500 Dollar Special Porsche 924.

"Mathias Rios" (Mars478)
11/13/2013 at 22:52 • Filed to: None

I have been looking for a project car for a while now. My budget was pretty strictly 500 dollars to limit myself to the down and dirty stuff. Some of you may recall a while back I asked about one or two different cars all of which I eventually decided against. However, this little Porsche 924 fit the bill in almost all categories.

-RWD

-Manuél

-German

-Coupé

-Cool factor is pretty high up there

-And it "runs"

Some of you may also recall that my good friend Aaron Brown !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! a Porsche 944, about a week before I bought my car. Part of the fun of buying this 924 was that I didn't tell Aaron I had bought it for about a week, although he definitely suspected it. I had some of my friends play along and confuse him. The major slip-up in this keep it secret plan was that my dad had uploaded a picture of the disgustingly grimy 924 on the AAA tow truck who towed it into the parking complex where it now lives temporarily. Aaron finally confirmed his suspicions when I set my keys down on a desk (with 924 keys in place), and he grabbed them and stole them to confirm that they were similar to his 944's. As you can probably tell, he didn't want me to buy this car...

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Oops.

Let's talk about this car's specifics. It is a 1982 ('81 manf date.) Porsche 924, with a 2.0 Liter 4 cylinder (yes the wimpy audi/VW sourced 4 cylinder.), 5 speed manual, and is maroon-ish red. I paid all of 500 dollars for the car (including a title, who woulda thunk it.) and 75 bucks for a set of original Porsche wheels with nearly new rubber on them. The only MAJOR problem with this car, is the brakes don't work, and the problem has been narrowed down to a rusted out brake line. As you can imagine it hasn't been driven since I got it and put it in the spot (very, very cautiously) by slamming the E-brake to make it stop. The interior is pretty trashed apart from some possibly Ferarri sourced seats (I'm not 100% sure, the PO said they were out of a 512TR and I really, really doubted that, but upon further inspection I found a Ferarri logo on the seat belt release button clip thingy, and the seat belt is Klippan labeled. All I know is they definitely AREN'T Porsche). The exterior is rough, the rear end is OK, the paint is dull but I think it can shine if I give it a good wax. The front is a little worse, Both fenders have seen body work and repaint (perfect candidate for 944 front fenders eventually) in a similar color. The hood and header panel are rock chipped and peeling. The PO had put a ridiculous hood scoop on it and I had to remove that.

The car is FULL of rice-y mods. Such as;

-"Fire Breather exhaust" (There is literally a spark plug that ignites the exhaust gases. Disabled that first thing)

-Really crappy wheels with nice falken rubber. Some spacers too. Gonna sell them once I get them off for money towards the car.

-Blue LED illumination in the car

-A RIDICULOUS obnoxious tachometer (I have literally never seen one this big) that didn't even work.

-Pedals that lit up red and had fake metal flames on them

-Red shift knob and leather surround

-Stickers for some "racing" thing all over.

-And best of all, leaky pretty much straight pipe exhaust which is obnoxiously loud.

Otherwise, the car is pretty solid, just incredibly dirty. Clutch feels good, shifts into gear are crisp (stationary, obviously) and there isn't too much play in the shifter. Starts right up after replacing DME relay. Unfortunately the battery isn't out of this car and the hood won't shut with it so I'll have to replace that eventually. I plan on bringing it back to it's glory (on a limited budget however). You can follow my progress over at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! where I have a build thread going. PO claims it was a Cali car, it has somewhere between 103k and 143k miles (title and odometer say different things and PO tells me it has more than what the title says but who cares anyways). That's pretty much it, I'm sure I will be writing a part 2 to the 500 Dollar special 924 saga, but that is yet to come. In the meantime here are some more pics.

Not related, but the guy who towed the car to my parking garage said that he was the inspiration for the song Money for Nothing by Dire Straits. At first he said that he worked doing custom kitchens (deliverayayayay) and then he casually asked me if I had heard that song. He also told me about how he used to race VW bugs. He didn't realize my 924 was front engined and kept looking in the back of it to see what kind of engine it had...

TL;DR: For 500 dollars you can buy a Porsche 924 with a blown brake line and ricer mods.

When I got the car/craigslist pic:

Engine bay before I bought it:

Comparison of the aftermarket wheels and stock ( I think the stocks look immensely better and whoever disagrees is wrong):

DISCUSSION (20)

Kailand09 > Mathias Rios
11/13/2013 at 22:58

likex1000.

