For decades, Volkswagen AG and the firm of Dr Ing. h.c. F. Porsche KG were practically joined at the hip. As many of our readers are undoubtedly aware, Ferdinand Porsche designed the original Volkswagen Beetle in the 1930s, at the order of Adolf Hitler. When Herr Doktor-Ing. Porsche and his son, Ferry Porsche, developed their first postwar car, the 356, they naturally based it on the Volkswagen, using much of the Beetle's running gear. Although Porsche gradually replaced most of the 356's Volkswagen components with bespoke Porsche hardware, the relationship between the 356 and the Beetle remained much like the old story about grandfather's ax: if you replace the handle, and later replace the blade, is it still the same ax?

The relationship between the two companies went deeper than the use of shared hardware. Porsche financed the 356 in part by becoming VW's Austrian distributor. (Porsche had moved to Gmünd, Austria during the war, and didn't return to its headquarters in Zuffenhausen, Stuttgart until 1950.) Starting in 1948, Porsche also provided most of Volkswagen's research and development. Volkswagen and Porsche's R&D work was so closely intertwined that the main reason Porsche adopted its familiar 900-series type numbers (911, 914, 928, et al) was to avoid confusion with Volkswagen's own numbering system; the 900s were the only block of numbers VW was not already using. Furthermore, starting in 1969, Volkswagen controlled Porsche's North American distribution, selling Porsches alongside Audis. (VW had acquired Audi back in 1964.) While the two companies were separate entities, they were greatly dependent on one another.

In 1967, Ferry Porsche and longtime Volkswagen marketing director Heinrich (Heinz) Nordhoff agreed to collaborate on the development of a new sports car, which was to be marketed and distributed through a jointly owned entity called VW-Porsche VG (Vertriebsgesellschaft, marketing company). As we have seen, the result of this collaboration was the Porsche 914, which appeared late in 1969 as a 1970 model.

Heinz Nordhoff died unexpectedly in April 1968, and VW executive Kurt Lotz took his place. When Lotz arrived, Volkswagen was struggling to find a direction beyond the Beetle. Its Type 3 and Type 4 cars, which shared the Beetle's familiar air-cooled, rear-engine configuration, were selling poorly in Europe, and their competitors were rapidly stealing VW's market share.

To address this problem, Kurt Lotz took a two-pronged approach. First, he commissioned Porsche to develop a direct replacement for the Beetle and Type 4, an air-cooled, mid-engine car code-named EA266. Second, he moved to acquire the struggling automaker NSU, which at that time was preparing a new front-wheel-drive, front-engine, water-cooled car known as the K70, which Volkswagen eventually sold as a VW.


The 914 used a mid-mounted, air-cooled engine; most were four-cylinder VW engines, but the rare 914/6 had a carbureted version of the 911's flat six, giving much better performance. With odd styling and a high price tag, the 914 never sold as well as anticipated, and Porsche fans were reluctant to accept it as a real Porsche. Production ended in 1975, although about 4,100 were sold in the States as 1976 models.

Lotz was not a popular figure, in part because he was a Christian Democrat at a time when Germany's Social Democratic Party was ascendant. The German state of Lower Saxony is a minority shareholder in Volkswagen AG, making its directorship a very politically sensitive position. In 1971, Lotz was forced to resign, replaced that October by Rudolf Leiding, formerly the head of VW of Brazil.

Leiding almost immediately canceled the EA266 project. It was clear that the market was shifting toward water-cooled engines and the transverse front-engine/front-wheel-drive layout of the BMC Mini, the Autobianchi A112/Fiat 127, and others. The mid-engine layout had advantages for racing and sports cars, but it was a risky, radical idea for a family sedan, implying high noise levels and difficult routine maintenance. Furthermore, sales of the mid-engine 914 were far from confidence-inspiring.

The cancellation of the EA266 raised the question of whether Volkswagen still needed Porsche at all. The engineering staff VW had acquired from Audi and NSU had much more experience with water cooling and front-wheel drive, neither of which Porsche had ever used in a production car. Leiding informed Ferry Porsche that VW would not be renewing its current development contract, which was set to expire in 1973.

The end of the relationship with Volkswagen was only one of the dramatic changes that took place at Porsche during this period. In the fall of 1971, Porsche had begun work on the V8-powered 928, intended as the eventual replacement for the familiar rear-engine 911. A few months later, in March 1972, the firm began a reorganization that transformed it from a privately held company to a publicly traded entity, Porsche AG. Ferry Porsche and his sister, Louis Piëch, withdrew from their roles as managing directors, and engineering director Ernst Fuhrmann became CEO, the first non-family member to head the company.

