Cheap Trick
A German mechanic finds value for money his way: by building a 924S that's as fast as a modern 911 Carrera
STORY AND PHOTOS BY WOLFGANG BLAUBE

At 270 km/h, the 996 driver’s eyes are glued to his rear view mirror. An old sports car is gaining on him. Quickly. Is it a Ferrari? No, too narrow. A Mazda RX-7? No, too fast. A 924? Come now, he thinks, that is not possible! But it is a 924. As he shoots a slack-jawed glance sideways, he gets a glimpse of Jörg Langhinrichs at the wheel. Very unagitated, very relaxed. This is what makes Jörg’s day.

Surely the speedometer is overreacting, thinks the 996 driver. I mean, come on, what street-legal 924 can top 270 km/h (167 mph)? But it’s no mistake. He’s up against a 924S that has logged 283 km/h, or 176 mph, on a GPS. Langhinrichs says it will go even faster in cold temperatures, fast enough to peg the speedometer needle against the trip odometer’s reset button. But even at “just” 283, Jörg has already attained his goal: He wanted to annoy 993 and 996 drivers with a car worth about as much as their alloy wheels.

His 924S is a characteristically German kind of sleeper, a car built for the one country that speed limits forgot. Even in the year 2009, you can still legally go full throttle on the autobahn. Trouble is, Porsche’s relatively small home country is packed with relatively big cities. These days, the highways around them are limited to 120 km/h (75 mph), 100 km/h (62 mph), or even 80 km/h (50 mph). All told, some 65 percent of the German freeway network is not so free. Still, there are enough strips here and there, and Jörg Langhinrichs knows those strips — particularly the sparsely populated ones north of his Hamburg home.

For Jörg, hunting season starts every sunny weekend at dawn. His wife and children are still sleeping. The autobahn is empty. Empty, that is, save a few very powerful cars driven by owners who enjoy running fast. The big guns enjoy a kind of right-of-way at top speed. All those 750is and S600s and A8s —electronically limited to 155 mph — must get out of the way for the modern Porsche's, Rufs, and Ferraris. And Jörg’s 924.

Langhinrichs has quite a bit of history with this particular car. In 1986, 19-year-old Jörg had an apprenticeship as a mechanic at the Porsche center in Hamburg. That year, his father, Horst, bought a brand-new Guards Red 924S, the 160-hp model with no catalytic converter. His son’s name appeared on the car’s order form and registration. Why? Company employees paid less

Horst favored his 1986 911, driving it quite a bit more often than he did the 924. But the latter didn’t just sit around — by 2005, the car had accumulated 262,000 kilometers, or 163,000 miles, many of them logged by Jörg. At that point, Horst decided to give the car to his son, by then a Porsche master mechanic. It had a cash value of some 2,500 Euros, so Jörg elected to keep it as his winter car alongside his low-mileage, summer-only 924 Turbo.

Then things changed: He found one of just 528 factory 944 Turbo S Cabriolets in a wrecking yard. While the Turbo’s body was a goner — it had supposedly been slid into a garbage truck by its previous owner — its mechanicals didn’t look bad. Jörg began negotiating with the yard, and after three years of persistence, he struck a deal: For 3,000 Euros — then equivalent to roughly $4,700 — he got to pick the 105,000-kilometer Cabriolet clean. After selling what he didn’t need, he ended up with a driveline, brakes, struts, and a few odds and ends for about 2,400 Euros.

Being a mechanic, Jörg didn’t have much trouble bolting the Turbo powerplant into the 924’s engine bay: The only piece he bought new was the forward bulkhead, needed to make room for the 944 Turbo intercooler. Replacing the gauges with the Turbo’s speedometer and tachometer/boost gauge was another easy job, but the big challenges came in the details. Cases in point: The fuel systems for the 924S and 944 Turbo reside on opposite sides of the car, and the two models’ electrical systems are very different.

In the end, Jörg solved all the difficulties and got the 924 running using only factory parts. In the process, he created a car that remains 100-percent Porsche. Early test drives met his expectations for straightline performance. The big surprise, he says, was high-speed roadholding — it was far better than he had suspected. The car went dead straight at an indicated 275 km/h (171 mph). If anything, he says, it almost felt a little boring — and subsequently, he purchased a performance chip for the car’s engine-management system.

The 2.5-liter four now achieves a claimed 305 hp, a nice bump from its original 250-hp rating. Jörg knows that he can get much more power out of the engine, but says he has little interest in exceeding 0.85 bar of boost or 6800 rpm. For him, the ability to maintain top speed for long periods counts for more than absolute velocity. After all, he’s a modest man.

Regardless, the car’s numbers are pretty impressive. Its German registration sheet lists a curb weight of 2,690 pounds, a figure that includes a full tank of gas and a driver. DIN standards list the 944 Turbo S at 3,097 pounds; Jörg claims that his car, with 55 more horses, can accelerate from rest to 62 mph in 4.7 seconds, or one second quicker than a Turbo S. Narrow bodywork helps bump his car’s top speed past that of the ’44’s 260-km/h rating.

Where, exactly, does that top speed lie? Jörg says that the ultimate number depends on various conditions: When it’s warm outside, his car has been known to beat the 944 Turbo S’s number by 20 km/h (12 mph). When it’s cold, he says the needle is “almost pegged.” In this case, the “peg” is the trip counter reset button on the speedometer — a landmark that corresponds to 183 mph.

So what will this wolf in sheep’s clothing do today? It’s time to find out. Germany is still asleep on the Sunday morning that I strap into the car. Or rather, we had hoped it was still asleep. Unfortunately, Jörg and I are by no means the only ones using the A23, which leads northwest out of Hamburg.

Past Pinneberg, a 100 km/h sign with lines across it tells us we can have a go, but we’re repeatedly blocked by slow cars packed with more stuff than any reasonable family holiday should require. The Nissan passing the Peugeot at 120 km/h. The shabby VW Bus overtaking the tiny Fiat at no more than 95. Can’t these people see that this 924 means business?

Suddenly, the A23 frees up. There’s a six-kilometer straight just past the next knoll, so Jörg accelerates. The speedo needle rotates rapidly and, with 270 km/h on the clock, we reach the long straightaway. But what’s that? A temporary sign reads “Construction Ahead — Reduce Speed to 80 km/h.” The road work continues for nine klicks, ending up in a permanent 120-km/h zone.

On our way back, there’s no chance to make another run. An indicated 277 km/h (172 mph) will have to be it for today. Jorg’s in-car GPS indicates an actual speed of 269 km/h, or 167 mph. He doesn’t seem to be disappointed; he’s confident in his car’s potential, and he understands the limitations at hand. “You just can’t calculate the traffic situations,” he says. “This is a public road, not a race track.” Oh yes, that’s right…I almost forgot.

Before I head for home, where my wife is just making breakfast, I sneak another look at Jörg’s 924. Apart from its 928 rims, which the Germans call “manhole covers,” the car looks just like a regular 924 — a Porsche that came to the U.S. with little more than 100 hp, and a car that was sold in its home country with a smoking 125-mph top speed. Compared to that, Jörg’s cheap trick is a real shocker. Too bad there wasn’t a single 996 in our way.