I had an ’97 944 turbo as an all year round daily runner for 5 years. Never missed a beat, most reliable car I owned. I sunk some cash on ‘upgrades’ but fundamentally cost less to run than my SMax. Obviously not that fast compared to modern day hot hatches, but far more fun to drive than any hot hatch/fwd hatch i’ve ever driven. They were a far better car than the 911 of the day – handled better, were faster in turbo and S2 guise, and more reliable. As Porsche originally designed the 924 for VW for an new affordable coupe, but VW ultimately went for an in-house cheaper (and inferior) option for what became the Scirocco, Porsche designed the car from the VW parts bin so most parts are still freely available. In fact I found parts were pretty cheap – mostly VW parts, but even for genuine Porsche parts they were quite cheap from the Porsche dealer network as they usually offered big discounts on genuine parts. After being shunned by VW Porsche reckoned the 924 platform was the future for Porsche and we then got the 928 which was intended to be the 911 replacement, but it was never to be. Just as well because the modern version of the 911 is an awesome car by any measure and a testament to Engineering and sticking with a non-ideal platform and making it work and competitive. It’s nice in this modern world to have something that is a bit quirky and different form the boring, plethora of conventional mid-engined sportscars that are all fundamentally the same apart from the exterior shape.
So to say the humble 924/944 was not the greatest of Porsches of all time is a bit disingenuous. Like the Boxster and Cayman of the current day range, the 944 was never intended to mix it up with the 911 of the day or any car in that segment, they were intended to be cheaper, entry level sports cars to break Porsche into the mass market. So to that aim they were very good cars and very successful and the format was copied by a number of other manufacturers, but were never designed and intended to be in competition with the 911 – just like the Boxster and Cayman of the current range – both excellent cars but designed to sit within a certain market segment.