30 Days of Porsche: 1989 Porsche 944 Turbo

Our third Porsche Review: the 1989 Porsche 944 Turbo

Who says all Porsches have to be rear engined? The Porsche 944 began as a project similar to the 914 as a join venture between Volkswagen and Porsche but evolved into one of Porsche most successful models.

When Volkswagen (and Audi, who planned to build the engines) backed out of the program, Porsche picked up the slack.

Using a smaller straight-four version of the 928's engine Porsche built a car which would go on to have a run of nine years and 163,000 models.

Of those cars 25,000 were built as the Turbo version and our test car, the 1989 Turbo, had only 4,100 models built.

944

FORZA STATS

Price: 12,000cr
Class: C/405
Engine placement/Drivetrain: Front-engined, RWD
Power: 247 HP
Weight: 3,115 lbs

Speed: 5.7
Handling: 4.8
Acceleration: 6.4
Launch: 7.0
Braking: 4.7



944 at speed



ROAD TEST
After driving really old cars for the past couple of days I was pleased to get back behind the wheel of a relatively modern car for a change.

I found the 944 to have nice balance in the corners. It has predictable handling and if you don't drive like a maniac, it is stuck like glue.

The only issue is that because this is a racing game you do have to drive this car on the edge, and that's when it bites you.

The 944 is prone to oversteer



The 944 is incredibly tail-happy when driven on the edge. It suckers you into thinking it has all of the grip in the world when you turn in and on the exit the rear end steps out and you have to fight it to keep it from spinning.

Other small issues with the car is that, despite it has 230 bhp, it feels slow. I think that has something to do with the weight rather than the power.



Paint By: CrackDeathBox

 UPGRADED ROAD TEST
The 944 really isn't a bad base of a car to start off with, in fact it is quite good.

A couple of small complaints like oversteer and weight are easily curable, so I expected this car to be decent in its original class of C.

While it only gave my 20 PI points to work with I felt I could get the balance just right with those restrictions.

First I gave the 944 a sport weight reduction then worked on the transmission, springs, and other handling traits. I considered adding areo, but I thought with the lack of power it would ruin the car.

I really hoped that the oversteer had been cured as I took the car to the Silverstone National Circuit for a time attack.

I was disappointed to find out that now the car had not only kept its oversteer on the exit of the corners, it now understeered as well.

Despite this my best laptime of a 1:08.720 was good enough for the top 1% on the leaderboards and 3,795th overall.

The Porsche 944 certainly has potential to be a great racer but to completely cure the handling, it will need to be in B or A class.

Oversteer!

As always, thanks for reading! Check back later today for my reactions to the June Car Pack and tomorrow for the 1982 Porsche 911 Turbo.