Here's What a $180,000 Porsche Was Like In 1994

This is a

1994

Porsche 928 GTS, you might know a little about the 928, maybe your uncle had one or some guy on the street has one or you yourself had one in the 90s, but not many people know about this 928. gts. Last final iteration of the 928, this one sold new in

1994

for 88,000, which is equivalent to 180,000 in today's money. Today I'm taking you on a complete tour of the 928 using this 94 928 gts and myself. I'm going to show you all the oddities, corks and interesting features of this car. T

here

's a lot. I'm going to start by giving you a complete tour of all the quirks and strange features of this 928 gts, which, by the way, comes to me from Platinum Motor. cars, an exotic car dealership

here

in the beautiful Detroit area whose inventory is so wild, vast and varied that getting in there is like cars and coffee, then I'll take it out on the road and see how it drives, but first overview the 928 It was sold from 1977 to 1995 for almost 20 years with the same basic design.

It's a front-end v8 unlike any other Porsche sports car and was originally intended to replace the 911, but never did more at the end of the year. video this 928 is a strange car, a strange mishmash of the 70s, 80s and 90s and this gts is the definitive version, it was only sold for three years at the end of the 928 production and had 350 horsepower, which still It's a lot nowadays. It really was a lot back then, if the 928 ever becomes collectible this is the one that will skyrocket in value. Good time for quirks and features starting with the front and one of the 928's most famous design features, its headlights were now pop-up headlights.

It wasn't uncommon for cars of this era, but most other pop-up cars hid their headlights when down. In this car, the headlights were always visible, but when you turned them on, they actually appeared. The car looked like a frog when the headlights were off. up top it was very strange and when the guards weren't hidden they just rested talking about lighting let's look at the key for a minute this car doesn't have keyless entry or anything like that but it does have A little trick there is a giant button on the key and when you press it it becomes the dimmest flashlight in the world.

Next, let's discuss possibly my favorite quark in this entire car, which would be the crazy rear window on the 928. You're looking at this rear three. The rear quarter window here is one of the strangest I've seen on any car. This oddly shaped rhombus that starts upright and somehow ends up flat at several different angles across this window has to be one of the strangest things to do and I strongly suspect it. It's not cheap to buy now, if you have less than 928 you probably live in fear of someone breaking your rear three quarter window. Next let's talk about the fuel door, it opens like a normal fuel door and inside is a fuel door. lid with a lock, which were common cars that came out of the 70s due to the gas crisis.

What's less common is the little flap between them that says oil good, a little reminder to check your oil, oil good and that's it. In back, let's talk about the rear wiper, which is a pretty big piece, so big, in fact, that the wiper arm connects to the tailgate in two separate places. I was thinking, oh, are there two separate wiper arms? No, no, the two separate places that eventually connect into one. and a kind of unnecessary complexity that you can only get from a Porsche. Another interesting feature of this car was always the sunroof, which has to have the smallest opening of any sunroof in the entire automotive industry;

It only opens about seven inches, which makes you wonder why. they even bothered with a sunroof, not many cars have door panel storage, it's usually something you throw things in, sometimes it has a lid and this car not only has a lid but it also has a little latch . To push it open, you push the latch and only then can you access the door storage. The craziest thing about this is that when it's closed and when you haven't opened it, you can still put things in there, which makes the entire latch system moot. I bet if you asked Porsche engineers, they would say yes.

This is the most brilliant solution. All cars should have it. The rest of us just think it's a bit strange and unnecessarily complicated. The 928's door panel also had other oddities such as the door panel-mounted air conditioning vents and the side seat memory control button, but the strangest thing by far was the circle door lock, which would be this now that this car has central locking, so you can lock and unlock the doors automatically, but if you wanted to unlock or lock an individual door, you didn't just pull the door lock, you that you turned this circle, which is actually quite difficult to turn, I have no idea why this happened, but it happened once you get in the car, you start to notice some of the other interesting quirks, like for example the transmission selector now In some cars, when you shift gears, the gear you're in comes on.

Porsche decided to develop its own solution. There is a small triangle coming out of the transmission selector that points to

what

ever gear you are in. you're in, it's a pretty novel solution to an interesting problem. Next, we have to discuss the button that takes you to the trunk, which is probably my favorite piece of switch inside this car. It's not a latch or a lever anywhere in here. It's this weird rubber button on the floor and you don't press it, you pull it up and now the trunk is open. Another interesting quirk of the 928. There isn't much storage space inside the cabin unless you count the trick with the designed door pockets.

