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

this is a 1994 porsche 928 gts you may know a little about the 928 maybe your uncle had one or some guy down the street from you has one or you owned one yourself back in the 90s but not that many people know this the 928 gts the ultimate final iteration of the 928 this one sold new back in 1994 for 88 000 which is equivalent to 180 000 in today's money today i'm going to take you on a comprehensive tour of the 928 using this one this 94 928 gts and i'm going to show you all this cars weirdnesses and corks and cool features there are many i'm going to start by giving you a thorough tour of all the weird quirks and features of this 928 gts which by the way comes to me from platinum motor cars an exotic car dealer here in the lovely detroit area whose inventory is so wild and vast and varied that going in there is like a cars and coffee then i'm going to take it out on the road and see how it drives but first an overview the 928 was sold from 1977 to 1995 nearly 20 years with the same basic design it's a front-end v8 unlike every other porsche sports car and it was originally intended to replace the 911 but it never did more on that at the end of the video this 928 is an odd car a weird hodgepodge of 70s and 80s and 90s and this gts is the ultimate version it was sold for only three years at the very end of the 928 run and it had 350 horsepower which is still a lot today and was really a lot back then if the 928 ever becomes collectible this is the one that will shoot up in value okay time for the quirks and features starting with the front and one of the 928's most famous design traits it's headlights now pop-up headlights were not uncommon on cars from this era but most other pop-up cars concealed their headlights when they were down in this car the headlights were always visible but when you turn them on they did indeed pop up the car looked like a frog when the headlights were up it was so strange and when you put them away they weren't concealed they just sort of rested in speaking of lighting let's discuss the key for a minute this car doesn't have keyless entry or any of that newfangled stuff but it does have one little trick there's a giant button on the key and when you push it it becomes the world's dimmest flashlight next up let's discuss possibly my favorite quark on this entire car that would be the 928's crazy rear window you're looking at this rear three-quarters window back here is one of the strangest i've ever seen on any car this oddly shaped rhombus that starts upright and somehow finishes flat in various different angles throughout this window has to be one of the strangest things to make and i strongly suspect it isn't cheap to buy now if you under 928 you're probably living in fear that someone's gonna break your rear three-quarters window next let's talk about the fuel door it opens up just like a normal fuel door and inside there is a fuel cap with a lock on it which was common cars that came out of the 70s due to the gas crisis what's less common is the little flap between them on it it says oil okay a little reminder to check your oil oil okay and since we're around back let's discuss the rear wiper which is a rather large piece so large 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 they eventually connect into one and a kind of needless complexity you can only get from a porsche another interesting quirk about this car always was the sunroof which has to have the smallest opening of any sunroof in the entire car industry it only opens up about seven inches which makes you wonder why they even bothered with a sunroof at all not a lot of cars have storage on the door panel usually it's just something you throw stuff in sometimes it has a lid and this car not only does it have a lid but it has a little latch you have to push in order to get it open you push the latch and only then can you access the door storage the craziest thing about this is when it's closed and when you haven't unlatched it you can still put stuff in there which kind of renders the whole latch system moot i bet if you ask 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 kind of weird and needlessly complicated the 928's door panel had some other weirdnesses too like for example the door panel mounted air conditioning vents and the sideways seat memory control button but the strangest thing by far was the door lock circle thing that would be this now this car has central locking so you could automatically lock and unlock the doors but if you wanted to unlock or lock an individual door you didn't just pull up on the door lock instead you twisted this circle which is actually rather hard to twist no idea why this happened but it happened once you get inside the car you start to notice a few of the other interesting quirks like for example the transmission selector now in some cars when you shift into gear the gear you're in lights up porsche decided they developed their own solution there's a little triangle coming off the transmission selector that points to whatever gear that you're in it's a rather novel solution to an interesting problem next up we have to discuss the button that gets you into the trunk which is probably my favorite piece of switch gear inside this car it's not a latch or a lever anywhere in here instead it's this weird rubber button down on the floor and you don't push it you pull it up and now the trunk is open another interesting quirk of the 928 there's not that much storage space inside the cabin unless you count the trick over engineered door pockets so you get to the center console and you're thinking yes i finally have somewhere to put stuff they said you open it up and oh no there is just not any space in there could probably hold a credit card maybe so let's talk about the central locking button this interior is a weird hodgepodge of shapes and colors and sizes as things were added throughout this car's 20-year production run the lock button is a great example it is bright red it's backlit and has a picture of the key on it everything else is black but this particular button is red when you push it it's lit when the doors are locked and unlit when the doors are unlocked another strange switch in this car is the one that controls the windshield wipers not the one that turns them on and off that's just a stalk coming out of the steering column like in a normal car instead it's the one that changes the speed of the intermittent wipers it's actually a little dial hidden at the base of the instrument panel behind the steering wheel and it's rather strange next up we have to talk about these little buttons over here the first one makes sense it controls the headlights twisted and they go on the next one controls the fog lights the third one is completely unrelated to the headlights in fact it's the odometer zeroing button hold it down and it zeros the trip odometer this has to be the single largest odometer zeroing button in world history it's bigger than the button for the door locks also unusual this car doesn't have some fancy electronic screen in the gauge cluster like most modern cars but it does have a few functions for example if you pull a little lever to the left of the steering wheel the entire car turns metric with the temperature reading in celsius pull the lever again and the entire car turns back to miles and the temperature rating is back to fahrenheit one little dial to change to an entire measurement system and unit of temperature but if you want to access the pocket on the door you have to pull a little switch before you're allowed to lift the lid next up let's talk about the back seats now porsche intended for this car to be a grand tourer a practical car you could use to take the whole family and see the world evidenced by the fact that they actually put some stuff back there for example there is a sun visor for the rear have you ever seen that in any car before the rear passengers have a sun visor the other interesting thing in the back seats is there are four climate controls for rear seat passengers there's only six up front and yet in spite all that thought towards the rear the back seats are actually really hard to get into as i shall now demonstrate oh well i'm glad they included four air conditioning vents and these sun visors because i could really use some extra comfort now before i move on from the back seat i want to touch on that sun visor one more time i've moved the front seat all the way forward so i can be comfortable back here i'm going to go to put down the sun visor and hello i now no longer think that this is a sun visor for the back seat passengers instead i think it's a wall so the front seat passengers can block out the backseat passengers