Junkyard Find: 1978 Porsche 924

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Many Internet Car Experts believe that any Porsche, no matter how battered, is worth big money. Spend some time around the 24 Hours of LeMons and you’ll learn otherwise, and of course you can always find 924 s, 944 s, 914s, and even the occasional 928 in the cheap self-serve wrecking yards. The 944 is the most common, but for some reason I have never shot one for this series. I’ll remedy that soon, but for now here’s a much-abused 924 I spotted in Denver not long ago.

My favorite Fun Porsche 924 Fact is that you could buy a DJ-5 mail Jeep with just about the same Audi engine as the Porsche 924 (you could get the engine in other AMCs as well, including the Gremlin).

Still, the 924 was fairly sporty for its time, and I’ve seen plenty of well-driven ones knock out decent lap times on road courses.

This one doesn’t seem rusty, but we can assume that its last half-dozen owners were not meticulous types who treated it gently.

There’s a 944 at the same yard now, and I’m still bummed that some guy beat me to its nice VDO gauges by about 30 seconds at the All-You-Can-Carry-For-$59.99 junkyard sale. I’ll go back and photograph it soon.





Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Speedlaw Speedlaw on Aug 21, 2015

    I recall seriously considering one of these new. The 944 had just come out, and the 924 was still being sold as the price leader. Two things made it a no sale. The steering column was low...in your lap low. This was fixed in the 944. The other was that I'd recently had a VW Scirocco, from the "cheap and cheerful" side of the lot, and I was floored by the amount of common parts in this "very expensive" "Porsche". Lots of that was fixed when the 944 got its own engine and the platform was revamped, but for the-at the time amazing price of $25,000, I wasn't using the same climate controls, door handles, and such "behind the facade" parts that my VW had, in the 924 loss leader. It was pretty, though, and for the time, very pretty. My GLH Turbo was less pretty, but way faster.

  • RHD RHD on Aug 25, 2015

    One Saturday morning few years ago a day laborer knocked on my neighbor's door, looking to do an odd job or two. My neighbor gave him a bucket of paint and a brush, and said he could paint his porch, since he hated painting and had a long list of chores to do that day. A couple of hours later the day laborer found the home owner in the back yard, repairing a sprinkler. He handed him a few bills, and the day laborer smiled and said, "Thank you. But you are mistaken, Meester. It ees not a porch, it ees a Volkswagen!"

  • Calrson Fan Jeff - Agree with what you said. I think currently an EV pick-up could work in a commercial/fleet application. As someone on this site stated, w/current tech. battery vehicles just do not scale well. EBFlex - No one wanted to hate the Cyber Truck more than me but I can't ignore all the new technology and innovative thinking that went into it. There is a lot I like about it. GM, Ford & Ram should incorporate some it's design cues into their ICE trucks.
  • Michael S6 Very confusing if the move is permanent or temporary.
  • Jrhurren Worked in Detroit 18 years, live 20 minutes away. Ren Cen is a gem, but a very terrible design inside. I’m surprised GM stuck it out as long as they did there.
  • Carson D I thought that this was going to be a comparison of BFGoodrich's different truck tires.
  • Tassos Jong-iL North Korea is saving pokemon cards and amibos to buy GM in 10 years, we hope.
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