Rudolf Leiding, aware that the VW contracts had represented a substantial portion of Porsche's income, decided to offer Porsche a final project, as a sort of severance package. It would be a new inexpensive sports car, a replacement for the 914.

The heads of VW-Porsche VG, Erich Filius and Klaus Schneider, had actually started discussing a replacement for the 914 back in 1970, when it became clear that 914 sales would be less than expected. Filius and Schneider felt that the 914's replacement needed to have more interior room -- it should be a 2+2, rather than a pure two-seater -- and it should share even more off-the-shelf hardware, to bring down its production costs. They also thought a new car should also bear a clearer resemblance to other Porsches. By design, the 914 had had no styling continuity with existing Porsche or VW models, which had proven to be a commercial miscalculation.

In early 1972, these plans were codified as project EA425. It was to be designed entirely at Porsche's Weissach development center, but financed by Volkswagen. Unlike the 914, Leiding insisted that the new model be marketed only as a Volkswagen or an Audi, not as a Porsche. This was bad news for Porsche's board of directors -- the main reason they had been interested in the 914 in the first place was that they needed a cheaper entry-level car -- but they were not in a position to refuse.

To keep costs down, the EA425 needed to use an existing VW or Audi engine. The Porsche design team, led by Jochen Freund, eventually settled on the 2.0 L (121 cu. in.) EA831 engine slated for the Audi 100 C2 and Volkswagen's LT31 van.

There was no enthusiasm for repeating the 914's mid-engine layout, but the 928 suggested an interesting alternative. Like the old "rope-drive" Pontiac Tempest of the early sixties, the 928 had its engine in front, but mounted the transmission at the rear, connected to the engine via a narrow driveshaft. This provided better weight distribution than a conventional front-engine/rear-drive layout, as well as a larger polar moment of inertia, for greater stability. While the 928 was intended as a much more expensive car, Freund believed they could make the "fast shaft" concept work for the EA425 by using a large number of existing components. Freund's engineers bought a used BMW sedan to use as a test mule, fitting it with an Audi engine. While they added a unique clutch (up front, with the engine), the rear transaxle was a modified version of Audi's O-88 four-speed transaxle, originally used in the front-drive Audi 100. The driveshaft, a bit less than four feet (1.2 meters) long and 0.78 in (20 mm) in diameter, was contained in a hollow torque tube, avoiding the need for universal joints. It was a compromise, but it worked, and it was relatively cheap.

The rest of the EA425 was a hodgepodge of off-the-shelf Volkswagen and Audi components. The suspension -- MacPherson struts in front, trailing arms in back -- combined various pieces from the Volkswagen Golf, Super Beetle, and the Type 181 utility vehicle (better known as "The Thing"). The steering rack was a modified version of the VW Scirocco's; the front disc brakes were borrowed from the Audi 100; the rear drums came from the K70; and the heating/ventilation system and many interior pieces were from the Golf. In all, it was something of a corporate kit car.

The EA425's exterior was designed by Dutch stylist Harm Lagaay, under the direction of styling director Tony Lapine. With a fat, semi-fastback tail and a steeply sloping, grille-less nose (made possible by tilting the engine 40 degrees toward the horizontal), it bore a strong resemblance to its 928 sibling, although it differed considerably in detail. It had a basic wedge shape, with flowing, organic lines marked by a number of strong creases. U.S. models got body-colored bumpers on hydraulic struts to meet federal crash requirements; they were among the first 5-mph (8-kph) bumpers of this era that didn't look like battering rams. The sleek contours and smooth nose, with its trendy pop-up headlights, made the 924 one of the most aerodynamic cars of the seventies, with a claimed drag coefficient of 0.36.


Seen here in the Porsche museum in Stuttgart, this model of the EA425 is clearly related to the eventual 924 production car, but the styling, particularly in the rear, has some significant differences -- note in particular the shape of the rear quarter windows. (Photo © 2009 Francis Murigu; used by permission)

Volkswagen approved the EA425 in mid-1974, but there were signs that its commitment was wavering. That May, Volkswagen allowed Porsche to buy out its share of VW-Porsche VG, and there were rumblings from Wolfsburg that Volkswagen was financially overextended. Although the new front-wheel-drive Golf and Scirocco would be very successful, their development and launch had been very expensive, making 1974 a money-losing year for VW. Those losses, which ultimately totaled some DM 800 million (about $300 million at that time), undermined the VW board's confidence in Rudolf Leiding. They forced him to resign in January 1975. Since the EA425 was Leiding's project, his departure boded ill. Indeed, Leiding's replacement, former Ford of Germany exec Toni Schmücker, quickly decided that a new sports car was very low on VW's list of priorities. He told Fuhrmann that VW would not proceed with the EA425 project.

