Porsche 944 | The Brave Pill
Tony Hadley - meet your perfect car
Brave Pill has put ticks against many boxes, many of them repeatedly. The database hamsters reckon that over half the cars the column has featured in four and a bit years have been powered by V8 engines, and close to an outright majority have also been German. This week’s star only adds to one of those tallies, but is also the first time a Porsche 944 has been featured. It is creating history in another area, too - the spec box’s admission to no fewer than 12 former keepers makes this the most-owned car in BP history.
Yet that isn’t the most courageous thing about it. You’ll immediately have noticed what is: the fact it is golder than Donald Trump’s bathroom. It turns out we’ve already had a gold Pill before - a Land Rover Discovery V8 in full ‘nineties ram raid spec. But on the elegant lines of the 944 the brilliant hue is even more shocking. Only extroverts need apply, while wearing sunglasses.
Most car colours are incidental to the car that carries them, regardless of whether you like the shade the car underneath is the more important part of the equation. But gold often seems to reverse that equation, with even those with little or no interest in cars remembering a bullion-coloured one.
The first car I bought with my own money was a Mk2 Vauxhall Cavalier. This was in the early ‘90s, when there were still hundreds of thousands on the roads. But mine, to my youthful pride, was wearing a brilliant shade of metallic paint very similar to the one on this 944. My teenage self thought this was the very height of classy sophistication, although I had soon rattle-canned the lower doors in black to try and make it look like an SRi, and also to hide the rust. Friends and acquaintances were less kind, with one of the more frequent catcalls being to ask if Henry Kelly knew I’d nicked his car. More than three decades on I’m sure there are people who only remember me as the Man with the Golden Cavalier. On the plus side, I never lost it in a carpark.
By coincidence, our Pill was first registered in 1983, as was that long-scrapped Cavalier, this being the same year that Spandau Ballet released ‘Gold’, their anthem to precious metal. It was clearly an Aurelian era, or maybe just one when everybody liked shiny things.
The 944 was equally fresh at that time, having been launched the year before. In essence, it was Porsche’s third attempt to persuade 911 buyers to get with the times and move to a front engine, having been developed from the 924 and being sold alongside the grander, V8 powered 928. The big difference over the 924 was more muscular contours and the arrival of a new Porsche-developed DOHC four-cylinder engine to replace the 924’s weedy Audi-based motor.
The new donk displaced 2.5-litres and made a respectable 161hp as launched, although later versions pushed that figure progressively higher. Like the 924 and 928, it used a transaxle gearbox at the rear to give near optimal 48:52 static weight distribution front-to-rear, with the adverts making much of this evidence of modernity (and making an unspoken contrast to the 911’s ass-heaviness.)
While the basic 924 had always felt slow, even the launch-spec 944 was respectably brisk; an 8.5-sec 0-60mph and a 130mph top speed were sharp-end for 2+2 sports cars at the time. Reviewers liked it and sales were strong, especially as the eighties entered the era of conspicuous consumption - many a yuppie graduated from a Golf GTI or BMW 325i into a 944. But this early success meant that, as the economic winds turned into the cold chill of the early nineties, there was a relative abundance of 944s out there, and values fell both hard and fast. By the turn of the century, it was possible to get half-decent examples for a couple of grand, and grotty ones for banger money.
Yet, in this inflated era, the £6.995 being asked for our Pill makes it the cheapest currently in the Classifieds, although with the dealer selling it admitting it requires a fair amount of fettling. That’s most obvious in the cabin where there is a DIN-sized hole where the audio unit should go, although one that would be simple to fill with a period-appropriate head unit. The dashboard is also suffering from cracks - that being a ‘they all do that, sir’ for early 944s - and the spectacular grey fabric seats are showing wear and a few tears, especially on the passenger side. Outside the moulded rear bumper is drooping and the rear PORSCHE graphic has partly worn away.
A peek at the MOT history behind the obscured plates pretty confirms an impressively low mileage - just 53,417 at the time of the last test, this being less than 3,000 higher than the tally it had passed with its first online ticket in 2012. Our Pill was off the road between 2014 and 2020, when its first MOT seems to have been a sighting shot to see what was wrong with it; it flunked with multiple fails including corroded brake pipes, excessively worn discs and grotty MacPherson strut.
But work was obviously taken in hand as it recorded an almost clean pass (with a single tyre advisory) a month later. The most recent test in October last year was green apart from another advisory for rear structural corrosion. On any Porsche of this vintage, it would be more surprising to see no evidence of rust. The last pass could also be the last one, as it is now old enough to be MOT-exempt.
This 944 has certainly lived an interesting life having had more than a football team’s worth of owners, each of who possessed it for an average of 4,400 miles and less than three and a half years. As the dealer points out, it will be exempt from both VED and ULEZ charges next year, so could be a canny buy for a stingy metropolitan party animal. Or just somebody who loves gold.
They're lovely cars, don't feel that powerful but the power delivery is quite linear, they just keep on pulling right up to the red line.
But rust... Oh the rust... (despite being galvanised).
And the tailgate that steadfastly refused to remain shut tight, whining diff, oil leaks (despite getting all belts and seals done by a specialist).
Rusty fuel lines, brake lines... Never again!
And this one is way over priced, has the 'wrong' steering wheel (the 3 spoke is way better IMHO), seats are ripped - it just looks tired, very, very tired.
And I'd wager that at 40 years old, that mileage is way more than stated, and probably closer to 250k miles or more.
You'll buy this for £7k, and may end up spending another £7k fettling it.
Truly a brave pill, this one.
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