For over a decade, the Porsche 924 remained the brand’s entry-level sports car. During its 12-year run, Porsche shifted over 121,000 examples, meaning the normal 924 is not uncommon today and your local Craigslist probably has one for sale.
But what we have here is a special edition 924 that encourages you to buy vermouth while you’re out for a drive. This 924 is the Martini Championship Edition.
In 1976, vermouth manufacturer Martini and its stylish racing livery ran the Porsche World Championship. To commemorate this, Porsche whipped up some new trim and a minor performance upgrade, and presto — special edition.
The Martini Championship Edition 924 was limited to 3,000 examples, all of them painted the exact same way: Pure white paint, with Martini racing stripes around the body.
The dash area featured some upgraded materials. Genuine leather covers the steering wheel, instrument panel, and center console. Fastened to the console (but not really pictured in the sale) was a commemorative plaque bearing the special edition’s name and each vehicle’s number. The blue piping on the seats is a nice, Martini-like touch.
Red carpeting and matching corduroy seat inserts made the Martini Championship Edition’s interior a special place. It’s all faded here to a 1970s-orange-formerly-red color, but at least it matches.
You know a car has lived through the 1980s when there’s an equalizer of this sort of complexity present. Circa 1984, this would have been the business.
Performance stayed the same in these versions, meaning one will find the standard 95-horsepower Volkswagen engine under the hood. Power goes to the back via the four-speed manual transmission. There’s also a revised sway bar for better race-day parking lot handling.
Currently for sale on eBay, this special 924 is a one-owner vehicle — surely a rare instance for a lower-level Porsche, especially 40 years after it left the showroom. It has less than 52,000 miles, working out to a little over 1,300 per year. Such a classic and limited edition Porsche might be a worthy investment, as this very clean example is yours for $6,995 without any negotiation.
[Images via eBay]
That’s not a bad price if you just want to have some fun or want to think of yourself as a “Porsche Collector”.
I’d rather have the E28 M5 at the back ;)
Porsche styling was so damn ahead of its time in the 1970s. Both the 924/944 and the 928 looked up-to-the-minute in 1989.
I agree. Later 944 S2 still looks great.
Porsche: accept no substitutes.
Like the substitute 924 ? Basically a Pinto with a Beetle engine ?
They were unpopular when new, handled like crap and understeered like a pig, no performance either.
They might have had the best power steering of any car ever produced to go with their perfect weight distribution and handling that let them win races in spite of often spotting their competition 50% in power to weight ratio.
What a hunk of German junk.
You being facetious?
If this were junk, it wouldn’t be 40 years old.
You’ve obviously never driven one.
Or worked on one. The wiring is the size of angel hair spaghetti. Mess with it at your own risk.
My roommate had one of these back in the 1990s and it had two under-dash fires, and then the crankshaft key partially sheared out so it could never keep a timing belt for more than a few months, so it eventually got towed away.
Oh, and one stupid molded O-ring for the oil filter housing was something like $85 and that was 25 years ago.
Pass . . . a current GTI (or heck, a Hyundai Veloster Turbo for that matter) is a far better car than this thing.
This has been for sale for a while at this price. There is another one for sale but discussion in the community points to it being a fake, a number of items don’t match up.
I’d think replicating the dash cover and that plate wouldn’t be too easy
I suppose a 924 is okay, but a Martini 911 is far more iconic to people of a certain age.
God, what a temptation! Unfortunately, I won’t have that new Gold Wing paid off until the end of next year.
It’s been no secret that since I (stupidly) traded in my 924S on that Solstice, I’ve been looking for another 924/944.
I very nearly bought a 924 about a year ago for $1K. I don’t know if I made a correct or cringe-worthy decision.
I remember in HS, in the early 90s a friend had 78 or 79 924. Any drag race between his very tired 924 and my very healthy MK1 GTI was a very slow drivers race, with no clear advantage to either.
His was in poor cosmetic shape but was reliable. I think his dad kept it and spent a few grand with a fresh paint and upholstery work. As for my friend,he bought … a 2wd Chevy Luv long bed automatic.
I haven’t seen a 924 on the road in a really long time.The styling has grown on me for some reason.
The owner of this car supposedly spent $3000 on an engine refresh and repainted the car. However he has lost the receipts.
It looks good, but I would have to go down to Atlanta and drive it. The last car I bought sight unseen turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.
The charm of this car is you get to own a Porshe for a reasonable price. It is not fast. I think my wife’s Honda Fit could beat it. 11-12 seconds 0-60. Obviously this is a “sports car” and that should not matter as much. You could always swap out the engine with a later turbo version. This car will never be worth a ton of money.
Yeah, you’d want to make sure the clutch was good – they’re an expensive nightmare to replace.
These pop up on eBay every once in awhile. And equalizers? I had a Muntz 169 sever-band with 40-watt amp, in ’78, in my ’78 Audi Fox, with a Blaupunkt AM-FM-8-Track, Jensen 4″x10″ Coax speakers in the rear package shelf (the shop had to cut holes in the steel tray to install those), and 4″ Pioneer dual cones in the front doors. It sounded amazing, mainly thanks to the equalizer. Too bad the car was ridiculously unreliable.
Looks like an aftermarket exhaust (Borla?) on it. After the original exhaust on my Audi Fox rotted out (in less than two years), I put an Abarth exhaust system on it. That lasted a little over a year, before it started rotting out, too.
Vodka, shaken, not stirred.
Save your money for a 944 or 968. Even Porsche salesmen hated 924s.
Back in the 1900s I had an ’84 944. Apart from some 16-year-old girl in her Dad’s Bonneville SSEi kicking my ass in a stoplight drag race it was a great car. Ripped naugahyde everywhere; a huge but shallow hatch ( due to the rear transaxle ) that could display an amp and a guitar or two to anyone walking by; a stereo system that took longer to warm up than the engine did; a dog-leg transmission pointlessly installed by some berk, guaranteeing that any friend or girlfriend who drove it would occasionally lunge backwards in traffic, then blame me; a rubber rear ‘wing’ that mostly just held water but was a great help while repeatedly having to slam the hatch into the recalcitrant hatch-locking mechanism; no block heater; rear tires that only Toyo could size at the time; and a fifth gear that could only be used on a slight downslope. With a tailwind. At 120 mph.
Waitaminute.
It was a piece of shite, now that I think about it.
I’d (almost) buy it for the interior alone.
“the car was ridiculously unreliable.”
Yep
I recall reading something after the 924 had been on sale in the USA for a few years. A spokesperson for Porsche said that the 924 was “meeting consumer resistance”. A marvelous turn of P.R. phrasing.
Well, I was referring to my Fox. At first, I had a love/love relationship with it, until four months in, when I started having fuel injection (K-Jet) problems. It was love/hate for awhile, then by three years, it was just hate.
Kudos to the graphic designer trying to hide those awful side markers.
A customer at the shop went through nightmarish negotiations with the owner on bringing his 924 into the shop for PA inspection. You would have thought the car was a showroom version of the Porsche brand from the way he acted. It was not. Slipping clutch, oil leaks everywhere, billowing clouds of blue smoke, upholstery ripped up everywhere, back seats too. Wires hanging under the dash, of course the AC didnt work. It was collectible only in the eyes of a scrap yard owner. And it failed pa insp, with a long list of safety related problems. My Porsche story and I’m glad I don’t work on it.