This left Ernst Fuhrmann in an awkward position. Even though VW hadn't wanted Porsche to sell the EA425 under its own name, it was still a much-needed source of work and revenue. By 1975, production of the 914 was winding down. A few months earlier, the Porsche board had voted to resume development of the 928, placed on hold after the OPEC oil embargo, but a production model was still years away. The 911's sales were improving after a brief slump, but it was too expensive to sell in the volume Porsche needed to survive, and Fuhrmann was not confident about its ability to survive ever-stricter U.S. emissions standards. As a temporary measure, Porsche reintroduced the four-cylinder 912 for 1976, but the firm was in dire need of a cheaper entry-level car.

The EA425 seemed like the best answer. It was finished and ready to go; eight prototypes were running by the end of 1974. It was slated to enter pilot production in the summer of 1975, and VW had already set aside a plant to build it, an Audi factory in Neckarsulm, in Baden-Württemberg. Furthermore, since Volkswagen still had Porsche's distribution rights, VW-Audi dealers would benefit from the car, whether it was badged as a VW, an Audi, or a Porsche.

Fuhrmann finally offered Volkswagen DM 160 million (about $58 million) for the rights to the EA425. That was at least DM 20 million ($7.5 million) less than VW had invested in the project, but it gave Schmücker a way out of a potentially ugly labor problem. As a cost-saving measure, Schmücker had originally planned to close the Neckarsulm plant entirely, but that prospect had gone over poorly with the autoworkers union, and it would undoubtedly have had serious political consequences. Volkswagen accepted the Porsche offer on the condition that the production cars be built at the Neckarsulm factory, by VW-Audi workers.

Once it became a Porsche project, the EA425 received a new type number: 924. Porsche built about 100 preproduction models in the summer of 1975, and full production began that fall. The 924 was introduced to the press in November, at a special event in Camargue, in the south of France. It went on sale in Germany in February 1976, and debuted in the U.S. in April as an early 1977 model.


In European trim, the early 924 was 164.2 (4,171 mm) long on a 94.5-inch (2,400-mm) wheelbase, and weighed around 2,450 lb (1,111 kg). U.S. models, with their bumpers standing further from the body, were somewhat longer and around 90 lb (41 kg) heavier. While most 924s had a manual gearbox, Audi's three-speed automatic became optional in 1978. It was a poor choice for the underpowered 924, exacerbating both its engine noise and lack of performance. (Photo © 2007 Rudolf Strickler; used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike Attribution 3.0 license)

Although it was the entry-level Porsche, the 924 was hardly inexpensive. In Germany, it started at DM 23,240 (around $9,000). The initial U.S. models started at about $9,400 -- adjusted for inflation, that's the equivalent of about $35,000 today. The 924 was cheaper than the short-lived 912E, but some $2,000 more expensive than the final 914, and far costlier than it would have been as an Audi or a VW. Furthermore, the price escalated rapidly. By 1978, it was up to almost $12,000, and it had hit nearly $17,000 by 1980.

The 924 was not exactly a stunning value. Its handling was superb, with none of the knife-in-the-back tendencies of the contemporary 911, but it had a jittery ride, it was noisy, and its brakes wilted in hard driving. Moreover, it wasn't very fast. European models, with 125 hp (93 kW), had reasonable performance -- 0-62 mph (0-100 kph) in just under 10 seconds, a top speed of about 125 mph (202 kph) -- but a Ford Capri 3000 could blow the 924's doors off. Even more embarrassing, the Volkswagen Golf GTI was nearly as quick to 62 mph (100 kph), for about half the price. The American models, which were de-tuned to 95 hp (71 kW) to meet U.S. emissions standards, needed around 11 seconds to reach 60 mph (97 kph), and topped out at about 110 mph (176 kph). That was decidedly mediocre compared to the Datsun 280ZX, Mazda RX-7, or Chevrolet Corvette, particularly since the 924 was more expensive than any of those rivals.


