EXPRESS DELIVERY

A 1986 944 Turbo back from the dead.

Nobody knows the automotive landscape where you live better than your postie. They’re up and down every street, on and off every driveway and, if you’re lucky enough for your mail merchant’s blood to have its own octane rating, paying close attention to the array of weird and wonderful cars inhabiting your home town’s garages and workshops. Needless to say, if you’re looking for a doer-upper and don’t want to have to travel far to scribble your name on the logbook of your next project car, you might want to consider having a quiet word with the person who brings those unwelcome brown envelopes to your door each day.

This is exactly how the 1986 944 Turbo you see on the pages before you came into my possession back in April 2017. My friendly neighbourhood postie, Barry Newman, approached me with news of a seemingly abandoned 944 he’d observed languishing in a hedge less than five miles from my home. So the story goes, the car’s owner was using the near 220bhp coupe as his daily drive at a time old Porsches weren’t commanding the prices they do today. Sometime around 2011, he inherited a solid Jaguar XJS from the estate of his deceased father-in-law, rendering the Porsche entirely redundant. Needing a fair amount of remedial work to pass its fast-approaching MOT (these cars weren’t the cherished chariots they are today), the tired transaxle was parked in a corner of its keeper’s garden and more or less forgotten about. The aforementioned hedge slowly grew around tired bodywork during the ensuing half-decade.

Recognising my appetite for taking on a Porsche project, Barry approached me with news of this lost treasure after its owner decided to move home. He couldn’t take the Porsche with him, but realising the value of Stuttgart-crested cars — especially those wearing Turbo or RS badges — had skyrocketed during the time the sorry-looking Guards Red