How A Four-Door 928 Sedan Might Have Helped Porsche In Its Darkest Hour

“I like the two-door one next to it better.”

I overheard this comment from a person at a Cars & Coffee sometime before COVID. She was looking at a relatively late-model Porsche Panamera and expressing her preference for the car sitting beside it, which she perceived to be the coupe version of the Panamera. As a person obsessed with car marketing, her declaration perked my ears up since I’m always interested in real-world opinions on automobile designs from people outside the enthusiast fold.

I assumed this woman was not a Thomas Hundal-level enthusiast because, unless I missed something, Porsche never made a two-door Panamera. After a few steps to better see what she was looking at, I realized the “two-door Panamera” she was referring to was not even a contemporary of the Panamera, but was in fact a thirty-year-old example of a forty-year-old design. It was a 928S4.

And I have to say, I liked the 928 better, too. And I understand how she could miss the decades-long span between the cars; Tony Lapine’s GT masterpiece from 1978 has such a pure shape that it transcends time. Like the pyramids or an obelisk, it’s not capable of looking dated.

This preference of hers had me wondering why a four-door 928 was never offered to cocaine-addicted insider trading stockbrokers in the eighties. It turns out that the idea was considered, but not particularly well executed. Can we do better?

Dialing 911 Didn’t Help

Porsche was in trouble. After selling nearly 31,000 cars in 1986, sales quickly dropped precipitously to half that number two years later. While other brands rebounded after the ’87 stock market crash, Porsche continued to fail; by 1992, sales had shrunk to a boutique manufacturer-like 4,131 cars. What happened? An unfavorable exchange rate and inefficient, costly production processes were partially to blame, but the product mix has to be seen as the real culprit. You’d likely love to have any one of these 1992 Porsches in your garage today, but at the time the cars of this lineup offered too little for too few for too much.

Let’s break it down. At the time, Porsche’s least expensive choice was based on the same 1976 924 design. By 1992, this car had transmogrified into the 968 with an enormous three-liter four-cylinder and a $40,000 price tag. Some enthusiasts might have liked them, but typical buyers found that they could get far more for less money in stellar Japanese rivals of the time like the FD RX7, A80 Supra, and Z32 300ZX Turbo that weren’t based on sixteen-year-old cars.

At the other end of the market, Porsche offered the 911 and 928. With the demise of rear-engined VWs in the seventies, the 911 was thought to not be long for this world. The brilliant front engine/rear transmission 928 was touted to be the successor to the old Beetle-derived Porsche sports cars, but the Porsche “faithful” didn’t all warm to this outstanding example of design and engineering.

President and CEO Peter Schutz made the choice to give the rear-engined car a stay of execution. To some, the 911 had “won” the battle against the upstart 928, but these two cars never should have been in competition for the same market space anyway. Porsche continued to make the 928 faster and into more of a harder-edged supercar that totally missed the unmatched luxury/performance compromise of the original design. At the same time, they were making the likes of a 911 Turbo into something more civilized and cannibalizing sales from their now-faster-and-rougher 928. In the end, they all lost.

Sadly, Porsche was missing out on the market where the well-heeled of the time were actually spending their money. While all of these firms were gladly taking in the cash of movers and shakers with ten-pound cell phones, suspenders, and contrasting white-collared shirts, poor Porsche saw its fortunes slip away while a key to profitability right under its nose languished.

More Doors Means More Sales

For those of the Radwood crowd like me, the late eighties was a golden age of “analog” cars with an ideal blend of reasonable performance, ample-but-not-absurd creature comforts, and lack of any electronic assists or mumbo jumbo beyond anti-lock brakes. It was also a time of an extreme delta between bottom-feeder economy cars and the sedans for captains of industry that could easily exceed their 150 mph limiters which the “gentlemen’s agreement” decided was decent for society.

Around forty years ago, nobody would have had difficulty determining what brand of European luxury car had just passed them, or if it was a top-of-the-heap model versus one of its lesser brothers. All of them had distinctive qualities that gave well-heeled buyers a plethora of choices, particularly in “big” luxury sedans.

Mercedes-Benz had the vaunted W126 S-Class, the Bruno Sacco masterpiece with a stonking V8, and the build quality of a Panzer tank. This was the default choice for chancellors and CEOs, and it seemed unbeatable at the time. Who would dare challenge it?

Few imagined that a company known for motorcycles and funny Isetta clown cars could ever pose a serious threat to the three-pointed star. The 1987 E32 BMW 7-Series proved them wrong. More stunning than that was Munich’s offering of a V-12 motor with four more cylinders than anything Mercedes could have provided at the time- gasp!

