Blaspheming in Abrahamic religions is cause for condemnation or far worse. Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe 928 may surely be viewed as an affront to the alter of Porsche, but is its price a sin as well?
Popular as they are, yesterday's 1991 Saudi Syclone did manage to blow your burqas up. But its price sure didn't get your camels humping, and while its original destination was the Middle East, there wasn't any middle ground in the votes - it sadly garnering a 71% Crack Pipe loss.
Porsche's Rubenesque 928 has also proven a popular act on this particular stage, although one well known for its peculiarities and seemingly insatiable appetite for bank accounts. One of the car's major tapeworms has always been its complex and wear-prone aluminum engine, parts for which can be breathtaking in their cost. Other foibles of note are electrical gremlins and an interior that can fall victim to time and use, potentially ending as ratty as a frat house couch. Today's 1980 928 addresses two of those three issues, although many of you aren't going to like the route taken for one of them.
Renegade Hybrids isn't a street gang sporting Prius tattoos, they're the folks who'll stick Chevy V8s into any Porsche that happens along. They'll pop them in the backs of 911s, the mid-sections or 914s and, as in the case of this solid gold dancer of a 928, up front too. Its seller says the ZZ4 crate motor came to live under the fish-eyed Porsche's severely sloping hood just 12,000 miles ago. The gearbox - which here is the rare 5-speed - has but 30K on it, while the car itself is reported to have traversed over 100K in total since Ronald Regan was in the White House. While the original OHC alloy engine filled the Porsche's nose verily, the SBC looks a little lost in there, but at least you can see it all. That'll be good for wrenching on it, a task that the Chevy's rock solid reputation should make a less frequent occurrence than with the Porsche mill.
Okay, I know what you're thinking - this is yet another SBC transplant polluting what was once a great car that few of us could ever afford to own due to its onerous parts prices and frequent maintenance requirements.
Yes, yes it is.
It's also a car that no one will know has a much more dependable - and less expensive to maintain - engine just so long as you keep the hood closed. Sure, the claimed 355 ponies this push-rod engine puts out will arrive along a totally different torque curve than the Porsche's original and more flexible V8, but who the hell cares? It'll still be a kick in the pants to drive.
While you're getting kicked in your pants you might notice that beneath them the seats in this 928 have been recovered in what is said to be human skin leather, and in fact the seller claims the entire interior is awash in the former bovine containment material. He only offers one shot - that of the deeply segmented passenger seat -indicating possibly that the reskinning may not have been all that successful. The carpeting visible in that picture does look a little more bachelor pad than Park Place apartment, but it is at least a lovely shade of brown.
That interior hue fits nicely with the gold exterior color, and the remainder of the car - from the phone dial rims to the wild ‘70s discotheque body which appears to be free of rust, dents, or embedded hobos - should be pretty stout. Aside from the potential electrical issues, it should prove an amazingly reliable ride. And you could always claim that the hood latch is broken when pushed for a glance at the engine.
Porsche created a unique and fabulous grand tourer with the 928, but like any car time takes its toll and while it may seem blasphemous to have replaced the premium with the plebeian under this one's hood, there are plenty of reasons to have done so. The most reasonable one being that it's a pretty cost effective method of keeping the car on the road if the original mill went tits-up. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily cost effective to buy right now.
Porsche 928 prices are all over the board right now, with pristine examples demanding princely sums while utter crapwagons can be had for the cost of a decent big screen or the payment of the back parking ticket fines. This one with its American V8 - which you may see as a value enhancer or detractor depending on your sense of propriety - comes with a $17,000 asking price, which is on the achtung, baby! side of the scale. What do you think, is that $17,000 low enough to make this Porschevy a deal? Or, is that one more nail in its SBC-powered coffin?
You decide!
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