Oh boy here we go.

Original vs restored by experts that I truly respect and whose skills I envy...

Having recently acquired a 6,031 mile 87 S4 with a 5-speed and LSD and driven it home plus a few favorite twisty roads some 250 miles I can say that 928's when new were spectacular and feel like they were cut from a billet. This is the first 928 that I can not hear running at a stop sign. It is deadly quiet and vibration free. With six other 928's in the stable, I can say that it is wildly nice in comparison to all of them. I want to change nothing about the car. A little clay on the paint and leatherlique on the seats perhaps...

Of course the problem is that I can not drive the damn thing without devaluing it!

That said, I have yet to drive a car re-built/restored by my heroes - Rob Edwards, Greg Brown, Dave Chamberlain, Merlin, Shawn, Dave K., Drooman or a few other insanely talented individuals. Their cars must be spectacular!

One thing I do know is that you can never make them original again. It happens only once and never again, as soon as you start improving or taking things apart they are subtly different. Thus the extra valuation applied to the low mileage survivors.

Problem with me is that I love all things 928...

 

Not directed at anyone here, from 20 years of reading car forums and comments on yt car video's, I am convinced that the 5 speed allure comes from the "man card points" associated with the "skill" of driving a stick. It's all horse****, my grandmother drove a plymouth with 3 on the tree, my mother always had a manual, and I learned on a manual with no instruction. It's a joke. But that is where the premium comes from IMO.

When people say automatics here they are generalizing way too much. Some of the later cars start off in 2nd! There are many different gear ratios. If you have not driven a "swiss" market auto with a non-swiss engine you have no clue how good these can be.

But I would like the 928 with paddle shifters and rev matching.

 

Here in Germany in the late seventies driving a stick was the rule, in a sports car the only reasonable choice. From an performance standpoint the 5 speed rules the 3 speed automatic.
I think the automatic was the bridge for Mercedes drivers to the Porsche.
The generation of cars after the 928 ,like my Audi S8 had had a torque converter clutch/overdrive and more gears so in the meantime sticks are on the way of the Dodo in performance cars.

 

The best car, in my mind, is one that has low mileage, with the paint and interior near perfect, and the original drive train mostly/completely untouched. We take these apart, do maintenance stuff (which includes head gaskets, these days) and make them fresh, with updates to "fix" what the factory screwed up.
Our goal is to put these cars back together, so that no one has a clue we were there.
The motivation, for this work, is that there's nothing worse than a low mileage survivor, which blows a head gasket, splits a cylinder, and needs a new engine. (There's a myriad of other failures, which are also very traumatic and "value reducers".)

We're trying to make these cars "good to go" for another 35 years!

The second best car is one that has the same attributes as the car above,, but with mileage. We do the same process, as the low mileage car,, above, (Yes, we will need to touch a few more things than the car above, but the result is the same.)

"Good to go" for another 35 years!

The shop is just about done doing the "survivor" OB Euro car, that Rod Edwards sold on BAT.
While certainly a survivor, that was certainly not a "forever" thing. The mechanical part was an impending disaster.

It's now magnificent, in every sense of the word..
And it is very difficult to drive, without a giant smile, on my face.

We've done/are doing several really nice BAT cars, which come to us, before they even go home to their owners.
They come for the same treatment....both low mileage and higher mileage.

So what is the best 928?
It doesn't really matter, to me, manual or automatic. Low mileage or high mileage. OB or a GTS. Completely restored, restorod, or the Extremely Extreme.
For me, the best is to be able to hop into a 30-50 uear old 928 and be able to drive it anywhere, any day, with zero thought about what might fail.

 

How good these cars are you know if you leave the city with stop and go and reach open roads to eat mile after mile.
we have fall here, yesterday the rear breaks loose on a twisty road but after the adrenaline shot the big grin was immediately in my face again.

The sound of the 4,7 l S2 , the willingness to rev and the perfect seat position in the turbo seats with steering wheel with 30 mm hub.
As a tall guy near 2 m, what other classic sportscar has this opportunities?

With redone stereo and CarPlay I miss nothing. My wife don‘t like it, maybe she want airbags or she don‘t like the smell of the 40 year old interior.
Her new Audi Q3 is a perfect car but it‘s boring, the car is doing to much on it‘s own.
Sound generators in the exhaust aren‘t the real thing.

Sometimes I‘m driving in the 928 to the village plaza to get goods and visit the bank.
The young people don‘t recognize the car till the engine starts, starting an 928 is a very unique sound!

So what‘s the best 928? A survivor you can drive every time you want and you know you‘re sitting in a special car with 10.000 comrades all over the world and forgot the every day stress.

 

Oh did I screw up today!

I missed the end of the BAT auction of the Silver 1978 OB #241 that Rob Edwards completed... Imagine 2:00 on a Tuesday, and I forgot to "Watch" the auction. Arrrrrgh!

Car went for $78,928 and was an absolute steal in my opinion. Rob might chime in on this, but I do not think it could be replicated for $125,000?

 

I agree it was a steal at that price, no way could it be replicated for anywhere near the selling price. I put $11,000 in parts and 30-40 hours a week into it for 6 months (something on the order of 800 hours), and that was with a trailer full of parts, the shell already painted and the seats reupholstered. I think the car was inadequately represented in that auction, and that driving video was counterproductive. The sellers did have a ton of concurrent auctions going, but you'd think a collector car dealer would have the marketing part down.

The winner got a great car at a significant discount, without the wait- right place, right time. Good for him!

