944obscene

Yep. The Turbo Hydromatic transmissions were great designs. The TH350 is one of the most friendly/beatable transmissions you can swap on a car. And a Powerglide makes a great racing trans. There's a local race prepped 20b Miata SoloII car that runs a Powerglide trans with clutch engagement. That thing is a creepy crawly beast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9W7reXDxpg

M758

Yep.
In the early 70's Porsche was contracted by VW to create a sports car for VW. As such the early 924 development used lots of VW & Audi parts to contrl both design and build costs. Along the way VW scrapped the sports car project idea and the EA425 as it was called had no home. At the time the 914 was reaching the end of is production life and Porsche needed a new entry level sports car. They were clearly familiar with the EA425 project as they have done all the design and development for VW. So they chose to buy back the design rigths from VW. Part of the deal was that the chassis be built at the VW plant in rather that the Porsche plant in Stuttgart. This had to do with capacity in Stuttgart and maintain some aspect of the 914 arrangement with VW. So by this time Porsche was in dire need of the entry level car as can be evidenced by the 1976 912E as a one year only entry level car that covered the gap between the 1975 914 and the 1977 924. So this meant alot of the 924 would be very similar to the EA425 as designed for VW. As time went on Porsche took the basic EA425 now turned 924 and made it more and more Porsche. The next big change was the 944's 2.5L Porsche motor vs 2.0L Audi motor. After this the 944 Turbo was developed and the VW rabbit based front suspension was ditched for aluminum Porsche parts. Same for the interior which was updated with more Porsche parts bin items and fewer VW parts bin items. These updates were also applied to the 85.5 944 non turbo cars. Interestingly the 924S was introduced as the latest entry level car using a mix of early and late 944 bits in the narrow body of the 924.

Po924S

Hum. I didn't know that GM did that. Cool.

hacker-pschorr

I grew up with Porsche's, Audi's and VW's the same way domestic fans will have a GMC truck, Pontiac sedan and a Corvette in the garage. To me they are all the same family, each serving a different market.

The snobbery of Porsche owners trying to distance themselves from their VW roots is amusing.

V2Rocket

so if the trans is just lifted out of the Audi 100, i wonder if it still has provisions for 4WD?

J Silverman

The transaxle is actually from an audi 5000.

tifosiman

You should take yours apart to find out and get back to us on that.

Potomac-Greg

Yet it exhibits none of the Audi 5000s "sudden acceleration" tendencies.

V2Rocket

when i get my tax return im hoping to buy a spare tranny to rebuild the first one, so ill get back to you then.

944obscene

A FWD 944 would crawl on walls.

951_for_John

The drive shaft for the AWD will be at the rear of the trans. running to the rear bumper.
the flanges that the half shafts bolt to, go to the front wheels on the audi, then a drive shaft runs to a dif at the rear of the car...

V2Rocket

yes i know. but lamborghini, bugatti and our own 911 turbo have big driveshafts from the back of the car and dont seem to have any problems there :]

how freaking sweet would it be to have a 4wd 944 platform...

Voith

that blue coolingfluid cap is from vw.

AHA 911 isn't a REAL porsche :>

V2Rocket

the glue on the headliner is the same brand honda uses


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

whiz944

M758 relates pretty much the whole story. Porsche didn't have the internal factory capacity to build the 924, and VW had just closed down the NSU plant in Nekarsulm - so they had some excess capacity. A deal was made, and the old NSU plant was used to build the 924. The arrangement worked well enough that the 944 was built there too. Though IIRC, the 944 engines were built over in the Porsche plant in Stuttgart and then trucked to Nekarsulm.

I traded in an Audi 5000S for my 944, back in 1987. Believe me when I tell you there is no comparison between the cars. I liked the Audi a lot, but the 944 was far and away a better car in every respect.