and probably also the sun but while the rear seats aren't big enough for any normal sized person they do have one benefit this car is supposed to be more practical than a 911 and indeed there's a little bit more rear seat room but also there's more room in the back these seats fold down and then you have this entire cargo area to do with what you want which you didn't have in the 911 of course because it was rear-engined so now you know all about the 928 you know all about its weird quirks and features which are surprisingly plentiful for a porsche since they're usually so perfectly meticulously engineered but how does it drive to find out i'm going to take it out on the road and for more of my thoughts click the link below to go to autotrader.com oversteer where i've written a column about all of my thoughts on the 928 gts all right so i'm getting in the car to drive it the first thing i've discovered here is that the entire gauge cluster and all the buttons on it move when you tilt the steering wheel there's no telescope for the steering wheel but even the turn signal stock moves in this thing this is crazy driving the 928 gts i've always wanted to drive one of these actually i've always kind of thought they looked cool even though i know that the prevailing opinion is they kind of look dated there is a pontian g5 behind us though so that's a very exciting experience there's only about four though because we're in detroit there's a hundred of those there's an automobile silhouette there's sub 97x i could just sit here and watch poorly selling american made cars drive by all right let's try now i happen to be of the opinion that for especially for the gts model the automatic was the correct transmission manual 928 are pulling more money now this was intended to be the grand touring car for whatever that was worth the automatic is the right transmission it's a big heavy front engine v8 car this kind of car you want to just put your foot down and go like a bullet the road manners are are pretty good at lower speeds this car is actually pretty comfortable even 23 years later the weirdest thing about this car is the simple amount of force required to push the accelerator you wanted to really commit to the accelerator before you uh you were allowed to go anywhere but you really have to deeply and and it's hard to push to stab the throttle before you can get anywhere man this car this car you know it's only a four-speed automatic and so it's dulled a little bit by that i kind of wonder how this thing this car has 350 horsepower i wonder how it would feel if it had a good transmission i drive so many of these older automatic cars like the prowler that were just killed by their automatic transmissions and it's such 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 the thing about this car it doesn't build power furiously but when you get high in that range boy it really makes some power uh it isn't as fast certainly as you know a modern sports car or something like that but it has that grand touring car sort of you get the sense that you could go 150 and not break a sweat kind of power building everything's very quiet the car is actually really well insulated it's surprising uh how quiet it is when i'm driving it it's it's uh it's almost weird they were able to do this 23 years ago this is what the panamera feels like the steering is really heavy even though it's power steering you have to really give it some effort in order to make it move this is actually nice i have to admit driving down the street most 23 year old cars no matter how nice they were they're a bit cumbersome in modern times cars from the early 90s you don't want to be in them this car has perfectly blowing ac as nice as any modern car i've been in 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 an enormous amount of support uh they're very soft leather you feel like you kind of sit down this was really intended to be a touring car like all porches this car feels very well put together obviously also all the materials are pretty high and there's some weird button placement and some odd things even though this car is 1994 there's no weird squeaks or rattles or shakes from strange places the steering is just so heavy it's almost amazing to me how heavy the steering was you got to remember this car was designed in the 70s it's just from a different era for a 94 car the steering just seems crazily heavy obviously it lightens up when you start moving but it still is heavier than any modern car the thing that i'm kind of taking away from this experience is this car feels heavy when you floor it it takes a while to build power the accelerator you push it it takes some time the steering feels heavy this car was was not intended to be the light tossable sports car that a lot of porsches today and even porsches back then really were it was no 911 this thing and so that's the 928 gts but i'm not done quite yet earlier in this video i told you the 928 intended to replace the 911 but it was saved at the last minute indeed the 911 was saved by an american this is a good story i promise we've made it this far it's worth sticking around here's the situation the american was named peter schutz and he was porsha's global ceo 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 of the brand morale was low sales were off and the workers all loved the 911 and they were sad it was going to be replaced but the 928 was the hot new model and that was the next generation of porsche sensing the feeling among his employees about this shoots walked up to a diagram on a wall in the office where they were meeting that showed all of the porsche model life cycles with the 911 coming to an end soon he stood up grabbed a marker walked up to the chart on the wall and drew a line from the 911 off the chart and on to the wall in the office prolonging the 911's life cycle indefinitely immediately after that porsche began retooling the 911 for a new generation rather than attempting to kill it off and replace it with the 928. this story is porsha lord now the guy who saved the 911 with a draw of a marker onto a wall and who knows if it's really true right well it just so happens that a friend of mine is acquainted with peter schutz who is now retired and living in florida and my friend went over to schutz's house for dinner a couple of years ago and he asked him the question did you actually draw the line from the chart onto the wall and save the 911. shoots his response was you bet i did and i was grinning like the cheshire cat when i did it and since then the 928 intended to be the 911 replacement has faded into obscurity while the 911 is stronger than ever and with story time over it's time for the doug score beginning with the weekend categories and styling i don't like how a lot of the early 928s looked with their ugly early 80s wheels and a lot of them were painted gold but by the gts they had it pretty well down it gets a 7 out of 10. acceleration it did 0-60 in 5.4 seconds giving it a 5 out of 10. handling is above average but not on par with modern sports cars and steering seems needlessly heavy it gets a 6 out of 10. cool factor is high the 928 is rarely seen and the gts is particularly special it gets a 7 out of 10. as for importance this was a significant 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 earns a seven out of ten that gives it a total weekend score of 32 out of 50 placing it predictably below the modern sports cars i've already scored next up are the daily categories and features and equipment the 928 gts was pretty well equipped in its day but this category is judged by modern standards and it's pretty sparse for 2017 it gets a mere 3 out of 10. luxury measures comfort and the 928 is above average but not hugely it gets a 6 out of 10. quality measures materials and reliability materials are nice but there are some poor ergonomics and oddly placed buttons meanwhile reliability is starting to become a little uncertain and potentially expensive as this car ages it earns only a 5 out of 10. practicality isn't bad it has about 15 cubic feet of cargo space giving it a 4 out of 10. it would earn extra points for those back seats but they're just so small finally value depends on why you're buying it by modern standard that's not an impressive performer or a great luxury car especially given that nice ones can sell for more than 60 thousand dollars but i do think the 928 gts will eventually be regarded as a valuable classic and that's enough to earn a six out of ten that gives it a total daily score of just 24 out of 50 bringing the total 928 gts doug score to 56 out of 100. the 928 is a cool car but it just can't hang with the modern stuff you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,888,023