If there's any consolation, there's another outstanding restored '78 that should be hitting BAT in the next couple weeks. And Olmann's Petrol/Cork restoration is pretty epic:

https://www.pcarmarket.com/auction/1979-porsche-928-5/

 

So back to where the market is heading -

The economy is a huge factor, and we all know the toys are the first things to go when tough times strike. But that's generally harder on the less valuable toys; the super expensive ones don't seem to be effected as much. We're not in the Bugatti level yet, but I think our 928s are not on the same toy-depreciation level as bass boats, Harley Davidsons, or side-by-side quads.

I also agree that the market is driven by Gen X'ers (like me) who are in their prime earning years and nostalgic for what we lusted after as a teen. In 1984 (Risky Business), I was the same age as Tom Cruise's character. Curiously, 38 years later, I'm only about 15-20 years older. 🤔
"We buy what we wanted when we were in high school" isn't a new saying in the collector car market.

You guys are a lot smarter than I am, so I'm listening to everyone here. I see values continuing to climb, but maybe not quite as quickly as they have over the last few years, and I'm basing that guess on a combination of the above 2 points. Hagerty says my '78 has increased in value 25% in the past year, while my '57 Corvette has decreased 8%. I have no idea why, except that guys from my father's generation are the ones who lusted for C1 Corvettes, and most of those guys are not as active in the car scene as they used to be. Maybe it's something else. The Porsche does have more of a worldwide appeal. But then again, the '57 Corvette is a style icon. Again... who knows?

As for specific things that make a 928 more/less valuable and desirable (like the "rare" manual transmission), there are a lot of things that go into the calculation. It's more than auto vs manual.

- condition
- specific year
- various levels of "restoration"
- sunroof "delete"
- rub strips
- Euro vs. NA cars
- pasha vs. leather
- original vs. modified
- low VIN
- unusual colors
- LSD

I think of it this way: If I was at an auction with many 928s, which ones would interest me most, and how might I value some of those factors compared to others? IMHO, it may be worth more to be to have an unusual color than a super-low VIN, and I might be willing to bid more on an original car than a repainted one, etc.

I do enjoy seeing more & more quality restorations, and I think that's a great indicator for the market. Guys are restoring the cars they like, which in turn attracts more demand for show-quality 928s. It's absolutely awesome to see a 928 in some of these major events, and looking every bit as great as the more popular models!

 

I am convinced that it is possible. IF the zeitgeist can change and the goal is restoration then early VIN for a restoration is best ?

 

I would say yes.

 

Milestones? What about this in a sellers/auction description: "This 928 is one of the first 10 (or 50 or 100 or hell even 1000) cars EVER MADE. That makes VIN #'s interesting for valuation considerations.

 

There's much truth in what you have said...and more layers as well. I think that the 928 started with the purity of a GT design in mind- a GRAND TOURER not a 'slam and bam gear shifting machine' (I've owned some of those! Enjoyable but not a GT that exists with pep, torque and comfort for stop and go traffic and long drives that include steep hills). Later the car seemed to become something else..... let's add larger engine then we can make it heavier, change it's profile, make it beefier, make it......"sportier". The last generation 928 is very much a different kind of car than the 1978/9 model i think. Each has it's merits. Can we at least agree that an automatic car is more comfortable (less labor intensive) to drive than a manual and therefore more GT like?

 

Sorry but that isn't what the acceleration curves show in the factory owners manuals...at least for the first generation cars. If you have yours take a look for yourself. The performance is very, very close on both transmissions. Factor in a less than skilled driver or a sloppy shift and the automatic is the favorite for acceleration. The reason why the automatic was much scarcer for the early cars was the cost. Any idea how much more money this added to the purchase price? Big money for the automatic so much so that most buyers ordered the car with the 5 speed.

 

No wonder Porsche had such financial troubles in the 80s. They took a rare and valuable option and started giving it away for free after just 2 model years.

 

Some things to consider on these points;

There's the "early" market segment, 78-79, that has gained a lot of interest in recent times. I break that market into five segments:

press cars #1 - #12
pre-production cars #13 - ~#50
1977: ~ #51 - ~500 (all R.o.W. delivery only)
78 MY: (all US and RoW after july 77)
79 MY: (all US and ROW)

I think any car under #50 would qualify as "low VIN" example. The good news is that the survival rate is phenomenal! to my knowledge the following production number cars (add 10 for VIN) are currently accounted for:

1
2
4
6
8
9
11
18
19
20
24
49
51

24% survival rate for first 50! that's just what I know about, likely more out there. Keep in mind that Porsche was very happy to find 901 #57 to restore for their museum and refer to it as "the oldest 911" a dismal survival rate for a much loved Icon model launched only 13 years earlier.

I think most of the blood and money into the current "early" market are relative newbies that start out with "OB!" as their entire search criteria followed closely by "pasha!" then as (if) they expand their interest it turns into "78-79" ...then "78" (Haven't seen a lot of "must be a 79" types yet) only then they may learn about "77" cars which *can* lead to paying attention to VINs. While I think each one of these steps produces progressively smaller numbers of buyers the ratio of available cars to interested parties begins to widen considerably, and once one finds themselves in the low VIN pool of interest all roads literally lead to my house haha.

Since there are no performance upgrades throughout all the early car (as defined here) range the same criteria tends to take over (mileage, condition, colors, transmission, interior trim options, etc.) If one wants to do a full restoration, find a car configured from the factory how you want it and restore it. If you like low VINs id say do the same thing, except with a car under #100ish. (#51 VIN 61 is still available in germany white over green, first car delivered to private customer) The selection is a lot lower you may have to compromise on color.