This weeks car of the week gets mixed comments from different people depending on who you talk to, but I can get enough of the front engined rear wheel drive late 80’s Porsche.
Comment negative comments run along the lines of ”Its not a real Porsche” and “the engines in the wrong place” but the 944 is a great sports car and can now be picked up for a very reasonable price.
There are a number of different engine options for any aspiring 944 owner to choose from. The base model is the 2.7 4 cylinder that produces 165bhp and sprints to 60 in a slightly sluggish 8.2 seconds. The 2.7 version also came with a automatic gearbox, which i wouldn’t recommend due to the box being slow to respond adding over a second to the 0-60 time, raising it to 9.4 second. Porsche’s just shouldn’t be that slow. The 944 S2 came with a 3.0l 16v 4 cylinder engine delivering 210bhp (very healthy for the early 90’s) and because the car only weights 1350kg the S2 is propelled to 60 in only 6 seconds. The S2 is not the most powerful 944 sold, that title goes to the 944 turbo. With a 2.5l 4 cylinder turbo charged engine pumping out 250bhp to the rear wheels the 944 Turbo streaked to 60 in 5.6 seconds and will run a standing 1/4 mile in just 13 seconds.
The car that i have chosen is a very tidy Porsche 922 S2. though the S2 is the middle model of the three above, I think that it is the best for performance vs value. I found this 944 S2 on pistonheads and its the 3.0 litre, 16v, Late bridge spoiler model and was first registered Nov ‘91. The car is completely standard and looks to have been looked after very well. The car includes a full service history from a mixture of both Porsche and an independent garage.
The car has done 123k miles and is currently for sale for £4,250. I think you’ll agree that for just over 4k that’s a hell of a lot of car foe the money. I wish i wasn’t saving for a house at the moment, or this may very well have been on my shopping list for some weekend fun. Here’s some pictures of the cars to wet your appetites.
Reports from January van sales show that the whole industry is still suffering from economic down turn.
Registrations: 13,099 in January; 219,450 for the rolling year, down 34.5%.
Trucks: 1,553 in January; 33,263 for the rolling year, down 40.6%.
Vans: 11,546 for the month; 186,187 for the rolling year, down 33.2%.
The report stated:
“New van and truck registrations continue to reflect a weak economic recovery and businesses reluctant to commit to new investment,” said Paul Everitt, SMMT chief executive. “These are the lowest January truck registrations since 1992, leaving most truck makers very disappointed at the slow start to the year. It is extremely important that government uses the upcoming Budget to encourage new investment in capital goods and help re-build business confidence.”
Van rental has also seen a hit over the last 12 months with summer searches in Google UK down around 30% in 2009 compared to 2008. We are beginning to see improvement the searches starting to approach the numbers we saw at this time last year, but van hire is still not out of the woods yet.
Now i don’t really understand replicas normally, but this is very interesting indeed.
I am interested as to how well the final finish will be and how well the car will drive (though its just a bigger Boxster) with a lengthened Porsche chassis and a much heavier V8/V10 in there. TBH, for the same money i would much rather by a Aston Martin, better build, more artchive and a much better investment, but that just what i think.
The 4 stroke engine has been powering most automobiles in the world for many years, with only small changes being made over time to make the engines more powerful, more economic and efficient. There is now a new engine design that uses an extra stroke to help achieve these goals with smaller engines.
The engine has been developed by Ilmor Engineering and could be the future of design for automotive engines. The design uses 3 different cylinders to produce power, but only the outside two actually fire. The firing cylinders go through the normal procedure of intake, compression, combustion and exhaust to make their power. This is where the 5th stoke comes in, as the cylinder located in the center receives the exhaust gas from one of the outside cylinders and allows it to expand even more, creating power.
The outside cylinders alternate to keep pressure even across the board. The result of this additional step is a torque curve similar to a diesel while still being able to ignite from a spark plug and without the emissions associated with diesel fuel.
The engine is currently only 700cc but the power output of the running test engine is 130bhp with 122lb.ft of torque. Ilmor engineering state that when the engine is running perfectly the little 0.7 litre engine should produce around 150bhp, which is amazing for such a small engine.
I am personally very interested to see if this new 5 stroke engine manages to make it into a production car and to see if anyone will further develop the idea to make a bigger more powerful version.
