I am doing a research paper for my European History class on the cooperation of German car manufacturers over the last few decades. I know Porsche borrowed some parts from Volkswagon for the 924/944/968 series, so I figured this would be a good topic because I can learn more about my car and get a grade for it at the same time. Does anybody know any more specific information on what parts were shared, or sources where I could find information? Thanks.

 

This will be a massive paper! I looked into this when I was scoping a thesis a couple of years ago. There are so many changing collusions over the years its so hard to keep track! Use Proquest or similar and you will find a ton of articles.

 

Porsche also shared parts from Mitsubishi, the balance shafts that it!

 

My understanding is the 924 was originally commissioned for Audi by Volkswagen, but then VW decided not to go through with the program. It was so far along (tooling already purchased) that Porsche decided to go ahead, buy it back and put it into production, kind of a replacement for the 914.
Brian Long has done several books about 914, 924 and 944. They are published by Veloce Publishing. Try www.velocebooks.com, you might find some of the info you seek there.

 

Really so the Mitsubishi has the same balance shaft as my Porsche? I thought they just used the concept of balance shafts off them, not the part.

 

FWIW, the biggest borowed bits from the corporate parts bins were the front struts (from early Rabbit/Golf), rear suspension (Super Beetle) and transaxle (Audi). Interesting that Porsche has a well-deserved reputation for evolutionary engineering when some of the driving force behind it was a lack of corporate resources. Yes, over the course of the line's history the 944 benefitted from very sophisticated aluminum castings for control arms and trailing arms, etc...but the basic geometry was defined by the shared parts. Truth be told, one of the reasons they developed the cast rear arms was that the Super Beetle was going out of production and it was not economically practical to keep the tooling active for a one or two day run of stamped steel arms for the 944 every six months

 

Be very careful. once you get past the manufacturer hook-ups, you will no doubt at sometime mention the shared components. Once that starts, you'll start to get into suppliers, and THAT will make your paper into a hardback.

 

It sounds like the topic of this paper is WAAAAAY too broad - you might want to narrow it down to specifically Porsche and it's relationship to other manufacturers or something. That alone could keep you busy for an entire book (or two).