[V8] 928S anyone?

[Roger M. Woodbury]

This car on Bring-a-trailer is a pretty decent looking 928 for its 
vintage.  The five speed is a downer, in my opinion and even if this car 
was early enough to have the early automatic transmission it would be a 
much better daily driver than having to deal with the clutch.  In this 
car, at 60,000 miles you are almost guaranteed to needing a complete 
clutch overhaul and there is no mention of that in the listing.

 From the pics I think the car looks very clean.  The interior looks 
about right for this age and model.  This is possibly a multi-owner car 
and at best, the maintenance history is very sketchy.  While it is great 
that the timing belt service was done by an authorized dealer, I would 
want to know exactly what was done at the time the service was done. 
There is MUCH more that needs attention on one of these cars than just 
the timing belt service and it is actually more complex than the V8's 
timing belt despite the similarity in appearance and configuration of 
the engine.

60K is a great mileage point to buy one of these cars in my opinion.  
The first timing belt has been done and presumably the car should 
present well enough so that any obvious signs of abuse can be detected.  
That the heater is not working is a real problem for me, because it 
means that someone didn't put the money in to keep the car up properly 
at some point, and therein will lurk a lot of other expensive gremlins.  
The photos of the car from low in the front and rear show the car to be 
very clean, so I would suspect the car has not been terribly abused.

A pre-purchase inspection is mandatory and must be done by someone who 
really knows what these car are and can look in the right places. The 
928 is a very complex automobile and to make right once things have been 
let go will be very expensive.  At a guess, I think this is a $5000-6800 
car. There are quite a few examples out there for this kind of money 
that are at least this nice.  For not a whole lot more you can buy the 
newer and much improved S4 that has a decent maintenance record with few 
blemishes disclosed. That being said, I would plan on having about three 
grand in hand to use to bring the car up to specs at a minimum.  If you 
do your own work, then plan on quite a lot of time playing with it in 
the garage.

The Cup wheels?  Pass.  The original Porsche manual is quite specific 
about wheels.  Especially for the later cars with the Weissach rear 
axle, Porsche did NOT recommend different wheels either in dimension or 
offset.

I have owned two 928s, both of which were S4's.  I would own another on 
in an eye-blink if I felt it reasonable to put money into such a car 
again in my life.  I have often thought about buying another one and if 
I ever do, I think I would be inclined to buy an early car...earlier 
than this one because they are simpler than the S4's in many way yet 
give away very little in terms of real, usable performance.

Roger