The 924's EA831 engine was a bored-out version of the OHC 1.9 L (114 cu. in.) engine of the 1972-1976 Audi 100. The Porsche version had Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection, and made a reasonable 125 hp (93 kW) in unrestricted European form. Although early U.S. engines had only 95 hp (71 kW), Porsche was able to restore that to 110 hp (82 kW) after the first year by adopting a catalytic converter, which allowed it to meet U.S. emissions standards with a hotter state of tune and a higher compression ratio. (Photo © 2006 P. Gagliardi; used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license)

Furthermore, hardcore Porsche fans kvetched that the 924 was not a 'real' Porsche, just as they had about the 914. Even if the 924 hadn't been another dramatic departure from the usual Porsche format, its Audi engine and array of VW components would still have provoked some sour reactions. The 924 was generally well assembled, but touches like the climate controls and fuel filler, both borrowed from the Golf, were jarring at that price.

The 924's cool reception provoked defensive reactions from Zuffenhausen; Ernst Fuhrmann railed against the assumption that all Porsches had to be air-cooled or rear-engined. Although the 924 sold well at first, over 30,000 units in 1976 and 1977, the "not a real Porsche" charges had clearly struck a nerve.


The 924 was nominally a 2+2, but its rear seats were suitable only for children. The lift-up rear window, suggested by Rudolf Leiding, added a measure of practicality, although the cargo area is rather shallow, a function of the bulky transaxle. The bulbous tail makes the 924 look taller than it actually is; overall height is only 49.6 inches (1,260 mm). (Photo © 2007 Rudolf Strickler; used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike Attribution 3.0 license)

(As a side note, we suspect that Porsche didn't help the 924's case by releasing it before the 928. Although the 928 had been designed first, it didn't debut until the Geneva auto show in the spring of 1977. When it did appear, many observers perceived it as an overgrown, bloated 924, costing about twice as much. If the 928 had come out first, the 924 might have seemed like an affordable version of the flagship, and both might have been better received.)

Porsche quickly moved to address the complaints about performance. Midway through the 1977 model year, engine changes boosted the output of U.S. cars to 110 hp SAE (82 kW). In Europe, a five-speed gearbox became optional in 1978, although with its awkward racing-style shift pattern (first gear down and to the left), it was cumbersome in traffic. Meanwhile, the company was working on a more comprehensive response to the 924's power deficit: turbocharging.

By the late seventies, many manufacturers, most notably Saab and Buick, were adopting turbochargers as a way of extracting more power from existing engines. Porsche had already introduced a turbocharged version of the 911, known internally as the 930, in the spring of 1975. A turbocharged 924 was a natural step.

Adding a single KKK turbocharger with 10 pounds (0.7 bar) of boost was enough to increase the 2.0 L Audi engine's power by more than 50%. Porsche revised the cylinder head, reduced its compression ratio to insure it could survive on pump gasoline, and added a unique exhaust-gas-recirculation valve to keep the turbo spinning when the driver lifted off the throttle. All this was good for 170 hp DIN (125 kW); U.S. models, with still lower compression and less boost, had 143 hp SAE (107 kW).


The 924 Turbo is readily identifiable from the front, thanks to the cooling slots over the front bumper and the prominent NACA-style hood scoop. The latter serves to circulate air around the turbo housing in an effort to reduce its temperature. It's not as effective as an intercooler, which was added to the Carrera GT models. Turbo and S models also got a duckbill spoiler around the rear hatch, also used on the 944. (Photo © 2009 Darcy Schott; used by permission)

The 924 Turbo, known internally as type 931 (932 in right-hand-drive form), also had various chassis revisions, including sport suspension, bigger wheels and tires, and, on European models, four-wheel disc brakes, again drawn from the Audi parts bin.

The turbo engine made for a considerably faster 924. Non-U.S. models could now do 0-60 mph (0-97 kph) in around 7.5 seconds, with a top speed of 140 mph (225 kph). Even the North American models were now reasonably quick. The increased speed, however, was not without its drawbacks. First was price; in America, the 931's base price was close to $21,000, significantly more expensive than the equally fast Corvette. Second was turbo lag; the turbo was weaker than the standard engine at low speeds, and its power delivery was far from linear. Third, the turbo exacerbated the 924's already-high under-hood temperatures, which led to frequent problems with overheating. Some critics were ecstatic about the greater speed and chassis and brake improvements, but not everyone was willing to overlook its flaws.

