ehall

ahh, okay. Gotcha.

Animus

I'll definitely take that off your hands if that day ever comes around... and I wouldn't turn down a GT3, but would have to drive one first, maybe yours.....

CarbonRevo

Bang for the buck. What other cars offer as much performance and true sports car fashion...for around $10,000? And lets make it even better. Make the cars all be stock. $10,000 is your limit. 100% bone stock. Good luck. The 951 is all around.

I liked someones earlier comment of how the boost hits. New cars have it come on so soft and easily. The 951 is seriously a turbo car that screams "when the turbo spins, the bull**** ends". 3-4k rpm and WOT in a 951 is an amazing point to be at. All before 3k rpm...your kind of "ho-hum" about diriving the car, and then the boost kicks and you instantly change your mind.

I love the look. Also, how many 4 cyl turbo cars can you find that are rwd these days? And can fit 295/30/18's out back? A lot of little things make me love my cars.

I have a good daily driver that's essentially a beater...but allows me to poor every cent into my 944's. I am however looking to get a Trailblazer SS with a House of Boost procharger!

porshhhh951

I'm just going to throw this out there. I don't know of many properly maintained 944 turbos that the owners have a total of 10k invested in them. Unless its a recent purchase. Alot of us that daily drive our cars and put miles on them have 2-4x that invested. Operative word here being "properly".

CarbonRevo

I'm talking about a car that you can go out, and buy for $10,000 straight up and have perform. NOT counting the maintenance costs. I know people factor that in, but I am not.

I know I already have double into my S2 that I bought it for...and it's just an S2. Not a whole lot to buy for an S2!

gt37vgt

I think the japanese clones are comparable bang for ya buck so I'm talking turbo RX7's and mitsu Starion's ..
but i don't know how well they hang together ...

CarbonRevo

The 951 really isn't all that bad. It's built strong. They really don't rust out like most cars. I've seen some wrecked and wrecked one myself. I sent my car over a 10ft drop off the side of the road at probably 30-40mph and it survived the wreck pretty damn well.

It's just got a lot of electrical items and fast wearing/stupid maintenance intervals. 951's weren't built for longevity like a honda civic or a ford mustang (that last one might be an oxymoron). So the fact that these cars require so much work to keep running, isn't really of a surprise to me. I don't complain about the maintenance on either of my cars really. I know I'm going against what the Porsche Gods intended, and for that I will pay. However, to me...the fun I receive along the way is easily worth the money.

Now, If I could sell both cars and have a 20-25k dollar budget? C5 Z06 for sure. No questions about it.

porshhhh951

25k will get you a c6 with a ls2 now. I also don't think the 951 is unreliable, I think its 20 years old. Any 20 year old car thats been toyed with and messed with will need quite a bit of parts replaced.

333pg333

I would have to disagree to a point about our cars not being built to last. When I'm at the track and there are guys looking at my car (often wondering what the **** it is??) and they have their Evos and WRXys. I open the door of my car and then softly slam it shut and it closes perfectly with such a solid sound. When I tell them that the car is 20 years old they just marvel compared to the empty coke can their cars sound like. I know that there are a lot of items that are suffering through age, but that is 2 decades of age. Look at a 6 year old Jap car and they're falling apart already. Sure those cars are good performers straight out of the box and they can be upgraded for a fraction of what some of us have spent on our cars, but you go through those Jap cars where you keep a 951.

TheRealLefty

This is a similar concept to that discussed by owners and enthusiasts of older Mercedes Benz products...not so much from the performance aspect but very similar as to the wisdom of continuing maintenance and value.

There is a huge gap between cars are that are engineered backwards from a price point and those that were engineered to an internal standard of quality and serviceability. Both MB and Porsche products from 20 years ago (and older) have quirks in complexity and anachronistic service cycles, but once you're sitting on your garage floor surrounded by the bits you get it.

Japanese and Korean cars work backwards from a set of target parameters established by other cars. I am not being insulting here to share that they tear apart a popular product with the intent of recreating its commercial appeal for less cost. This is smart, they boil stuff down into how heavy should the switches feel, what sound should they make, how deep is the carpet, who many horsepower must it have and then go bang out those elements with little thought to long term value, service difficulty or longevity of ownership.

I recently changed a blower motor in W124 Benz. By the time I reached the bum motor (3 hours after I started) I was literally laughing out loud at the ludicrous level of design and manufacture engineering I was looking at and disassembling bit by bit. My 944 Turbo, under cover in the next stall of the open air garage, was covered nose to tail with seven interlocking pieces of rain guttering, an octopus of rubber stripping and seals attached to a monstrous mono-blade windshield wiper assembly, cabin filters and such, every one of them secured with proprietary nuts and bolts and clips and liners. When I finally got to the motor, it was elegantly engineered FOR removal and dropping in the re-furbed, re-brushed squirrel cage (good only in the 94/95 variant being 2 mm wider than the previous one) the installation took 90 seconds. Two hours later it was back together.

Sorry for the novel, but the point is clear to many here. A car that is well engineered for both performance and long term maintenance is worth maintaining and provides excellent value. No doubt many 951 owners would swap out for a GT3 Cup car if we won the lottery, but in the meantime we're getting more bang for our buck in a 944 and we're not throwing the money away because the car is built and designed to last for decades. It was the standard of the era in the Fatherland and the 944/951 marched forward throughout it's production life to a higher and higher specification.

A fully developed 951 is literally a street supercar and a track car Q-ship. Celebrate it!

Van

I have not done any work on modern corvettes... how do they compare?

If I had $25k to spend, I'd look at a 996 before a 'vette. And not because I think it's faster - it's probably not (although at my last track event I was passing the vettes...) - but because of the engineering.

Chris White

The one thought that keeps popping up in my mind....most 944 owners will never really appreciate the capabilities of their cars – you won’t understand what they can really do unless you track them.

Most first time 944 students I have had at the track really had their eyes opened up. It’s a joy to see them rediscover their cars. The best part is when the Evo / WRX guys are having brake problems, and most other modded cars are misbehaving…they weren’t built for this!

Van

Well put, Chris!

TheRealLefty

+1 on the track thing. I am amused when street cool guys gush over Brembo this and cross drilled that...or the latest and greatest EBC, fuel dumping, BOV venting 22 psi stand-alone. Not that these are not good mods, but most of this crowd would be absolutely blown away if they could see how fast and who hard a steel calipered, atmospherically aspirated 944 Cup car can run.

There is no doubt in my mind that a well sorted 944 can with modern R compounds can consistently exceed 1G in cornering forces and pretty much do it all day long with OE components.

Van

Fact. See my data graphs on page 3. 1.2 Gs consistently.