Reimu

If your 944 was getting the same fuel economy as a FC then you were doing something wrong.

Lorax

You can pick up a good '90 rx7 turbo II for $3500??

87 944 C

i've seen really decent 88 rx7 turbo's for 5g

ccaarmerciill

Napa valley windy roads, my friend in his 5 door mazda speed 3, me = stock 944 n/a with 9.5's in the rear on good tires. After about 2 miles of windy roads, I came to a stop sign and had to wait at least 30 seconds for him to catch up to me. Lots of understeer for him...

pcutt

Ha! I was actually in Napa Valley when talking to my acquaintance about his GF's car, and Hwy 128 was what brought up the subject of handling!

Brewer944

My daily driver is an 06 Mazda 3, bone stock. It does actually handle very nicely. I love windy mountain roads and gravel tracks - rallying it on gravel roads is so much fun. It has a little bit of body roll on sharp corners but tracks around them well nonetheless. It has more zip off the line than my 944 (in the dry) but I haven't yet pushed the 944 really hard, to conserve the 12 year old timing belt.

I will be able to provide more of a comparison once I have more miles in the 944. The Mazda 3 is a very sporty sedan, though, and does have excellent abilities to take bends. i once oversteered it in the wet when coming over a ridge in the on-ramp, but apart from that it has never seemed unstable.

eniac

A little defensive are we?

NEWSFLASH: Lancia, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Volvo, and Porsche all had made front engine/rear transaxles in the 60's and 70's. Before that it was Stutz. I don't think GM put them in the Corvette until 1997. But none of that matters and wasn't even my point.

The point I was making it that it was laughable this show talked like it was some new amazing thing JUST for the Z06. I was talking about how they were ooogling over the all the cool new stuff the Z06 had and how it was funny that much of that was already on our cars. I never said ours were the first.

hmm ok...

NEWSFLASH: Porsche designed the the 924 for Audi, for it to built by Audi. It didn't become an Audi because Audi felt at the time a 2 door sport hatchback didn't fit the Audi market and was much better suited as a Porsche. Much of the expensive tooling was already made for it to be an Audi so the production remained as so due to the expense. Porsche had control over how the car was built, how it was design, and what parts were to remain Audi and what new parts they would add as Porsche. This was the best way for Porsche to recoup the expense of designing the 924.

NEWSFALSH: The Z06 is still a pushrod V8...yeah a still a pushrod engine this day in age :0 , the 928 V8 was always a SOHC or DOHC. You cut a 928 engine in half and it looks quite like a 944 engine, you cut a pushrod Chevy V8 in half and it looks like half a pile of garbage. The Porsche V8 and Chevy V8 are not anymore similar then say a Ford V8 or Chrysler V8, or any other V8. I really don't even get why you brought up a 928 at all but that's a whole different subject for the "J-Lo" Porsche.

The fact is American cars are always behind the times. Which is ok since whenever they do try something new, it always seems to go bad....hence why Chrysler is about to be gone for good. I see things on my 1972 914 that took decades for US makers to catch up on. Namely the full electronic fuel injection, map sensor, dme, 4 piston brake calipers, r&p steering, all alloy alluminium engine block and head, galvanized body panels. I use that as one example but there are countless others that show which companies build cars to work for a few years and which companies build cars to last decades.

roman944

lol well it will probably "feel better" regular driving then a 944, but to regular maintenance on 944 and with good fresh suspension/tires it will be a lot more fun

a friend of mine has a base Mazda 3 and I've been in it a bunch of times, it's allright

now if this is MazdaSpeed 3, then its a different story, those things are turbo charged and can be a lot of fun, saw one run around the Auto-Cross last time, looked great

but I would still stick with a 944, there is NOTHING that can compare to a P-car

alordofchaos

More likely, the engineers designed the cars with all the goodies and the bean-counters nixed it to save a few hundred bucks per car

Seriously, change the belts.[/QUOTE]
Never got better than around 22~25 hwy mpg in my '80 RX7, and with a small tank (12~15 gallon), driving any distance was a PITA. Both my '79 924 and '86 944 consistently pull 30 mpg hwy and with a 20 gallon tank, I have to stop more to find a little boy's room than for gas

Tom R.

i tried to get 25 in my RX7s. thought i got it one trip back from VT. turns out i only got 24; i ran out of gas 7 miles from a station. Ouch. That one hurt.

