928 S4 "With Age Comes Wisdom"

[blueline]

From Hagerty:

"The 1987–91 Porsche 928 S4 Might Be the Best of the Breed"

https://www.hagerty.com/media/market-tr ... d568259d8a

1987-Porsche-928-S4-Deremer-4-scaled (Phone).jpg (28.77 KiB) Viewed 5626 times

Deremer Studios

[blueline]

And this ancillary link that was in the above Hagerty article:

https://www.hagerty.com/media/car-profi ... ack-sheep/

Porsche-928-3-scaled (Phone).jpg (52.42 KiB) Viewed 5624 times

Porsche

[RDMcG]

Big fan of these and I think they have aged well. I would love an early manual with the Pasha interior. I don’t think they are 911 substitutes and this was poor marketing by Porsche. More a comfortable long distance GT.

[dr bob]

From the perspective of a longer-term 928 owner --

Lots of the points in the Hagerty article are good. Many cars, bought cheap by the third or fourth owners, tend to be a patchwork of cheap fixes and compromises. Surprise that the 'cheap Porsche' they bought still demands parts and service at a level more closely associated with their original sales prices. So there are hacks and shortcuts taken when something stops working, or the owner just decides they can do without whatever feature is no longer working. So many "running when I parked it!" cars were really "running until it didn't and I couldn't justify fixing it so I parked it", tempting buyers with a short "just needs xxxx" list when in fact that lists is pages long. The normal Porsche purchase advice to get a good PPI from a qualified expert is no more applicable than for a 928. The cheapest example you'll find will have a long list of work performed, a very short list of work needed, and a purchase price only somewhat less than the sum of those costs. The alternative is the Craigslist special, where deferred costs plus purchase price plus the time needed to do the work can easily be multiples of the well-cared-for example.

Finding that expert PPI can be a challenge. Everyone at Porsche dealers who went through any of the factory-level training on the cars has long since moved on. My local dealer has one tech who's listed as capable via the Classics service program, and he's never actually had hands on one. It's all telemedicine. Local owners find that none of the local independents are willing to do much at all for them, beyond basic services anyway. My car came to me via Denver, where I was able to get the timing belt done back in the later 1990's prior to picking it up. Back home in SoCal, the 1000 mile tension check at the local dealer by my office in Pasadena turned out to be a problem, with more recovery from the damage they did than the actual service cost. So it's enjoyed a life of DIY care since then. Lots of studying, a decent online support network, a great local parts and advice community, and some prior Porsche knowledge made that possible. Not that many owners have that option.

The performance is under-rated in the article. Yes, the cars seem a bit ponderous at less than highway speeds. The steering is a bit under-assisted on pre-'91 examples, although it's perfect at touring speeds. For folks who grew up with 356 and early 911 cars as I did, even the 50-50 weight distribution was a ways from the light back-motor steering we'd learned to expect from Porsche. In contrast though, the car is an effortless two-finger ride at 125+, territory where those same 356 and period 911 road cars demanded a lot more driver input.

In the mid 1980's, the factory did days of endurance testing at Nardo, They stopped for fuel, oil, drivers and tires, and averaged over 180 MPH including stop time. Nardo is close to sea level. To make their performance point, they took the exact same S4 production prototype to Bonneville in 1986 and nabbed the NA production car speed record at 172. Altitude and traction were the limitations. Like most Porsche's my 1989 automatic car will pretty easily exceed the factory top-speed rating of 168, and keep going past the 172 manual gearbox rating and past the rated speed for the late-80's 911 turbo cars. I don't drive that fast anymore, even over roads I might have previously considered safe for the speeds.

With the rear seats down, the car will easily transport two sets of clubs plus weekend luggage. The automatic AC and climate control in the car has massive capacity compared with period 911 cars, including a second evaporator and blower between the the rear seats should your children or midget friends decide to ride along on hot days. Slogging L.A. traffic in the summer is no problem, especially compared with similar-period 911 cars I'd owned.