It got even worse for Benz when Audi- a division of the firm known for the damn Beetle- debuted a sedan with not just eight cylinders but four driven wheels to leave the rest of the field sitting in a snow drift.

Even old Blighty got in on the act, replacing the gorgeous but aging SIII XJ6 with the much more modern XJ40. Far from perfect, it was still competitive and showed Mercedes that challengers existed outside of the German borders; something that would have been driven home with the Japanese LS400 and Q45 a few years later.

Sure, there was a feast of luxury sedans for the rich during the bubble era, but one thing were a very limited number of large sedans that favored the “sport” part of the sport/luxury blend.

Mercedes offered the 500E: a high-performance W124 sedan with a 322 horsepower V8 (yeah, that was a lot back then), flared fenders, and a rear seat designed to hold only two passengers. The oddest thing about this fearsome hot rod was not that a car larger than an M5 BMW could offer such performance and handling; the strangest fact was that the 500E was largely built in Porsche’s Zuffenhausen factory. Look, desperate times call for desperate measures; Porsche certainly needed the works and that cash.

Wait a minute- the 500E only had four seats? Couldn’t Porsche have had their own four-seat GT sedan? Well, they at least tried.

Birth Of The Fried Egg?

Nobody thinks twice about the idea of a four-door Porsche today, but it would have been unthinkable for most people before the 2002 Cayenne SUV and “humpback” Panamera of 2009. Only a few one-offs existed that went nowhere beyond being mere curiosities.

In 1967, Porsche dealer William Dick commissioned a stretched 911 for his wife that featured four suicide-opening doors; the end result is not nearly as bad as you’d think if not totally ideal (yes, I think it originally had steelies and those wheels are a later addition).

Porsche wasn’t blind; by the eighties, it knew that expanding into the four-door sedan market was where the profits were. The 989 concept of 1988 was to be their entry into this territory, but the execution of the idea was doomed from the start.

Despite looking very much like a rear-engined car, the 989 was actually to have a V8 in the front just like the 928. However, the 989 was to be a clean sheet of paper product that shared absolutely nothing with other production Porsches of the time. The concept unfortunately looks like a less taut version of the rather unloved “fried egg headlight” 996 version of the 911 that debuted over a decade later.

To me it sort of resembles some kind of small BMW three-series competitor concept. It certainly doesn’t look like an adjusted-for-inflation $200,000-plus car, which is reportedly what the 989 was going to have to cost had it been produced. Remember, as an all-new car they would have needed to recoup tooling and development costs that likely mirrored the gross national product of several third world nations combined.

With Porsche’s dire financial situation at the time, it’s easy to understand why the 989 project died entirely by 1991. What is not so easy to understand is why Porsche missed something sitting right on the showroom floor that possibly could have done the same thing.

Julio, Get The Stretch

Besides the 989 project, it was long rumored that a longer wheelbase or even a four-door 928 might be in the works. In 1984, a stretched dark green 928 with an extra 250 millimeters of length was made as a 75^th birthday gift to Ferry Porsche. Here you can see an image of what was likely the big unveiling with middle-aged white dudes of all shapes and sizes; a couple of the Porsche executives almost look like they’re smiling.

Proportionally it’s a bit like a shooting brake; the overall look from most angles is hardly horrendous (if you ignore the added-on prototype projector headlights that, combined with the green paint, give off a Kermit the Frog vibe). However, it was still very much a two-door car with all of the limitations to back seat ingress that you’d expect.

In 1987, Porsche tried another expanded length 928; this time it actually had four doors but with a twist. The two extra doors were “suicide” style behind the front ones, with no “B” pillar between them in a manner similar to what Mazda would with the RX8 some years later.

This prototype was created by the same company that was transforming 944s into convertibles at the time (ASC), and if you think that big, gaping pillarless holes on the sides of the 928 would create enough chassis flex to alarm the engineers in Stuttgart, you’d be right.

Beyond this lack of chassis integrity, there are bigger issues with the ASC four-door. First, getting in the back would be easier than in the green Ferry Porsche car, but it’s not a “real four-door.” Dropping off kids or having your friends get in would still likely require front passengers to open their doors and possibly even get out of their seats; the rear pillar will be in the rear passenger’s face as well and there are no outside rear door handles. The second issue is that it’s a sort of convoluted-looking thing; possibly the designers were trying to make the thing look like a two-door (just two handles) but the end result is as ill-proportioned as it is impractical.

Would it have killed them to just make it into a standard four-door sedan? How much worse could that have looked? There’s only one way to find out.