Some of the Turbo's changes inevitably filtered down to the regular 924. The five-speed became standard in 1979, although it was replaced the following year with a cheaper Audi five-speed, with a conventional shift pattern. The Turbo's cosmetic and chassis changes, meanwhile, were optional on regular 924s as the M471 sport package; 924s so equipped were called 924 S. Porsche also built a handful of heavily modified normally aspirated 924s, known as type 933, in an unsuccessful bid for the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA)'s D-Production championship.

Although the 933 did not fare well in D-Production, Porsche had even more ambitious competition plans for the 924. Fuhrmann insisted it was nothing more than a good advertising tactic, but it was clear that Porsche was eager to silence criticisms of the 924's bastard origins by giving it a proper competition pedigree. It was also a way to shift the focus of Porsche's racing efforts away from the 911, which was still slated to die by the mid-eighties.

In September 1979, Porsche exhibited a 924 "styling study" at the Frankfurt auto show, with flared fenders covering a significantly wider track. This was actually a prototype for a new 924 model known internally as Type 937 (938 in right-hand-drive form), a homologation special for Group 4 racing. Including the six prototypes, Porsche eventually built 406 of the 937/938 cars, which were called 924 Carrera GT. Aside from the wider fenders, the Carrera GT had various suspension and brake modifications and an air-to-air intercooler, which allowed Porsche to bump the 2.0 L engine's output to 210 hp (157 kW) in street form. There were also 59 more-powerful Carrera GTS cars, fifteen of which were lightened Club Sport models, with standard roll cages.

The Carrera GT was not imported to the U.S., although there were some gray-market imports. Buyers who couldn't get one could settle for an improved S2 version of the regular 924 Turbo, with a new Bosch DME engine management system and a bit more power.


This is one of the full-race 924 Carrera GTRs, with around 420 hp (308 kW). This particular car, chassis BS70006, was a reserve car at Le Mans in 1981, although it did not actually race. It is photographed here at the 2008 24 Hours of Daytona. (Photo © 2008 The359; used under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license)

Porsche qualified nine of the full competition-spec Carreras for the 1980 24 Hours of Le Mans. Because the company hadn't yet sold the 400 production cars needed for homologation, the three cars that competed had to run in the Prototype (GTP, rather than GT) class, where they finished 6th, 12th, and 13th. The 924s were reliable and handled well, but they simply didn't have the power to match the leaders in the GTP class. Porsche returned the following year with two heavily revised 924 Carrera GTPs (known internally as 939), which again made a respectable showing.

Despite Fuhrmann's hopes, the 924's brief competition career did not help sales. Like many automakers, the recession of 1979-1981 hit Porsche hard. Worldwide sales fell from around 36,000 to 28,000, and the company posted its first-ever net loss for 1980. In 1981, the board pushed Ernst Fuhrmann to resign and hired Peter Schutz of Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz to replace him.

Schutz ordered a number of major policy shifts. He reversed Fuhrmann's decision to phase out the 911, and he called for a new emphasis on the American market. Schutz, who had grown up in America after his family fled Germany in thirties, recognized that the U.S. was Porsche's most lucrative market. He instituted a new "one spec" policy, so that U.S. cars would no longer be like poor relations.

Fuhrmann had considered a new entry-level car, priced in the under-$15,000 bracket the 924 had outgrown. According to some accounts, it would have been based heavily on the second-generation Volkswagen Scirocco, possibly with a new V6 to be developed with Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo. Schutz shelved those plans, feeling that Porsche didn't need a cheaper car so much as it needed to make its entry-level car worthy of the price.

The major objection to the 924 had always been its VW engine. Porsche's original deal with Volkswagen obligated it to use that engine in the first 100,000 924s. The 924 passed that milestone in 1981, which opened up new options. Furthermore, Volkswagen informed Porsche that it was planning to phase out the EA831 engine by the end of 1984.

A new, Porsche-designed engine was the obvious answer, but an all-new engine was a stretch for Porsche's resources. However, the Porsche 928 had a large-capacity, water-cooled V8. Slicing it in half, as Pontiac had done for the rope-drive Tempest 20 years earlier, would provide the basis for a big-displacement inline four, which could easily be adapted to replace the 924's VW engine.


