Crumpler

I was reading recently that when Bez returned to Porsche in 1988 to be Technical Director, he found a disjointed board of directors in Stuttgart.
He was convinced that Porsche "was the 911", and that any and all resources should be but back into that model for redevelopment.

Taken from an quote in Pano: "the 928 was Fuhrmann's and Lapine's thing. It was never going to make volume, and the board didn't know what to do with it."

That suggests to me that, at best he was apathetic to our car. More likely he was able to galvanize his efforts by steering board meetings in his direction.

Curious if others can expand.

hacker-pschorr

The first nail in the coffin was back in 1980-1981 when Peter Schutz stepped in as CEO and immediately put the 911 program back on track.

From his Wiki page:

"Cancellation of the 911 was also causing low morale in the engineering department, where the 911 was seen as the quintessential Porsche. While sitting in the office of Helmuth Bott, chief of engineering, he noticed a chart that showed the evolution of the 924, 928 and 911 on the wall. The line for the 911 stopped at the end of 1981. Schutz picked up a marker, extended the 911's line off the end of the chart onto the wall, and told Bott to make it happen.[6] In the meantime he had the camshaft and other minor fixes implemented, quickly ending the quality control issues."

Tom in Austin

It's funny to me that they couldn't think of 928 as filling a separate market niche in its own right. After all, they had done the 914/6 as a second model and apparently didn't lose any sleep about where it fit alongside the 911. And they were willing to buy out the 924 project from VW and gain an additional model that way.

Seems at some point they'd quit planning the end of the 911 and just see how each of the products was doing in it's respective markets. Maybe they didn't start out expecting to have a luxury GT product, but it turned out to be a success and reflected well on Porsche's abilities, so why let it's fate get tangled up with 911 worries?

hacker-pschorr

You need to remember what was going on in the world back in 1971 when Project 928 started.

Porsche saw the future of "real" sports cars dying and they needed to move to stay ahead of the market, so they designed the ultimate GT as their answer to a dying sports car market.

Porsche was 100% correct, but 20+ years ahead of the market. Fast forward to the 993 ---> 996, this is where the "928" GT replaced the 911.

The 914 was a VW except in America, and the 924 was supposed to be the next Audi.
The 944 was only thrown together out of necessity to keep the company alive. Porsche was hemorrhaging money by 1983.
I'm sure the 928 had a lot to do with it. Not a cheap car to produce.

The more history I read about the 928 I'm baffled how we ever made it to 1995. My only guess is, the S4 was already so far into development early in the 80's they had little choice but to keep it on the books to try and earn back some of their development costs.
On top of that, German Stubbornness helped keep the 928 alive a few more years. Until the 1996 regulations came out and it proved to be way too costly to update the 944/928 and the Boxster was cooked up.

Crumpler

I agree and bet there was more then a coincidence that the 968's last year was 1995 also?

Watching "the last days" of the 928 would be interesting. I wonder what the last nail in the coffin was, and who was holding the hammer.

Might be the guy we are discussing, I noticed Lapine stepped down in 1988 -- right after Bez came back in.

Nicole

The 928 was killed by high cost and poor sales, along with the fact that it had no shared components (no synergies) with other Porsche models. As much as we love it, it was not economically viable for Porsche in the end, and given their financial situation, it did not make sense to develop a successor.

mark kibort

Didn't Ulrich Bez go on to design the Aston Martin Vantage and others at AM? (he was the drivng force of the 993 which took many new designs from the 928 , right?)

Nicole

He went to Kia first, before arriving at Aston Martin.

Vilhuer

Last days were already in '89-90. They had to develop new stuff as every model was 15+ years old already and it started to show too much. They knew at the time that there would be money for just one new model. It had to be 911 because it simply couldn't be killed. 986 and 996 are basically one and same car developed at same time on single car development budget. Real party trick was to sell 996 with much higher price even though it didn't really cost more to build. Even 986 was made on profit so each 996 made $20-30K for Porsche. They simply had to play everything on one card to survive independed at the time. It didn't work at the end because they got too greedy but killing 928 and 968 and concentrating on just 986/996 was brilliant move.

Nicole

Agree with Erkka. Interesting is that the 986 and 996 were essentially the same up to the doors. That's where the differences start. The 986 was designed to be as inexpensive as possible, up to the point where it was using some of the same suspension components in front and back.

JHowell37

I don't think there was any grand conspiracy involved. OBD-2 was mandated in '96. Porsche decided it wasn't worth updating an ancient (by automotive standards) platform yet again, in order to comply with the new regulations. It wasn't selling very well, and its price was through the roof at that point.

Wisconsin Joe

Something else to consider is that Porsche didn't want to replace the 911.

Expanding on what Hacker said above; in the early 70s, it looked like a rear-engined, air cooled car wouldn't be viable in the US for much longer. Safety and emissions regs were tightening and there was a very real fear that the 911 wouldn't be able to be engineered to meet them.

So they designed something that could meet the regs that were upcoming and proposed (in addition to being really cool & fun, the Weissach axle is really safe).

Whens some of the more ridiculous proposals died off, and the threats to the 911 eased off, the 928 became "extra."
The 924/944/968 was supposed to be an "entry level" car, but pretty rapidly priced itself out of that market.

And (as was noted) in the 90s, Porsche had to pull way, way back for economic reasons. 2 models, lots of commonality. They also had to meet the new regs.

drwhosc

Reading a book right now about Bob Ingram's collection. Something that struck me was that porsche lost a lot of money back in 1988. The DM was not too healthy. this was one of the few times in the history of the company. In 1987, they had a very slim margin. So I think they were just moving on. they also seemed to phase out the 928 if you look at the numbers. It was a slow one...

danglerb

I think PCNA and the dealer network had both hands on the hammer driving in the nails. They are the ones doing most of the 928 hating, customers hated the dealers. What killed it for me was in 86 I went to two or three dealers and could not get a non sunroof car without paying full price in advance.

OTOH without there mistakes few of us would have 928's now.