Slam! Slam! Slam! Slam! Let’s Move

Automobile coachbuilders can do almost anything, but I understand there are limitations that in some cases can only be overcome by production stamped parts. My guess is that both of the attempted 928 “XL” prototypes fell into that trap, though I’ll be the first to admit that I’m in awe of what they could accomplish outside of the factory. Thankfully, with Photoshop we have no such restrictions on proposing what Stuttgart could do with millions of dollars of tooling; money that might have been well spent.

Honestly, it’s tough for me to do this one, since I find stretching and putting extra doors onto a 928 to be a bit like painting earbuds onto the Mona Lisa. Actually it’s worse since I think that painting is highly overrated and the Porsche icon still underappreciated by the world. Still, I fully understand that it must done since I do school runs with the kids a few times a week and carry coworkers and clients in my car who won’t want to deal with flipping front seat backs, getting out in the rain to release rear seaters or strange “half doors” that require a sequence to shut. We need something with four “real” doors and actual ‘B” pillars to keep the structure drum-tight.

Starting with the ASC car, the changes are not too significant. The front door gets a bit longer with the new rear door extending back over the rear wheel arches. I’ve actually sneaked the wheelbase an inch or so back; I’ve also changed the rather upright rear hatchback to something more gently sloped as on the stock 928.

Here is the animation between the ASC “suicide door” car and my proposed “real” four door:

In the front view the change is less pronounced; even compared to the stock car it isn’t that drastic:

The animation shows the subtle changes:

I angled the rear pillars as more of a fastback to get closer in appearance to the standard 928.  The ASC car made the pillars more vertical so that the whole thing looked a bit more like a “shooting brake” than a coupe.

I’m not against that “wagon” idea by any means but that should be a separate model if produced.  The animation shows the difference:

Now we have a sporting-looking sedan that’s still subdued, unlike the aforementioned Porsche-built Mercedes 500E which looks like the customized taxicab that it is by comparison.

My Knees Aren’t In My Face Anymore

We can debate what car has the most beautifully designed exterior of all time, but I have a hard time coming up with a finer cabin design than the 928. So pure in form, it featured ergonomics unheard of from Porsche with clean, logical controls that even tilted with the steering wheel. Look at the dash of any other 1978 car and you’ll be shocked at how advanced it appeared.

The four-door would be almost indistinguishable from the “coupe” up front save for the additional add-on console binnacle holds switches for the rear windows, a window lockout, and rear dome light control.

The rear cabin in the stock 928 is just as nicely resolved, as seen on this stock two-door model:

In my proposed four-door model shown below, the rear seats would benefit from the wheelbase extension (around 9-10 inches). The transaxle also goes back an inch or two beyond the rear seats compared to the stock car which gives a little bit more hip width for each back passenger. The rear seat A/C optional on 928s of the time would be standard on the four-door but notice that with the seatbacks folded you have a nice, flat area for all of your cargo. If you want to nerd out on details, each rear door continues the armrest line from the front door panels back, with a window switch, ashtray, and lighter on each. The 928’s famous rear sun visors will be present as well, now with vanity mirrors on each. Sunvisors and ashtrays are very important, people.

I’d keep the basic suspension tuning of the last 1986 “S” model 928 or at most the earlier S4s; the more performance-oriented levels of trim and big wings would be reserved for the coupe. I remember an Autoweek review where they claimed that no other car on earth could offer such handling limits yet ride so comfortably. In a face-off with a concurrent Jaguar XJS and BMW 850i the Porsche made those cars “seem lethargic by comparison”. Adding a bit to the wheelbase should, if anything, only improve the ride and make it less twitchy. The end result is obviously a bit stretched-looking, low and long, but if there’s one violation of typical proportions on a car that works for fast, expensive cars, that’s it. I’m looking at you, Lamborghini Espada.

I don’t know what the tooling for new parts to make a four-door 928 would have cost, but it’s almost certain to have been a drop in the bucket compared to what was needed to make the ill-fated 989. We’ll never know.

And Now They Just Want SUVs

The 928 soldiered on in the Porsche’s darkest hour with a handful of sales in the early nineties before being unceremoniously dropped in 1995. Porsche would rebound, of course, and it did so with cars that bore a lot more resemblance to the 928 than the 911; nobody gives this amazing car its due.

Porsche would take nearly a decade and a half to come back with a front-engined car; this time they weren’t afraid of making it a sedan: the 2009 970 Panamera. Still, it really wasn’t until the later 971 was released in 2018 that we had a Panamera that wasn’t sort of ungainly in appearance.

At that point, though, it was a bit too late. Today, Porsche sells about six times as many Cayennes alone as Panameras as the whole market for high-end sedans, in general, continues to evaporate. It’s a shame that the 928 could have possibly done more for the brand back when Porsche needed it most a quarter century earlier.

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