The 944's engine was 2,479 cc (151 cu. in.), a little more than half the displacement of the 928S engine, thanks to a 5 mm (0.2 in) increase in stroke. Like the V8 on which it was based, it was all aluminum, with a single overhead camshaft and two valves per cylinder. In U.S. form, the normally aspirated 1986 version, like this one, was rated at 147 hp SAE (110 kW), although some turbocharged variants could produce more than twice that output. (Photo © 2005 Stephen Foskett; used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license)

The new four was not literally a V8 shorn of one cylinder bank, as the Tempest's four had been, but it shared much of the V8's architecture, allowing it to be built with existing equipment. In initial form, it was 2.5 L (151 cu. in.), with Bosch L-Jetronic fuel injection and a pair of counter-rotating balance shafts to quell the shaking that would otherwise afflict the big-capacity four. To the undoubted chagrin of Porsche technical director Helmuth Bott, the company found it could not avoid paying royalties to Mitsubishi on the balance shaft design; those royalties eventually cost the company about $8 per engine. The 2.5 L engine got its first real workout in one of the 924 GTPs that ran at Le Mans in 1981.

At the Frankfurt auto show that September, Porsche announced that it would soon introduce a new front-engine model using the new engine. Although the new model bore a distinct resemblance to the 924 Carrera GT, Porsche assigned it a new type number, 944, to signify its break with the 924. In fact, the 944's relationship with the 924 was much like the relationship between the sixties 356C and its VW-based ancestor: changed significantly in detail, but still intimately related.

The arrival of the 944, which debuted in May 1982 as a 1983 model, meant the end of the 924 Turbo, but not the 924 itself. Porsche dropped the U.S.-market 924 for the 1983 model year, but it remained in production for the rest of the world through July 1985, with few changes. That fall, Porsche launched a new 924S, which combined the old 924 body with the engine of the 944. It reappeared in the U.S. market the following summer, priced at $19,900, about $5,000 less than a 944. Production of the 924S ended in September 1988, the last of the 924 line.


The 924S used the 944's engine, along with its brakes and power steering rack. Since it weighed a bit less than the 944, it was slightly faster, as well. Most shared the "phone dial" alloy wheel design of the S2 944, although with narrower tires. Note the prominent side marker lights and the rubber inserts in the bumpers, which distinguish the U.S.-spec 924 from its overseas counterparts. (Photo © 2001 Chris Dotson; used by permission)

The 924 sold quite well by Porsche standards; the final tally was 121,289 924s, 13,616 924 Turbos, 16,669 of the later 924S, and 507 Carrera GTs and other special-production models. Stylistically, it was one of the most influential cars of its time. Direct, conscious imitators included the Mazda RX-7 and Dodge Daytona/Chrysler Laser, and its influence was visible in many later sport coupes.

Despite all that, the 924 never quite overcame its redheaded-stepchild stigma. Its resale values were far less robust than those of the 911, which by the late eighties made survivors something of a bargain. Thanks to their assortment of off-the-shelf VW parts, 924s were somewhat less wallet-abusing to own than a 911 or 928, and the Turbos lent themselves to amateur racing and shade-tree hot rodding. Still, as with the 914 and Ferrari/Dino 308 GT4, the 924 will never be coveted, despite its admitted virtues.

In the second part of our story, we'll take a closer look at the 944 and the final iteration of this series, the 968.

# # #

Our initial source on the development of the 924 was the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide, Porsche Chronicle (Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, Ltd., 1995). Additional information on the 924 and 928 came from Julius Weitmann and Rico Steinemann, Project 928. A Development History of the Porsche 928 From First Sketch to Production (Stutgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1977) and the interviews quoted in Randy Leffingwell, Porsche Legends (Motorbooks Classic) (Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1993). Technical details came from the 924/944/968 Frequently Asked Questions page (Version 1.8.9, 15 July 2009, http://www.connact.com/~kgross/FAQ/944faq.html, accessed 15 November 2009). Some details on U.S. cars came from Mike Covello, Standard Catalog of Imported Cars 1946-2002 (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2001; Second Edition), while production figures came largely from the 924 Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_924, accessed 15 November 2009).

Historical exchange rate data for the dollar and the mark came from Harold Marcuse, "Historical Dollar-to-Marks Currency Conversion Page" (19 August 2005, UC Santa Barbara, http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/currency.htm, accessed 9 December 2009). Inflation estimates came from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator, http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl.

The title for these articles was suggested by a lyric of the David & David song "Welcome to the Boomtown," composed by David Baerwald and David Ricketts, which appeared on their 1986 album Boomtown.

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