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As part of a ‘924 Roundup’ back in late September, I included a stealthy 924S Special Edition model with low miles from an unassuming and apparently unaware second-hand dealer. The good news is that the dealer doesn’t follow our page, where they would have learned that their 924S is more than just one of the high compression motors for 1988 but also effectively a lightweight Club Sport model equipped from the factory with the M030 Koni suspension. It seems not many others have caught on, either, as it remains available with a price drop below $9,000. That’s a lot of limited edition performance Porsche for your money! Someone grab this one before anyone gets wiser.
The below post originally appeared on our site September 30, 2015:
The Porsche 924 represents some of the best aspects of automobile enthusiasts, while simultaneously embodying two distinct and very different decades. From the 1970s comes the upright, modernist and simple dashboard, but while it nods to the decade that bore it, the exterior is immediately identifiable as the 1980s signature silhouette with a low-slung, long hood, pronounced bumpers and flip-up headlights. Quite a few cars in the late 1970s and 1980s attempted to mimic the design of the 924, including the notable RX-7 and you could even argue the 280/300ZX. You can even see influence of the groundbreaking 924 design in the Miata of the late 1980s as well as such modern GT cars at the AMG GT-S. For enthusiasts, though, it was the near perfect weight distribution, the torquey inline-4, the manual gearbox and the all-important Porsche badge of engineering and build quality that led to the 924 being a hit. It didn’t hurt that it was the most affordable Porsche, either, and arguably still is so today. I’ve rounded up a group of 3 distinct and neat 924S models from late in the run to see which offers the most bang for your buck:
As we watch 911 and 928 prices from the 1980s soar and the 944 Turbo, long considered the go-to value of the Porsche world, has started the march up the valuation ladder, where is a budget-minded Porsche enthusiast to turn? Without a doubt, the best place to get your low-cost thrills still is the “poor man’s” 924. Spanning just over a decade in production, values on early 931 Turbo models have also started to creep up, but if you look you can still find a good value on the later and arguably better driving 924S models. Reintroduced in 1987 with the underpinnings of the 944, the 924S was a budget Porsche. While the roughly $23,000 entry price certainly wasn’t cheap in 1987 dollars, it wasn’t much more money than a similarly equipped Audi Coupe GT. Dynamically, there aren’t many differences between the 1987 and 1988 models; ’88s got a few more horsepower than the ’87s thanks to a compression bump, but otherwise they’re the same – that is, except for the limited run “SE” model, perhaps the absolute best value in the Porsche world right now:
