Any chance that OB simply refers to Original Body, as opposed to wide or something?

 

OB refers to "Old Bugger"....only applicable to 78-79 US/Euro, and some might argue any CIS 928, thus including 80-83 Euro as well. Term originated many years ago on Rennlist E-mail List as far as I know.

Rich

 

Old Bugger specifically, (as Richard mentioned) was a term coined by some people on the old email list (not really old, and not really gone - just a very different crowd, and very little *on topic* as I recall from my years frequenting it). It was mainly Jay Kempf, of the "Kempf timing tool". Old Bugger, really to be precise, is the 4.5L CIS car. So that is 78 and 79. These cars were very much similar USA and ROW, and after that there was much more deviation.

Vac acuated freaking door locks. No Wing. No Front Spoiler. No Alarm. No ABS. One Distributor. 8.5 compression. Hand made interior, many times written over on the underside in german, I would imagine with notes (loosely translated to): "Where the fritzle is the engine back here, all I see is a gas tank," and "this interior is made out of much better cardboard then the uber 911SC, but the checkers are making me dizzy" A correction to my point there is that the rear quarters are a very heavy white plastic.

These were the early years of Porsche putting all sorts of buttons and switches in the car, not yet really have a clear concise distributor list for the parts on the car. Round buttons for the seat forward button.

I have a 78 body with no sunroof and (now) no rubstrips. It was the 10th or 12th one off the assembly line for USA.

 

The early cars really reflect the early 70s, and not the later 70s. The original design was done in 71 IIRC. Thats when Porsche was still a small family owned engineering/car manufacturer and not what it was later and now - a large private hedge fund/marketing company that sometimes builds some cars that have a huge profit margin.

 

Rightly or wrongly, I and some of my friends refer to any pre S4 as an OB (Old Bugger).
I guess we will continue doing that!

 

I consider the original body as an OB (anything pre S4).

 

Ditto, me too

 

You people are WRONG WRONG WRONG!

okay, I feel better. The middle cars are in no way OBs. All in good fun....

BUT YOU'RE ALL WRONG!

 

Ya well I noticed you don't put all of your cars that are not running in you sig. any more so there!

 

Yes, I must concur with the current meaning of "OB" to indicate any shark up to and including 1986.5 - or "pre-S4" if you will, because the model year 1987 had so many changes made to the unibody as well as the new nose & tail.

That's why it sticks in my mind as Old Body, even thought I'm aware of it's 78-79 Old Bugger origins.

And I like 'em...

 

Sorry Brendan. You gotta move on, stay hip to the current lingo.

I wonder what the slang is for 1st and 2nd generation S2000s is?

 

I think JEC has come up with the solution:
OB = Old Bugger when referring to the 4.5L CIS cars.
OB = Old Body for everything else pre-S4.
[edit:] Actually, OB = Original Body for everything else pre-S4, how about that?
Everyone happy now?

 

The term OB was coined by JK (the aftermarket tension tool maker) to include the early CIS 928's. To include any other series in the OB status indicates a lack of knowledge of the differences in the 928's. Anything later should be referred to as OB2 or OB3.

Dennis

 

I seriously doubt that this is set in concrete. To me the term OB stands for "Original Body" and I may be wrong but I'm sticking to it

 

Thats number 2