For years the Porsche 924 was the car snobs used to prove they weren't snobs about Porsche. Wrong engine, wrong factory, wrong badge on a body built for Audi money. Then someone in Stuttgart bolted a turbocharger to it, and the sneering got quieter. This 1980 Porsche 924 2.0 Turbo, sitting in Casalgrande in Emilia-Romagna with an indicated 6,900 km and an ASI Oro plate, is that quieter argument made flesh, and it is asking to be taken seriously.
The one Zuffenhausen actually built
The base 924 was assembled at Neckarsulm with a van-derived Audi four, and everyone knew it. The Turbo, internally the 931, was a different animal. Porsche hoped it would do for the entry-level model what the 930 had done for the 911, so alongside the forced-induction engine (built at Zuffenhausen rather than Audi's Neckarsulm plant) it came with uprated brakes, suspension and steering, a new gearbox, custom wheels and a higher level of interior equipment. Sales began in spring 1979 after a March debut at Geneva. The dry-sumped turbocharged two-litre, single overhead cam and four cylinders, produced around 175 PS at 5,500 rpm and 250 Nm at 3,500 rpm. Outside you got the giveaways: alloy wheels, a distinctive NACA duct in the bonnet, and a rear spoiler.
The numbers read modestly now. The way they arrive does not. This is a front-engined, rear-drive coupé with the gearbox slung out over the back axle, so the weight sits where a good chassis wants it, and the car pivots and steers on the throttle the way modern turbocharged hatchbacks have entirely forgotten how to do. There is turbo lag, because it is 1980 and the boost was a moderate eight to ten psi, and when it finally lands the whole thing gathers itself and goes. Think of a butler who spends four seconds pretending not to have heard you and then sprints across the house. Manual, rear-wheel-drive, analogue: every one of those adjectives is now an endangered species.
Read the sills before you read the ad
At 14,500 euros this sits squarely in the middle of the Turbo's normal band, where good cars change hands and very good ones start nudging higher. What separates this listing is the mileage. A genuine 6,900 km on a 45-year-old 931, with the seller's honest note of "period patina" rather than a fresh respray hiding sins, is the kind of thing the small, obsessive 924 Turbo crowd pays over the odds for. Verify it, though, because low readings and honesty do not always travel together. Two things matter more than the odometer. First, the sills, which rust from the inside out, so visible bubbles on the outer sill mean the inner sills likely have issues too, and Turbos suffer more because the plastic trim holds dirt and blocks the drain holes. Second, the electrics: the battery tray corrodes through and lets water leak into the interior, corroding the fuse box and causing no end of unpredictable electrical havoc. While you're under there, check for a leaking heater matrix above the clutch housing, which will contaminate the clutch and flywheel if left.
Why the sneering stopped
The 924 Turbo has crept out of the trough that swallows all ordinary cars in middle age, reappraised as exactly the thing the badge-snobs said it wasn't: a proper Porsche driving experience, from the era before everything went digital, at a fraction of a contemporary 911's outlay. Southern European cars like this Italian example tend to have escaped the Nordic rust that killed so many, and an ASI Oro classification is the sort of provenance that props up values in that market. None of which means you sign anything on a Tuesday afternoon in Casalgrande. Confirm the mileage against the service book, put it on a lift for a specialist to read the sills and floor, check when the belt and water pump last saw a spanner, and only then decide whether the quiet argument has actually won you over.