Then i thought i was doing great because i got the same mpg in my legend coupe as the rx7s. best i got was my 88 olds cutlass supreme fwd. got 29 with four people and luggage and a ski rack. got 29 every trip to VT on regular with the ski rack.

hacker-pschorr

I've driven a 16 year old Mazda Miata with 150,000+ miles on the odo. Still an awesome sports car and solid as a rock (and RWD).

I've also driven quite a few 20 year old 944's that were so worn out they were dangerous at school zone speeds.

Not exactly.
One of the most common characteristics of every V8 “family” is the bore spacing. Every SBC has the same bore center; every SMF has the same bore center etc…..

The question “what makes a big block” comes up all the time. Most people give a displacement answer which is incorrect. It’s bore center spacing.

The 928 is within 30 thousandths of a big block Chevy. There is a big block 502 Chevy powered Bonneville race car with 928 S4 heads installed.

Granted the similarities do end there, other than the piston count.

eniac

Thanks for the info, I didn't know the spacing was so close to a BBC. I bet with S4 heads, that would be a beast.

If the 928 has the bore center similar to a chevy big block but has the displacement of a very small sbc, I really don't see how that can be considered the same. It makes for a completely different animal. I don't know what the 928 engine has to do with this topic still but given that it was made in 1977 with alluminium case, fuel injection and had a SOHC, then a DOHC later while the best and newest from GM is still a push rod V-8. The V8's from GM in 1977 were a complete joke. Carburated, heavy on emission control, lower displacement, weak iron block/heads, pushrod crap. It about as similar as saying a 928 is copied from a Thunderbird because the wheelbase is ## apart.

As far as I know the Z06 is considered a small block so there's little to compare to a 928 since as you state it has a bore center close to a big block chevy, not sbc.

Could the DOHC 928 S4 heads be fit onto a Z06 engine without extensive machine work?

yellowline

Also IF you can find a 944 that doesn't need $1000 in parts every year to be worthy of passing a DE inspection.

It doesn't need E85 and every trick in the book to make 500 hp, though. Give a small block the same build treatment and it'll put out power incomprehensible to owners of the red-headed stepchild Porsches


On topic- I think the only advantage the 944 has is feel. Everyone who tries my 83 comments on how it feels like a go-kart, and it's fun for that reason. Same reason I want to move to an air-cooled 911- I don't need the best or fastest; I want the experience.

87 944 C

though the vette engine is still a pushrod motor, there's nothing wrong with it, other than cherolet can't bore it anymore, nor can the put a s/c on it with more pressure than the zr1 or it'll become very unreliable, however as is the vette motors are incredible. it is a small block. though 427 really isn't a small motor to me.

i've passed inspection with my 21yr old 944, never put money in it to get it to pass. i've put money to keep it running(clutch) but never to pass inspection. the smog testing they did it passed with flying colors, well under what even the tech expected.

as for the 924, it was originally designed for VW as their sports car, when money got tight between VW/audi/Porsche, porsche bought the design(they had done originally) and audi produced it while VW supplied several parts, and badged it as Porsche, that way they could all make money on the car.

i made a trip in August, from Danville, Va to Oxford, NJ without stopping for gas. i stopped for Burger King and bathroom, but i made the entire 510mile trip on less then 1 tank, had about 3 gallons left. so that would be 28.3mpg. not bad i say

eniac

It's also twice the displacement and each engine is hand built by ONE person with his signature on it. If you buy a Z06 and the engine blows up, you have the guys name right on it who put it together. 500hp is the minimum I would expect out of this. GM could have went farther with this engine and made it even better but they stopped short by leaving it a single cam pushrod engine. Imagine the power it could have had with DOHC and variable timing and twin turbochargers. My point was they are doing nothing new. It's great they can squeeze 500hp out of an old dog but there comes a point when you just need to take that old dog out back and shoot it.

Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful car for what it is but it's nothing new. That was the whole point of my post and why the show I watched was funny. They focused on all the hype and "NEW" stuff that had been done for decades on other cars. It was just a silly comment more so about the writers of that show and less about the actual car.

Hmm, I always thought the 944 felt a bit heavy but that's coming from running BMW E30's, 914's and Fiats.

Owning an air cooled 911 is definately an experience. I feel the same way about classic european sports cars. I love the feel, look, and the smell of those old cars. They do handle well but most from the 60's to mid 70's were quite slow with little comforts. It's an experience, a pleasant one for me.