Darklands

One reason for the decline in sales was the hard dollar. Another reason was the immense loss of value of the new cars after a few years especially in the 90ies.

drooman

Well the thread title refers to the idea of the 928 "replacing" the 911.... and "compared to what" is clearly spelled out in my comment.

ChristianR

who cares, to this day and to everyday from here forward, the 911 is Porsches heart an soul, period, not the 928. love the 928 but it wasn't and never will be a 911. take a 911 all day long

icsamerica

That's the point, the 928 wasn't supposed to compete with or replace the 930. It was a slower, softly sprung (for a Porshe) luxury GT car made to compete with BMW 633, Ferrari 308, Jag XJS, Mercedes SL. The BMW and Mercedes got to the party and hit the market sooner and were selling extremely well at the time. Porsche wanted a slice of that pie. Also consider many of the 928's luxury features would have been designed in long before the release date. For example all the rubber in the suspension needed to be developed and tested years prior. All that rubber and the Weissach rear axle, a defining feature of the 928, would be pointless had the 928 been intended to replace the 911 as a true competitive sports car. There was only one other Porsche that was actually following in the 911's foot steps with the Carrera name, the power to weight ratio, LaMans, GTP and Walter Rohl at the wheel, and that car was the 924 (soon to be 944). The facts on the ground can not be ignored.

One counter fact that also cant be ignored is the 928's engine block. If you examine the 928 block dimension one can imagine Porshce had other ideas for the engine. The 928's block has the same bore centers as a Big Block chevy and enough crank case room for the same amount of stroke (3.780) as the vaunted Ford 427. If you look at the block it's clear to me 427ci was an obvious target. The odd thing is the deck height. 3/4' of a inch too short for a 427. This rationalizes the open deck block and timing belt. These two aspects of design would allow for various deck heights with a one simple machine operation. The interesting thing is a tall deck 928 block may not have fit in a 928. As it was the oil pan is too shallow, suggesting a dry sump was planned. If the deck was any taller the heads might hit the shock towers too. Could it have been the case the 928 was going to be larger, wider or perhaps the block was also destined for another chassis. Can you image a 917 with a tall deck 427" Porsche 4 cam v8 racing a LaMans. Seems plausible. Ford already proved a large V8 was competitive at LeMans. Porsche surely took notice.

icsamerica

The BMW 5 series and the M5 was responsible for the sales drop at that time (1988). It was no longer the case that a personal luxury sports car needed to have only 2 doors at the higher end. This idea was cemented by Mercedes in 1990 with the 500E. Audi Finished the thought with the 5 Door RS2 Avant in 1994.

merope

What's the exact point of this "debate"? Unless you find a letter/statement from Fuhrmann himself, all of this is conjecture and meaningless in the end of all things. And maybe that is the real important conclusion. The car took almost 10 years to develop. Within that timeframe even goals may have changed. We started planning the JWST in 2002. The telescope that launched on Dec 25, 2021 was not the same as that was conceptualized.

-Andras

SilverLined

If the 928 were truly intended to replace the 911 as a model, successor, halo-car, whatever... then Porsche would have ceased production of the 911 upon presenting the 928 (who remembers New Coke??).

What makes sense to me: America was Porsche's biggest market by a large margin, at the time. Porsche was building the 928 as a hedge to replace the 911's sales in America (not the 911, per se), should the 911 be legislated out of existence. Unsafe at Any Speed, in '65, and the green/EPA movement of the late sixties and early seventies put a target on the back of the 911. Losing the 911 on the American market would've been a mortal wound for Porsche, so they built what they thought would be the perfect car to suit most 911 buyers (think Hollywood-types and white-collars, more than enthusiasts).

The problem (sales) with the 928, in my opinion, is that Porsche assumed they knew what their buyers needed and deserved, but not what they really wanted. Porsche underestimated the importance of trendiness, and the power of the 911's image within their own brand.

All that said, the 928 is clearly the superior vehicle, and most people are clearly sheep!

8cyl

Is Porsche the only marque whose fanbase compares a traditional grand tourer to a mid or rear engined sports car? I don't think I've ever seen anyone compare a 308 to a 365 GTC/4, for example.

By-Tor

The cars are so different. 928 was targeted to compete mainly against Mercedes SL and Jaguar XJ-S. It was directed at completely different market segment and the main focus was the older, wealthier customers. All those cars are mainly automatics.

Back then, which cars were the _direct_ competitors of the 911? I don't think it had many, besides Ferrari (and it was way more expensive).

BMW, Jag and Mercedes didn't make true sports cars back then, only GT's. They didn't have F-Type R or AMG GT segment cars. And 911 was such an unique car and already had a "cult following".

Darklands

But the 928 is way sportier than a SL or xjs

ChristianR

thanks for this, i need a good laugh this morning

8cyl

Let's put it this way, a scenario if you will:

It is the 1980s and a man with cash to burn enters a Porsche dealership with the intention to buy the latest and greatest. He doesn't care about racing and has no prior affinity to Porsche. He is shown around a base 911 and a 928. The salesperson gives him the specs, the features, the options and the price. Among that, how both cars are different. Which car does the man buy?

Oslo928

After reading the whole lot, seem pretty straight forward to me

Fuhrmanns: "Oil crisis and EPA are putting us out of business by killing our cash cow, we need a substitute for OUR CASH COW so let's stop making high performance air cooled sport cars and move to high performance water cooled luxury cars before is too late"

Schutz: "Oil crisis is over and we engineered a way around EPA regulation so let's play the high performance luxury and sports car at the same time so we can have 2 cash cows"

History: Panamera and Cayenne became the cash cows that saved Porsche, the 911 is the most desired car only by people that cannot afford it and that cannot even see it got as fat as the 928 they love to trash

Today: regulations is coming for us again, we cant stop making those 911 cause we need them for image, so let's sell as many Taycan as we can, this way our average emission will be just below what is required. As long as the only co2 that people care about is the one going out of the tail pipe and ignore the 50% extra needed to build electric cars we should be able to keep printing money.

Ad0911

I've read most of the comments in this thread, but not all of it, so perhaps I missed some arguments, for which I apologize. But it occured to me that Porsche was getting more and more bad critics about the ride quality and roadholding - or lack of when things go wrong - of the much loved but also much hated 911. Choices had to be made to stop these critical stories because these were putting the Porsche name in a bad light. Perhaps the legal department at Porsche were already wetting their pants because of fear for legal actions whenever a customer with a wrecked Porsche would sue them for making a dangerous car. This would virtually end Porsche as a top end sports car manufacturer. So they either had to tame the beast or kill it. The taming proved to be a hard nut to crack, They finally managed this in 1998 when the PSM system was offered. Meanwhile they had to come up with a car with impeccable roadholding. So the 924 / 944 / 928 / 968 range was designed and they did this job very well but in 1977 or earlier during the design phase they could not foresee how things would end up so this explaines the need for the transaxle range. And the publications were clear: see the pictures and explanations of the transaxle system and in particular the Weissach axle. This was a really important development strategy for Porsche

jheis

I haven't read through all of this drivel, so I don't know if this is an Enzo, But as I understand it Porsche was concerned that the 911 (with all of its mass and noise at the back) would be unable to pass the ever tightening Swiss "drive by" noise regulations. Hence, the 928 project in search for a different solution.