Keywords: porsche 928, porsche 928 gts, 928 gts, porsche, exotic cars 1990s, 1990s cars, porsche gts, porsche 928gts, porsche 928 s4, porsche 928 gt, doug demuro, demuro

Id: GaoLQ_1zsrM

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/KingPetunia]

The story about Peter Schutz was really cool

[u/venerablelifting]

This window has to be one of the strangest to make.

Ha!

[u/traxtar944]

I love daily driving my 928. It's very much how you describe around parking lots and below 30mph. I describe it like a C4 Corvette in a few ways. Once you hit the highway, the car truly transforms like no other.

Some other interesting notes...

The glove box is heated and cooled with the HVAC system, there are no cup holders in the car, the trunk release only works with a door open, the fuse panel in the passenger kick well is covered by a plywood door, the older cars had vacuum powered door locks, the HVAC airflow flaps are controlled with a vacuum diaphragm system, the suspension system has fully adjustable coilovers, there are many magnesium engine components used (revolutionary for its time), the car has active cooling flaps in the front bumper, the intake manifold had a vacuum controlled flap that opens airflow and increases power, there is a kickdown switch under the accelerator that tells the transmission to downshift for overtaking, the transmission usually only goes to second gear at a stop light to conserve fuel, and probably many others I'm forgetting.

It's really a unique car to own and a real treat. The most fun car I've had to date.

[u/Doug-DeMuro]

Thanks for posting, /u/Nay2003. Not sure if this video will be mega-popular, but it was one of my favorite cars to review. So weird, so interesting, so many kooky features -- especially unusual in a German car.

Still can't get over the fact that the odometer reset button is larger than the button for the door locks.

[u/thefourofusaredying]

I actually expected the headlights to be more like the Lamborghini Miura, not those weird, cartoony frog eye things. I'd never drive a 928 in the dark with those headlights.

[u/batsassin]

Wow, literally saw this car go past me yesterday and was reminded by that Top Gear episode and thought Doug should totally review this!

Thanks for the consistent, quality content /u/doug-demuro

[u/vhalember]

This is nitpicking and off point, but but how is the 180k value determined, as 88K-->180K immediately struck me as an incorrect adjustment for inflation.

The adjustment is 145-147K across multiple calculators:

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

http://cpiinflationcalculator.com/

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

[u/Steffen98]

I wonder if Doug drives or flies to these different states to review these cars, and if so who compensates? 🤔

[u/_Seditious_]

Doug the type of guy to... uh... oh... wrong forum ...