Let’s say that instead of just hoping that some day your car will be worth a mint, or indeed even caring what other people think about your vehicular choices, you just want have a car which looks good and is enjoyable to drive. Let’s not forget, this advice is coming from someone with somewhat polarizing vehicle choices…so, take the advice with a grain of salt, but I’m going to persist in my argument that the 944 Turbo is the car for you. A true David of the 1980s, the 944 Turbo was the understated and unassuming Goliath slayer, turned down by the factory so as not to have its performance overshadow the 911 range. Being faster than a 911 is pretty much verboten in Germany and especially in Stuttgart, but nearly everyone that experienced a 944 Turbo in the 1980s came away with the impression that in every statistical (and in some non-statistical ways) it was a better car than the Carrera.
But, as our astute readership has previously noted, certain cars – the Audi Quattro, the BMW M3 and M5, and of course the 911 range – were the cars groups of individuals dream of. The 944 Turbo really wasn’t. There weren’t many people that hung 944 Turbo posters on their walls, because there was always something from Porsche that was a little bit more special – the 928 was more futuristic, the 911 was more comforting as a predictable classic, and “Turbo†was synonymous with only one Porsche in history.
That model wasn’t the 944, nor was it the 924. And though both of those respective cars outperformed their brethren in period and were very impressive outside of the Zuffenhausen lineup, the market of today in many ways continues to mimic the original sales trends. The 944 Turbo outsold the Quattro, outsold the M3 – neither, it should be noted, limited production cars. But today, probably in part because of its success, the 944 Turbo just doesn’t get the wows, the attention, or the press of its contemporaries. Of course, there’s one more thing it doesn’t get as a result – their price:
Porsche didn’t really have a lot going on in the early 1990s. For the 1990 model year, they had the 911, the aging 928, and the 944. I suppose you could count the 959 as well, but production “officially” ended in 1988 with a handful per year being made up until 1993. That means your options were quite limited if you wanted a Porsche but thankfully there was the 944 S2 Cabriolet if you coveted a convertible but didn’t have 911 money. Truth be told, I think the 944 S2 looks great considering what it is and the improvements that were made over the years along with an adequate inline-four that came in with slightly over 200 horsepower. After these became “old” cars, prices have stayed low enough that anyone on a small budget could swing one as long as they had a Porsche specialist in the general area that didn’t hate working on them.
