This is a story spanning a total of two years, soon to be three, and maybe a decade or two more. To understand Project 931, we have to go back to the dark ages; that’s right, the late 1970’s.
The late 1970’s was a dark time for automobile manufacturers; the era of the muscle car had all but come to an end, and the gas crisis saw to it. In this time period, Porsche was healing from the gas crisis along with everyone else, and the beloved 911 wasn’t as popular as it once was; sales were down and the 914 needed to be replaced as Porsche’s entry level model.
So in 1976, the Porsche 924 came out, a VW/Audi/Porsche parts bin car that was once sold as VW and then back to Porsche. Sales were great. However, performance wasn’t there with the doggy 4 cylinder Audi block engine. To add some much needed horsepower, in 1978 Project 931 was introduced to the world.
Project 931 was sold to us consumers as the 924 Turbo. It came with a heavily revised engine built at Porsche, peaking at 177 horsepower. Cosmetically, the 924 Turbo had a NACA duct on the hood, four vents on the badge panel, spoilered hatch, 5 lug wheels, disc brakes at all four corners, and mud flaps. Inside the car on early models, you would find green numbered gauges and then white number gauges on the later cars.
Overall it was a great looking, zippy car for consumers who wanted a Porsche, but not at 911 prices. Over 13,000 924 turbos were produced from 1978 to 1982. 1982 was the lowest production year of only 876 cars being made for the United States. Fast forward 42 years and it’s now a pretty rare little car.
931- #510 of #876 Cars
In April of 2019, 924 Turbo#510 was found by a guy in Topeka at a welding shop. The car was on Facebook off and on before he bought it for an undisclosed amount to me. At the time, I was daily driving my 1981 928 and was in my final spring semester at Kansas State in Manhattan. I had just finished the day at a dealer auction to look for a newer SUV to drive daily. That’s when I got the text from the 924 Turbo owner.
I drove out to his house in Topeka and found the car in pretty bad disrepair. The interior was all in the back of the car and parts were strewn everywhere. At the time, my issue was storage, and money, so I passed on it for about a year. Come June of 2022, the owner texts me again with a simple “Hey, I’m going to scrap this thing”.So I sent back “Hold on, let me check the VIN”; sure enough, it was the rarest year, 1982!
I told him I would be there that Saturday with a trailer and $500. The only catch was that he got to keep the ATS spiderweb wheels. Fortunately, I had a set of rollers off my ‘81 928 as I had swapped wheels for some 996 twists.
My fantastic girlfriend Kaitlyn accompanied me for the journey and as soon as we got home we commenced cleaning it out. The passenger window had been missing for a very long time and the car was full of leaves and spiders. Now Kaitlyn is absolutely awesome for helping. She spent all day cleaning out the car with me, even though she had to be at the Nelson Atkins for her sorority executive officer pictures that evening. Basically, she went from working hard in a spider infested old junk of a car to all dolled up and looking fine in about an hour.
After that day, the 924 Turbo really became self proclaimed as her Porsche, which is why I don’t plan on ever selling the car. As we cleaned it out, there were of course some brown recluses and other nasty awful spiders and wet leaves. Luckily, the carpet shampooed out and we found the license plate. It was last registered in March of 1999. That dates me to being 3 years old when it was last registered.
That was day one of ownership; fast forward to 2023 and the car does run, but still needs a lot of work to become a driver, and almost every weekend I work on it a little bit to get it one step further, and the list is too long to type out.
Background of The Car
The gentleman that I bought the car from had purchased the car from the welding shop owner, who bought the car from his friend,who’s no longer with us. He had bought the car from a storage unit auction. From there, I have five records on the Carfax: a theft and recovery in 1991, 2 registrations, a title transfer, and a move from Kentucky to Kansas City, Missouri. For more information, I had to call Porsche’s Classic Center in Alabama. They pulled the records that the car was sold new at Porsche Orlando. I was able to certify that the car was in Florida up until the mid 1990’s, when it went to Kentucky. They even had the original owner’s information, but could not share it with me for legal reasons. Shortly after that, I reached out to the Porsche Club in Orlando and a gentleman named Nort Northam came forward. He said it was very likely he sold the car in 1982, as he was “top dog” in sales at that dealership until about 1984. That was right about the time when he left to start his own store.
So, as of right now I have about 90% of the car’s history figured out except for who owned it. I suspect they’ve since passed as the car was abandoned and sold in a storage auction.
In Closing
To wrap up the story of one of Kansas City’s rarer Porsches, my long term goal is to restore the car, but for now I plan to have it running and driving for my girlfriend Kaitlyn. She’s taken a love for that car and accepts it as hers. It’s fondly been named Edna because of its original plate numbers. We both patiently await the day it’s rowing through gears again.
– Dan