Then you get to the center console and think yes, I finally have a place to put things. They said you opened it up and oh no there's just no room there, it could probably hold a credit card maybe so let's talk about the center console. Button Lock This interior is a strange hodgepodge of shapes, colors and sizes as things were added over the 20 years of this car's production. The lock button is a great example. It is bright red. It is backlit and has a picture of the key. Everything else. It is black but this particular button is red when you press it, it turns on when the doors are locked and turns off when the doors are unlocked.

Another strange switch on this car is the one that controls the windshield wipers, not the one that turns them on and off. only a lever that comes out of the steering column like in a normal car, however, is the one that changes the speed of the intermittent wipers. It's actually a small dial hidden at the base of the instrument panel behind the steering wheel and it's quite strange

what

we see next. I have to talk about these little buttons here, the first one makes sense, it controls the headlights turned on and on, the next one controls the fog lights, the third one has no relation to the headlights, in fact it is the zero reset button on the odometer, hold it down and reset the trip odometer this has to be the largest odometer reset button in the history of the world it's bigger than the door lock button it's also unusual this car doesn't have one a fancy electronic display in the gauge cluster like most modern cars, but it does have some functions, for example if you pull a small lever to the left of the steering wheel the whole car becomes metric with the reading of temperature in degrees celsius, pull the lever again and the whole car goes back to miles and the temperature rating goes back to fahrenheit. a small dial to switch to a full measurement system and temperature unit, but if you want to access the pocket in the door you have to press a small switch before you are allowed to lift the lid.

Next, let's talk about the rear seats. Porsche intended this car to be a grand tourer, a practical car that you could use to take the whole family and see the world, as evidenced by the fact that they actually put some things in there - for example, there's a sun visor in the back, have you ever done it? I have seen that in any car before the rear passengers have sun visors, the other interesting thing in the rear seats is that there are four climate controls for the rear seat passengers, there are only six in the front and without However, despite all that thought, the rear seats are actually very difficult to get into, as I will demonstrate now.

Well, I'm glad they included four air conditioning vents and these sunshades because I could really use some extra comfort now before I move out of the back seat. I want to touch that. sunshade once again, I moved the front seat all the way forward so I can be comfortable back here, I'm going to lower the sunshade and hello, I no longer think this is a sunshade for the rear seat passengers on the other hand, I think it's a wall so the front seat passengers can block the back seat passengers and probably the sun too, but while the back seats aren't big enough for a normal sized person, they do have a benefit that this car is supposed to have.

It's going to be more practical than a 911 and there's actually a little more room in the back seats, but there's also more room in the back, these seats fold down and then you have this whole cargo area to do whatever you want and which you didn't have in the 911, of course, because it was rear-engined, so now you know everything about the 928, you know everything about its strange quirks and features that are surprisingly abundant for a Porsche, as they are generally perfectly meticulously designed, but what? How do you drive to find out? I'm going to take it out on the road and to see more of my thoughts click the link below to go to autotrader.com oversteer where I wrote a column on all my thoughts on the 928 gts.

Getting in the car to drive it, the first thing I discovered here is that the entire gauge cluster and all the buttons move when you tilt the steering wheel, there is no telescope for the steering wheel, but even the turn signals move on this one. It's crazy drive the 928 gts. I always wanted to drive one of these. In fact, I always thought they looked cool, although I know the prevailing opinion is that they look dated. There's a Pontian G5 behind us. Although it is a very exciting experience, there are only about four because we are in Detroit, there are a hundred of those, there is a silhouette of a car, there are less than 97x.

I could just sit here and watch poorly selling American made cars go by, okay let's try it now. I happen to be of the opinion that, especially for the GTS model, the automatic transmission was the correct manual transmission. 928 is making more money now, this was meant to be the grand touring car, for what it's worth, the automatic transmission is the right transmission, it's very heavy. car with front v8 engine this type of car you just want to put your foot down and go like a bullet the road manners are quite good at lower speeds this car is quite comfortable even 23 years later the strangest thing about this car is the simple amount of power required to push the accelerator, you really wanted to commit to the accelerator before you were allowed to go anywhere, but you really have to go deep and it's hard to push to stab the accelerator before you can get anywhere, man, this car, this. car, you know, it's just a four-speed automatic, so it's a little dulled by that.

I wonder how this car has 350 horsepower? I wonder how it would feel if it had a good transmission. I drive so many of these old ones. automatic cars like the marauder that have just been destroyed by their automatic transmissions and it's a shame because if you put a modern automatic in it it would liven up the car to the point where it would have modern performance which this car has. It doesn't make power furiously, but when you get into that high range, boy, does it really make some power. It's certainly not as fast as you know a modern sports car or something, but it has that kind of grand touring car feel to it. that you could go 150 and not sweat, generate power, everything is very quiet, the car is actually very well insulated, it's surprising how quiet it is when I drive it, it's almost strange that they were able to do this 23 years ago this is what what the Panamera feels like.