Back to the theme -- Should people buy them? Some certainly should. The Hagerty article mentions these as targeting the same market as the Mercedes SL. I'd suggest they might be better related to the SLC as a personal sports couple and maybe the 500E "muscle cars" as personal performance 2-door executive rides. Both of those are significantly heavier than the 928, and whatever perceived extra driving effort the 928 showed over the 911 was at least doubled in both of the Mercedes cars. The actual design and engineering were pretty amazing for the time. That effort started at the factory more than 50 years ago now. The actual design and styling seem pretty timeless to me, and the car never fails to earn compliments, even though it's now a 35+ year old example of an almost 50 year old design and engineering effort.

More history -- The design effort started as the US and particularly California, then Porsche's biggest single market, were dramatically tightening emissions and fuel consumption standards. The air-cooled cars were almost impossible to bring into NOx compliance due to the wildly varying combustion temps. Porsche had been cooling the cylinders with richer mixtures for decades, and struggled with CO and HC standards as they tried to keep power levels up. My late-70's 911SC was burdened with exhaust hot-boxes to continue combusting the excess fuel coming from the engine. That method was a nightmare for owners and a dismal failure for the factory, as 911 sales numbers absolutely tanked. The 924 and 944 programs saved the company, but at that time the forecasts were very gloomy. Meanwhile, Porsche was assembling those 500E cars for Mercedes, so could see a path forward while learning some about water-cooled aluminum V8's as a way forward when the air-cooled cars looked to be doomed. It took the factory almost 20 years before they introduced a fully water-cooled 911 road car with the 996, along with its Boxter cousin. By the time those appeared in development, the 928 was way too expensive to build and sell. The costs of building a new car and driveline management system with OBD and the like didn't help.

I figure that mine costs me about $2,500 a year average over the last 15 years or so. I've been driving it a lot less since we moved from our little 'bungalo on the bluff' above Los Angeles, near the base of Angeles Crest Highway and some pretty regular tours. Parts costs are going up like everything else. My DIY labor is about the same as it's always been, a perfect offset for the professional therapy I'd otherwise need. There are collateral costs like keeping a climate-controlled garage and workbay, not included in that annual cost number.

On a strictly financial basis, these cars make absolutely no sense at all. Very very few cars actually do. But this one is a pretty timeless expression of automotive engineering as an art form. When mine came to me way back when, the total cost of acquisition was about the same as a new Taurus SHO or Honda Accord. What would I rather drive? That was an easy answer.

[blueline]

Wow - excellent bit of feedback and writing dr bob! Thank you!

[Tom]

Interesting to hear they were going after the Mercedes SL market with the 928 (and I'd agree the SLC and maybe XJS seem like a closer match). I love tooling around in the SL, with its stately, no-need-to-hurry, civility. The SL has so much in common with the 928 on paper, but the execution is so different it's hard to imagine they were going after the same buyers. Other than price tag, they seem like apples and oranges to me.

[dr bob]

I'm not sure the target market slice was the SL. I think your description of 'stately' motoring in the SL is proper, but way different from the 928. I've driven both and, with all due respect to MB and SL owners, the SL is a much heavier especially in the nose. I don't know anyone who drives their '80's SL at more than maybe seven tenths. It's a very nice open touring car. Your suggestion of the XJS audience is pretty good. Later, the 'comp' cars at PCNA in Reno included a couple F cars and the NSX, much more sporty than one might suspect. I had a project in Reno in the early 1990's, and the client's engineer was dating a woman high up in PCNA there at the time. They'd show up on weekends in whatever was in the fleet there at the time. Only one in a 928; she liked driving the NSX though. Mike wasn't allowed to drive any of their cars.

Whether the factory did much targeting is an interesting question. None of the ads I've seen do any. Instead, there was a lot of careful image marketing. Early cars were carefully placed with well-vetted buyers to make sure they would promote the image of cars in public. I lost a girlfriend to a dentist with a new 928, so it fell off my radar for quite a while. Plus they were pretty spendy especially in the new-car showrooms. I had too many other cars.

[Smsarchitects]

Excellent article and convo. Thank you Dr Bob for the down to earth insight on the 928s. As an owner of multiple examples, truer works have rarely been written.