Car and Driver Road Tests: Reintroducing the 928 for 9/28 You Should Know
In their June 1977 issue of Car and Driver, the editorial staff labeled the Porsche 928 as “the best Porsche ever.” That was a lofty claim even at the time, even if Yates had labeled the Mercedes 450SEL 6.9 “the best car” just a year prior. In this piece, entitled Porsche Re-Introduces the Sports Car, David E. Davis, Jr., L.J.K. Setright, and Brock Yates each gave their respective take on the new front-engined V8 Porsche during an early 1977 press launch. Today is 9/28, so what better day to revisit?
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First code-named 911 H, the 928 was conceived in 1971; by 1974, 200 million Deutschmarks had been committed to the project. This came at a time when most big manufacturers were struggling. Porsche chairman Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann put it thusly:
“In 1974, mind you…nobody would give you a penny for the future of the sports car. There was an energy crisis, a recession, and most of the people running car companies had—I don’t know how to say this nicely in English—uh, brown in their underwear. But we went ahead. We couldn’t look back.”
After the final prototype was built, Porsche placed a rush order of 12 pre-production 928s to be unveiled to the motoring press at Mas D’Artigny in southern France in late February 1977. The C/D tribe wheeled a white 928 wearing VIN 9288100014—denoting it as the fourth car built (not the 14th, as one might assume).
Image: Car and Driver
The entire piece, while long, is certainly worth the read. Davis, Jr. took the keys and recounted the day’s activities, including a conversation with Fuhrmann that included insight into the eccentric Tony Lapine; Yates contributed photo captioning and also took the Porsche for a spin after recovering from a bout of nausea brought on by the fumes from its underbody coating; and Setright, in his most erudite prose, dove deep into the engineering and technical specifications, providing information-dense assessments like this:
“Sixteen years, at least, have passed since Chrysler devised a formula wherewith to calculate the length of intake ducts that would insure the greatest amplification of the engine’s volumetric efficiency at the desired speed for maximum torque. The length of each of the eight ram pipes feeding the Porsche 928’s inlet ports accords with that formula, to set the peak of the torque curve at 3600 rpm, when it renders 267.6 foot-pounds, corresponding to a brake mean-effective pressure of 149 pounds per square inch.”
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