Come on now, the Porsche engine in the 944 is miles better than the Audi one in the 924. Got rid of all the vibration issues. Granted the base 944 is a bit slow, but I’ve currently got an ‘86 951 and it’s still a great car today. The weight distribution on it is just perfect. Much more fun to drive and way more reliable than the ‘85 Ferrari 308 that I recently sold.
I had to sell my beloved '86 951 to an out-of-stater due to California emissions madness[1], and miss it every day. I don't, however, miss the hours a month spent underneath it keeping it driving. Everything except the turbo was aftermarket by the time I was done with it. The mid-80s were this weird point in time where cars were still wrench-able, but manufacturers started adding electronic gizmos, not knowing how to make those gizmos reliable. It's like they were still figuring out how to make everything from engine ECUs to power windows, and trying ideas out on production cars.
(It was also my first experience with an interference engine, and the terror of having your timing belt break.)
1: Car blew clean as a whistle, even to clean air standards that never existed in 1986, but since the intake and exhaust had all sorts of parts not officially stamped with the CA bureaucracy seal of approval, it had to go :(
I don't know about that. More powerful engine, 4 wheel disc brakes (rather than 2 disc, 2 drum setup on a base 924) and the switch to electronic fuel injection instead of K-Jetronic all seem like decent upgrades to me. I had an '83 944 as my daily driver for a couple of years and for a poorly maintained 25 year old sports car it wasn't so bad.
The combination of an interference engine and a super-long manually tensioned timing belt was rather unfortunate though. I never had an issue with my belt, but adjusting the tension was very stressful. Especially since I was too cheap to buy the proper expensive tool and was using one of the crappy "cricket" ones.