I really have debated going this route. Though I'm a 'vette guy and would likely grab a C4.

dogisbadob > Mathias Rios
11/13/2013 at 22:59

Nice Audi.

Mathias Rios > dogisbadob
11/13/2013 at 23:01

Haha. I wonder if anyone out there has rebadged this car with audi or VW logos over the porsche ones? That would be weird.

dogisbadob > Mathias Rios
11/13/2013 at 23:03

I would so do that if I ever got a 924.

My favorite Porsche by far is the 914, and I really want one. If I'm ever able to buy a 914, I'd even consider putting VW badges on it since that's how they were sold in the DDM/GDM

Mathias Rios > dogisbadob
11/13/2013 at 23:05

I think this thing could rock an Audi logo pretty well. Yeah weren't they built by Karmann at some point? 914's are so cool and retro. I think their value is on the uptick now

Aaron Brown > Mathias Rios
11/13/2013 at 23:40

Some of you may also recall that my good friend Aaron Brown recently bought a Porsche 944, about a week before I bought my car. Part of the fun of buying this 924 was that I didn't tell Aaron I had bought it for about a week, although he definitely suspected it. I had some of my friends play along and confuse him. The major slip-up in this keep it secret plan was that my dad had uploaded a picture of the disgustingly grimy 924 on the AAA tow truck who towed it into the parking complex where it now lives temporarily. Aaron finally confirmed his suspicions when I set my keys down on a desk (with 924 keys in place), and he grabbed them and stole them to confirm that they were similar to his 944's.

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I call BS.

ASheep > Mathias Rios
11/13/2013 at 23:49

Great find! For 500 you're laughing, even if fixing/de-ricing costs you a couple of grand!

Every so often I get the urge to buy a 924 as a project car, but then I think about how much work a cheap 924 would need, and figure I may as well save and buy an old whale tail 911 to fix up, because they will always and forever be my favourite Porsche. Sadly around here, even shitty 924s are pretty expensive... For $500 though, I'd be there in a minute!

Mathias Rios > Aaron Brown
11/14/2013 at 00:22

To which part?

ddavidn > Mathias Rios
11/14/2013 at 13:36

Stocks are almost always better. In this case, that is definitely true.

DailyTurismo > Mathias Rios
11/14/2013 at 13:43

We all want to see pics of the seats, pedals and tach - because racecar.

Mathias Rios > DailyTurismo
11/14/2013 at 13:47

I have a ton of pictures, I'll post them up in part 2, this would've been too long with them.

Mathias Rios > ddavidn
11/14/2013 at 13:48

Finally someone agrees!

Alex87f > Mathias Rios
11/14/2013 at 14:27

1. Read post

2. Think: " why don't I do that?"

3. Go to local car ad website

4. Brand: Porsche - Car: 924

5. See that the cheapest one costs 2 500€ (3200$), but is in surprisingly good condition

6. Think...

Mathias Rios > Alex87f
11/14/2013 at 14:30

Wow. For that price you could probably get a beat up 944 turbo around here. I wouldn't spend that much on a 924. But you should DOOO ITTT

TurboSloth > Mathias Rios
11/14/2013 at 16:12

Kinja'd!!!

I want to say this is the bridge between Newark and Harrison. How much did it cost to tow? I'm trying to find a beater car that I can fix up, but my budget is pretty small.

Mathias Rios > TurboSloth
11/14/2013 at 16:34

Wow yeah you nailed it! I used triple A to tow for free for the first 4 miles but the rest was 4.50 per mile. I recommend getting the highest level of AAA to save some serious dough on towing. Aaa official policy is to not tow project cars or cars without plates/registration but the actual tow truck drivers don't care since they get paid from aaa regardless, just being some old plates and slap em on there. I ended up paying 60 bucks out of pocket for towing because I only had the most basic of AAA

Mathias Rios > TurboSloth
11/14/2013 at 16:34

Meatcoma > Mathias Rios
11/15/2013 at 11:50

Should be great fun as you both work through problems together - many of which may be the exact same. I hope you budgeted 4x the amt you paid for it for repairs =)

Stef Schrader > Mathias Rios
11/19/2013 at 22:26

I love that cheapo Porsches are becoming a thing on here.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Congrats!

Mathias Rios > Stef Schrader
11/19/2013 at 22:33

:D they're a whole lot of fun.

Maybe not exactly reasonable, but fun. It's also fun to tell people I bought a porsche for 500 bucks. Then I show them it and they understand.