The steering is very heavy even though it is power steering. You have to work really hard to get it to move. This is really nice. I have to admit, I drove most of the 23 year old cars on the street. no matter how nice they were, they are a bit cumbersome on modern day early 90's cars, you won't want to be in them, this car has perfect air conditioning, as nice as any carmost modern car I've ever tried, the ride quality is pretty good, it's a little harsh, but this is Michigan where the roads are a little bad, the seats are tremendously comfortable, they have a tremendous amount of support, they're very soft leather, you feel like you sit down, this really was meant to be a touring car like all porches, this car feels very well put together obviously also all the materials are pretty high end and there are some weird button placements and some things rare, although this car is from 1994, there are no strange squeaks, rattles or shakes in strange places, the steering.

It's so heavy that I'm surprised how heavy the steering was. You have to remember that this car was designed in the '70s. It's just from a different era for a '94 car. The steering seems tremendously heavy, obviously, it lightens up when you start moving, but. It's still heavier than any modern car. My takeaway from this experience is that this car feels heavy when you hit the ground. It takes a while to build power. You press the accelerator. It takes some time. The steering feels heavy. This car wasn't meant to be the lightweight throwaway sports car that many Porsches are today and even Porsches back then weren't really a 911 so that's the 928 gts but I'm not done yet.Previously in this video I told them the 928 was intended to replace the 911, but was saved at the last minute.

In fact, 911 was saved by an American. This is a good story. I promise we've come this far. It is worth staying here. The American's name was Peter Schutz and he was the global CEO of Porsche from 1981 to 1986. The story goes that the 911 was supposed to end production in favor of the 928 and Schutz was in a meeting with other Porsche executives in an office. discussing the future Brand morale was low, sales were down and all the workers loved the 911 and were sad that it was going to be replaced, but the 928 was the new hot model and that was the next generation of Porsche feeling the feeling among your employees about this.

Shoots walked over to a diagram on a wall in the office where they were meeting that showed all the Porsche model life cycles with the 911 coming to an end. He soon got up, grabbed a marker, walked over to the chart on the wall, and drew a line from the 911 off the chart and onto the office wall, extending the 911's life cycle indefinitely immediately after Porsche began remodeling the 911 for a new generation instead of trying to kill it and replace it with the 928. this story is porsha lord now the guy who saved the 911 with a marker drawn on a wall and who knows if it's really true, it just so happens A friend of mine knows Peter Schutz who is now retired and lives in Florida and My friend went to Schutz's house for dinner a couple of years ago and asked him if you really drew the line from the graph on the wall and saved 911.

His response was, "You bet so," and I was smiling like The Cheshire Cat when I did it and since then the 928 intended to be the replacement for the 911 has faded into obscurity while the 911 is stronger than never and with story hour over, it's time for Doug Score to get started on the weekend categories and the styling that doesn't I don't like the way many of the early 928s looked with their ugly wheels from the early '80s and many of them were painted gold, but for the gts they had it pretty good, it gets a 7 out of 10.

Acceleration was 0-60 in 5.4 seconds, giving it a 5 out of 10. Handling is above average , but it's not on par with modern sports cars and the steering feels unnecessarily heavy. It gets a 6 out of 10. The cool factor is high, the 928 is rarely seen and the gts is particularly special. gets a 7 out of 10. In terms of importance, this was an important

porsche

, one of the longest running models and a staple of the brand's lineup for almost two decades, the gts is the most important version, so it scores a seven out of ten, giving it an overall weekend score of 32 out of 50, placing it unsurprisingly below modern sports cars.

The following points are the daily categories, features and equipment. The 928 gts was quite well equipped in its time, but this category is judged by modern standards. and it's pretty lame for 2017, it gets just 3 out of 10. luxury measures comfort and the 928 is above average, but not massively, it gets a 6 out of 10. quality measures materials and reliability the materials are good, but there is some poor ergonomics and Meanwhile, oddly placed buttons, reliability is starting to get a bit iffy and potentially expensive as this car ages, it gets just a 5 out of 10. Practicality isn't bad, it has about of 15 cubic feet of cargo space, giving it a 4 out of 10.

I'd win extra points for those rear seats, but they're so small. Finally, the value depends on why you buy it by modern standards, which is neither impressive performance nor a great luxury car, especially considering that nice ones can sell for over 60 thousand dollars, but I think the 928 GTS will eventually be considered a valuable classic and that's enough to earn a six out of ten, giving it a total daily score of just 24 out of 50, bringing Doug's total score of the 928 GTS to 56 out of 100. The 928 is a cool car, but it doesn't match the modern things you see.