A Lifetime of Watching Porsches (Part 2)
Driving a bright green Porsche 911 Targa in 1980
In Part 1 of this article (Article #3), I recount how I discovered Porsche sports cars as a boy and how I kept an eye on them as I was growing up. As a young adult I became friends with someone who owned one and Part 2 describes riding in one and then driving it. Click on the button below to read Part 1.
One fateful day my friend from Switzerland and I decided to leave our office complex for lunch and he suggested we drive. It was still winter and winter in Montreal means sub-zero temperatures. Although the parking garage was attached to the building, it was unheated and exposed to the elements on that cold February day. We approached his car and it was indeed a 1977 911 Targa in what today would be called Python Green, quite a showy color by North American standards. I dropped in the passenger seat and realized that although the seats were firm, they were very comfortable. I looked at the dash board and was a little underwhelmed by what I saw but the instruments were purposefully large and clearly marked. This car gave the impression of being very businesslike, a lot like the 356 I had encountered years earlier.
He started the car and it fired up like a Beetle. More accurately, like a Beetle in cold weather that sounded like a bunch of empty tin cans clanking around back there. This car costs a lot of money to sound like Beetle, I thought. The car warmed up and slowed to idle, he applied reverse gear and gave it some gas to back out of the parking space. That was no VW engine! The sound when the throttle opened up was incredible.
We drove down the ramp taking us to the next level of the garage. He was going far too fast and were surely going to crash into the concrete wall at the bottom. He flicked the steering wheel and we made our turn precisely and without drama. We were not even out of the parking garage and I already understood what all the fuss was about. The 911 was like nothing else I had ever been in.
We turned on to rue Sainte Catherine, a three-lane one-way street and made our way to the middle lane. Other than the strong steady acceleration from that glorious engine, the first thing that struck me was the forward visibility. The hood of the car sloped down to the road like there was no engine in the way and those protruding front fenders indicated exactly where you were positioned in your lane. It struck me at that moment why racers prefer open-wheel cars. They know exactly where they are on the road and these early generation 911s took the driver very close to that open-wheel view of car-placement.
All the skepticism I had harbored for the 911 instantaneously disappeared. It became, in my mind, The Sports Car. It’s plain dash board was insignificant; strange profile, insignificant; cursive gold writing, insignificant. The 911 was a precision instrument crafted for driving and everything else was simply irrelevant. I secretly hoped I would have the opportunity to drive one some day.
That day came sooner than I thought. My wife and I spent many weekends at my mother-in-law’s farm located in the foothills of the province of Quebec’s Laurentian mountains. That spring we invited my friend and his wife to visit with us in the country. They drove up in the 911 and after looking around and admiring the views around us. I pointed out it was a lovely area to drive in and its many mountain roads were fun to negotiate in our VW Rabbit. We decided to go out in his car and I was given the opportunity to drive the 911 Targa after he warmed it up. My first impression was the steering, which was incredibly direct. I kept overcorrecting until I realized it was communicating the car’s maneuvers over the pavement, it was not trying to veer off the road. Its suspension was hard, but not unforgiving and the car felt extremely solid. Those outputs inspired confidence in my driving and created a level of engagement I had never experienced before, or since for that matter.
Then there was the power. By today’s standards its 2.7 litre flat six is by no means spectacular, but in the early 1980s it delivered almost twice the power of a typical sedan. When overtaking a crawling Mercury Cougar on the road I accelerated gradually in third gear, feeling the power built up linearly and it just kept going as I passed the slower car. The sound coming from behind was loud but not overwhelming. That was the sound of precision, not big-block bluster and its purpose was to let me know what the engine was doing back there. The car was not trying to impress, but rather it was responding confidently to every input from my right foot.
I still say all these years later that green Targa ruined it for every other car I drove after that. Everything else felt like I was at the wheel of a school bus. It says something that an hour long drive would have such a lasting impact that I would go out and buy one forty-four years later. I never sat in another 911 after that drive but the memory defined what a car should be; it became my benchmark used to measure every car I encountered since that time. The next 911 I drove was in August 2023 when I was trying to sort out which variant to purchase. I drove three the very same day.
In the interim I did drive a 924 sometime in the 1980s. We were in Massachusetts visiting family when a relative’s friend invited me to drive his 924. You could tell by operating the door that the car was build with the no-nonsense quality Porsche has always been known for. Seating position was lower than I expected, very purposeful and comfortable. The cabin was roomy and visibility was exceptional. No matter how you sugar coat it, the engine was anemic and was a disappointment given the way the remainder of the vehicle presented itself. Once under way on a twisty road, the 924 handled beautifully. Its balance was exceptional, due in part to its highly developed suspension but also due to its perfect 50/50 weight distribution with the engine in the front and transmission in the rear.
It delivered a very pleasant drive as I pushed the car harder and harder with every turn. Given its modest propulsion through a 110 hp powerplant, there was no danger of losing grip and its communicative but light steering suggested it was never on the verge of losing its composure. All in all, the 924 was an attractive, well built 2+2 sports car but its superlative handling rendered its lack of power frustrating. Porsche was right to continue development of that chassis which resulted in the much more powerful 944, a car I have never experienced but have been told was exciting and much more performance-oriented than its predecessor.
Also, in the 1980s I kept seeing a 930 Turbo parked, often illegally, on rue Sainte Catherine, Montreal’s main downtown shopping street. 911s were rare, 930 Turbos were unimaginable, only to be seen in car magazines and parked on turntables at car shows. I kept encountering it walking home from work. As I passed it on the sidewalk one evening, I noticed about twenty shoe boxes piled in the back and more sitting on the passenger seat. They were all Aldo Shoes boxes and it dawned on me that this had to be the founder’s car. His very first store was on that street and the 1980s is when his business was expanding rapidly. I remain impressed with that entrepreneur’s taste in delivery vans.
This covers my early encounters with Porsche cars. I continued admiring them from afar until August 2023, when I decided to buy one, which is a story that will be told at another time.