PORSCHE, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT
On the basis that a change is as good as a rest, this month I’m going to spend a bit of time remembering two old classic cars, neither of them Porsches. A little unconventional for a Porsche magazine I grant you, but bear with me for just a moment for both owe their existence to Porsche and, to some small extent, Porsche owes its existence to them, too.
It is well known that at the start of the 1990s Porsche was not exactly in the best of shape. Two of its products were elderly (the design of the 944 and 928 both dating from the 1970s) and the other was positively ancient. Its halcyon days of Group C racing were over, as were its championship-winning ways as an F1 engine supplier; its unsuccessful Indycar project was already coming to a close. The 959 was long out of production, its rallying successes no more than a rapidly receding memory. What’s more, the latest 911, the 964 with its cleaned-up cabin and power assisted steering, was getting a somewhat mixed reception in the press.
Porsche, to be blunt, needed work. And, as serendipity would have it, just up the road in Stuttgart, Mercedes-benz had a project in need of some expert handling. Feeling the need to respond to the BMW M5 and, some say, the famed AMG Hammer which was seen as a rival, Mercedes decided to fit its big 5-litre V8 into its mid-sized W124 chassis, better known to you and me as the Eclass. It needed someone else to do the engineering because it had its hands full at the time. It was only later realised that the widening of the track that was required meant the car would not fit on the W124 production line, so someone else would need to build it, too. And a grateful Porsche got both jobs.
It’s just as well the Japanese consultants who were brought in to sort out Porsche later that decade didn’t witness the process. Benz produced parts which it then shipped across town to Porsche which turned them into cars before sending them back to Mercedes to be painted. After that they turned right around and headed back to Porsche to have their powertrains fitted before, you guessed it, they were trucked back to Mercedes for their final checks and deliveries. Each car took 18 days to produce; if you want a comparator, at the same time the Nissan factory in Sunderland could produce a Micra from scratch in less than 12 hours. Just over 10,000 examples of the resulting Mercedes-benz 500E (later the E500) were produced between 1991–94, and no sooner had Benz called time on that project because it had an all-new Eclass to launch, then space on the Zuffenhausen production line (which had also built the 959) was booked for a car produced by another near neighbour, this time called Audi.
Audi had for years trying to sportify its rather staid image and, for the whole of the 1980s, the Quattro and its rallying derivatives did the job exceptionally well. But that car was long gone by the mid 1990s and, besides, would only appeal to people happy with a two-door coupe. What if its spiritual successor was something entirely different? What if it was, in fact, a five door estate?
Which is not only from where the idea for the Audi RS2 Avant originated, but the entire RS sub-brand which endures in rude health to this day. And, if anything, Porsche was even more deeply involved in its engineering than it had been with the 500E. For instance, it took Audi’s 2.2-litre straight five motor and tuned it until it produced 315bhp, almost 100bhp more than it had in the last of the standard Quattros and more even than that offered by the homologation special Sport Quattro. Porsche did the suspension and the brakes, too.
So which would you have? The market would absolutely say the Audi, with prices spanning the £35,000–£50,000 bracket today. Why? Because they look unfeasibly cool and are far rarer than 500Es, with fewer than 3000 being built.
But I’d have the Benz even if it wasn’t, at £20,000–£30,000, close to half the price. No, you can’t get it in right-hand drive, but I’ll always prefer rear-wheel drive to four-wheel drive, and a vast normally aspirated V8 to a small forced induction five. And while the 500E was slower in a straight line, at least it didn’t understeer everywhere like the Audi. Finally, I just love the look of the 500E: if you didn’t spot the flared arches, discreet wheels and badging, you might mistake it for any other W124. In short, it is a fabulous machine and one of the most underrated high-performance saloons there is. And all thanks to Porsche.