History | Porsche 924 | Daddys-Carparts

The 924 was originally a joint project of Volkswagen and Porsche created by the Vertriebsgesellschaft (VG), the joint sales and marketing company funded by Porsche and VW to market and sell sports cars (Ludvigsen: Porsche, Excellence was Expected).

For Volkswagen, it was intended to be that company's flagship coupé sports car and was dubbed "Project 425" during its development. For Porsche, it was to be its entry-level sports car replacing the 914. At the time, Volkswagen lacked a significant internal research and design division for developing sports cars; further, Porsche had been doing the bulk of the company's development work anyway, per a deal that went back to the 1940s. In keeping with this history, Porsche was contracted to develop a new sporting vehicle with the caveat that this vehicle must work with an existing VW/Audi inline-four engine. Porsche chose a rear-wheel drive layout and a rear-mounted transaxle for the design to help provide 48/52 front/rear weight distribution; this slight rear weight bias aided both traction and brake balance.

While the car was praised for its styling, handling, fuel economy, and reliability, it was harshly written up in the automotive press for its very poor performance, especially with the US spec cars. With only 95-110 hp, rapid acceleration was simply not an option, but the Porsche name carried with it higher expectations. When the 924 Turbo models came out, Car and Driver magazine proclaimed the car "Fast...at Last!" The later 924S had performance on par with the Turbo, but with much improved reliability, and at less cost. The '81 and '82 Turbos and the associated special variants are garnering interest in collector circles; and while many still exist, excellent examples of the cars are quite scarce as of today.

This article is based on the article Porsche 924 from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and is double licensed under GNU-Lizenz Free Documation License and Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported. In the Wikipedia is a list of the authors available.