Axon's Automotive Anorak: The bizarre influence of the Porsche 928

This rotund yet bold GT holds the distinction of not only being Porsche’s first (and to date only) front-engined V8 coupe model, but also the first and only non-mainstream mass-produced car to ever take the prestigious COTY title.

I mention this as I drove a very tired 1984 928 S the other day; the recent acquisition of a Porsche-loving friend of mine. The 928 has moved from being an out-of-reach object of desire for most motorists in its day, to an affordable but rather irrelevant dinosaur in modern sports-tourer terms today.

The corpulent Porsche does have its fans though, with a small but dedicated following as a classic car, despite the thirsty 928 being costly to run and, as my friend is now discovering, potentially eye-wateringly expensive to restore – as many surviving 928s have had a hard life.

The 928 was styled by the Latvian designer Anatole ‘Tony’ Lapine, who previously worked for General Motors, serving as a design studio engineer on the celebrated 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray, the curvy profile of which was quite evident in the V8 Porsche 15 years later.

The 928 was created to succeed the cult rear-engined 911, which was getting very long-in-the-tooth by the time Porsche launched the wide V8 2+2 GT in late 1977. As we all now know, the 928 failed in its attempt to usurp the 911, the rear-engined Porsche out-living the 928 by decades, with the latest 992 incarnation recently being revealed.  

Although personally not a particular fan of the Porsche 928, I can see the car’s appeal, and certainly back in the late 1970s the model made quite an impact in the new car arena with its promise of immense power and speed, plus distinctive styling, influencing a number of little-known wannabe copies at the time.

Of course, it could be argued that the curvy, glassy design of the Porsche 928 could have been influenced itself by the equally distinctive AMC Pacer that found fame in Wayne’s World, and preceded the Porsche by almost three years.

With its three-door bodyshell and plentiful curved glass, the 928 resembled an AMC Pacer that had been sat on by a large elephant; lower and wider than the iconic American classic. Conversely, one could argue that the Pacer looked like an over-inflated 928!

Either way, for a brief period in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the extraordinary rounded form of the 928 and Pacer looked like they might be set to become the shape of cars to come. This didn’t happen, however, despite the attempts of a handful of minor car companies taking inspiration from the Porsche 928 in particular.

The first to draw influence from the V8 Porsche was the obscure Italian coachbuilder Rayton-Fissore, which presented its Gold Shadow prototype at the 1978 Turin motor show. The Gold Shadow was a small three-door coupe based on the popular Autobianchi A112 hatchback, with clear styling overtones of the 928, especially aft of the windscreen pillars. Sadly this appealing model never made production, Rayton-Fissore turning its attention instead to the larger and far more profitable Magnum 4x4 (called LaForza in the USA), a luxury SUV aimed at the would-be Range Rover buyers and sold in reasonable numbers on the Continent and North America up until 2003.

A few years later, a ‘honey I shrunk the 928’ miniaturised Porsche was launched onto the Brazilian market, known as the Dacon 828. Dacon had been a Porsche distributor in Brazil until the late 1970s, when the importation and sale of all none-locally-built cars was banned by the Government of the day.

Dacon had managed to bring in a handful of Porsche 928s just before the Brazilian imported car ban kicked-in. Suddenly unable to legally sell any new 928s in Brazil, Dacon set about creating its own small-scale version of the car, its tiny 98-inch long 828 used some Porsche parts and looked particularly like the 928 from the rear. The 828 was powered by a rear-mounted Brazilian 1.6-litre VW boxer-four engine, connected to a four-speed gearbox and developing a whooping 67bhp. Dacon built the 828 until July 1994, with a paltry 47 examples of this expensive city car model being sold.

Undeterred by the 828s poor sales, Dacon went on to launch the PAG car brand in Brazil, offering a wider range of marginally larger coupes, all still taking their design inspiration from the Porsche 928. Though not as slavishly 928-esque as the Dacon 828, the Porsche’s influence was still quite apparent in the PAG Mini Nick, Nick L, the oddly-named Chubby, plus its own eponymous 928, this model having a near-identical elongated 928 rear end, the early model’s famous ‘telephone dial’ alloys, but (thankfully) not the Porsche’s ugly dead fish eye pop-up headlamps.

The rare Dacon 828 city car was later used as the basis for the Obvio! 828, a modern update of the Dacon, with a 170 bhp mid-mounted engine, CVT transmission and scissor-doors. The Obvio! 828 remains available in Brazil today, with an electric version now also offered and that familiar Porsche 928-esque profile still visible, 41-years after the Zuffenhausen original was launched!

The Porsche 928’s longer-term influence on automobile design and form was limited though, as the model (along with the AMC Pacer) proved not to be the shape of cars to come.

It’s somewhat ironic therefore that one of the other automotive icons of the late 1970s – the original Ital Design-styled Volkswagen Golf – has gone on to help form the future shape of motoring, with its crisp, square-cut two-box hatchback shape, as previewed in Pininfarina’s influential Austin A40 of the late 1950s, plus the later Fiat 127, Renault 5 and first-generation Ford Fiesta.

Amusingly, in the case of the Golf, a few examples of the popular VW hatch were modified in period to accommodate the Porsche 928’s V8 running gear, with the three-door boxy Golf bodyshells lengthened and widened to contain the 928 power train by noted tuners such as Sbarro in Switzerland and Artz of Germany. Ironic indeed, with these V8 Golfs today looking far more ‘now’ and relevant than the dumpy 1978 Car of the Year Porsche.