History is not made with ifs and buts. However, it is impossible not to ask yourself a question: how would things have gone if Porsche had produced this beautiful model?
There German company Porsche is a brand who doesn’t really need to ask questions about his past like. Sales speak for themselves and the brand, although producing sports cars that are certainly not within everyone’s reach, does not really fear competitors. Even in Italy, its cars sell regularly and continuously.
In the long history of the German company, however, there is a small regret, a question that only true fans ask themselves: how would things have gone if a project like the one we are about to present to you had come to fruition? We are in the eighties and Porsche is evaluating the introduction on the market of a small car with a sporty set-up, an economical car to counter its Japanese rivals.
Visually very similar to the Mazda MX-5 Miata, the Porsche 984 it’s one of those cars that could have really changed the fortunes of a brand, it’s difficult to say whether for better or worse. So let’s go and give prestige to a vehicle which, until today, has remained buried in the archives of the manufacturer to the point of not even having a page on it. Wikipedia dedicated to its history.
The Porsche they never made
The name of the car comes from the year of design of this prototype introduced by the Porsche Research and Development Center in Weissach in 1984 but abandoned already in 1987 after less than three years of work on the project. Curiously, the idea for the 984 came from two extremely different cars: the Porsche 924whose aesthetics were fundamental in designing the 984 and the SEAT Ibiza of the first generation from which it was to inherit the in-line four-cylinder engine.
As you can see, the small dimensions and clean aesthetics of the prototype were truly in step with the times. Soon they would be several Japanese convertibles released two-seater that this Porsche could certainly have countered, also boasting a brand famous throughout Europe. And the performance? The car would have been fitted with a four-cylinder engine derived precisely from that of the Ibiza with a power of between 120 and 150 horsepower.
It is difficult to imagine the other features of the car given the interruption of the project. We certainly know the car it would have had a cost not superior at 40 thousand Marks, a very low figure for the period. The car, like the plan for an all-wheel drive variant to compete in some international championships, never saw the light of day. Unfortunately.
