledge of the 944 can speak to your question. I’m also curious to know where a 944 falls on the durability and repairability scales (which are admittedly different) relative to the 928.
That your 2006 Mustang GT (that generation is always in my short list of Mustang favorites) performs as least as well as what was a very expensive Porsche from twenty years earlier is a reminder of how technology can make many things to be within reach over time. I like that.
I’d forgotten the leg-rubbing thing.
It sent someone I know round to Lotus instead. He and his brother got carried away on the spec so scrapped the Excel and started again with an Esprit. That was rather nice.
Funny thing, until recent years I’d never heard this wheel style called “phone dial”, although a similar Alfa Romeo style with more and smaller, perfectly round holes were sometimes called that. Back in the day, this Porsche style of wheels were always called “egg poachers” (photo for reference).
This is actually such a better description of those Porsche wheels than the phone dial, given that the egg poacher you pictured has the correct number of apertures.
The 928 is a very complex car, and like my Jaguar XJS, they were often abandoned when they developed mechanical/electrical problems beyond the resources of the owner. Values of these decrepit examples have been very low, I imagine that a modern Porsche dealer doesn’t really want to bother with working on these cars. So who will? That’s the problem. Old air cooled 911s have gone up in value immensely, but if someone really wants a Porsche there are a lot of used Boxsters available. In fact, my son even has one. I’ve driven it and it’s quite a capable car and I suppose a bargain. But they have their areas of fragility; the intermediate shaft bearings. Other problems led to a large number of engine replacements while they were still under warranty. I haven’t seen a lot of 944s offered on my local CraigsList, but I do keep an eye out for them. I still think they are quite attractive, and they have the bonus of still having real front and rear bumpers.
I’m pretty sure Jim Klein had featured an old 928 in one of his Curbside Recycling posts, and I seem to recall it discussed that despite the 928’s tank-like construction, the complexities of some of the systems can make some of them that need a little work to be cost-prohibitive to keep going. I’m glad you mentioned the Boxster (I took my silver-colored diecast of the prototype out of storage yesterday) as I’ve also wondered what the secondhand ownership experience for those is like, for decently maintained examples.
And the bumper thing – that beats having to replace an entire, expensive bumper cover, any day.
I was definitely one of those Porsche snobs who thought making a water-cooled engined Porsche was heretical. And, sticking an Audi derived water-cooled 4 banger in a newly released model. Come on Porsche where are ya going? Guess I should be more specific, It’s the in-line cylinder water-cooled engines I raised an eyebrow at.
Well, as it turned out those water-cooled in-line engine Porschees weren’t bad….at all. Trust us they said.
But, I still hands down prefer the air-cooled then water-cooled (this water-cooling thing I’m taking too far) Boxer engines, or those motors appearing in 911’s and Caymans. And, who doesn’t love that unmistakable whine.