Quarter-life crises and mid-life crises are for amateurs. After all, we live in the information age, where a little rectangle in your pocket will deliver all manner of bad ideas directly into your eyeballs. That’s why, today, we have two sports cars in such a shape that they could make your entire life a crisis, 24-fucking-7. How’s that for innovation? But first, let’s check in on yesterday’s matchup of Canadian oddities.
The weird facelifted Mark IV City Golf takes it with about 64 percent of the vote, and I’m surprised it’s even this close. Not only is that Acura awful, that Golf is actually so damn good that a reader legitimately bought it. More on that later. Anyway, today’s battle is a classic of romance, bloody romance. Nearly all of us have dreamt of sports cars, but if you’re on a shoestring budget, you might need to skin a knuckle or two to make that dream happen. Let’s meet our contenders, shall we?
1984 Chevrolet Corvette — $4,000 Canadian
Engine/drivetrain: 5.7-liter V8, four-speed automatic gearbox, rear-wheel-drive.
Location: Sutton, Ontario, Canada
Odometer reading: 269,258 kilometers (167,309 miles).
Runs/drives? Hell yeah, brother.
Oh great, a questionable Corvette with ceasefire injection. Not so fast. The good news is that you won’t have to worry about the troublesome crossfire injection system because that’s been solved the old-fashioned way, with a carburetor. Still, this bad mamma jamma should put down roughly 205-ish heaving horsepower through a four-speed 4L60E slushbox. If you’re only going to be driving your C4 Corvette to Hooters and back, it’s the perfect transmission choice.
Alright, time to address the elephant in the room. Someone’s gone nuts with the Krylon, spraying this fiberglass wonder matte black at some point in its life. Frank Ocean declared that shit stale in 2016, but it’s certainly one way of covering up absolutely ruined clearcoat. In addition, the front wheels and the rear wheels are off of two different Camaros, although the seller claims that a matching set of four wheels is included in the sale. There’s no indication what sort of wheels they are, but I feel comfortable predicting that they probably aren’t from a shopping cart.
Does this Corvette need work? Hell yeah it does. The seller claims that the windshield is cracked, the driver’s window doesn’t work, one headlight needs a relay, the passenger door apparently has something wrong with it, the seats are ripped, and the power steering has a nifty automatic draining function. Look, if you want to be Dirk Diggler on a budget, don’t expect perfection.
1983 Porsche 944 — $4,000 Canadian
Engine/drivetrain: 2.5-liter inline-four, five-speed manual transaxle, rear-wheel-drive.
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Odometer reading: 215,000 kilometers (133,595 miles).
Runs/drives? Indeed.
You knew this was coming. Look, Chevrolet and Porsche have been locked in a battle for sports car supremacy for decades, but that funny little engineering company from Stuttgart seems to be winning on the resale value front. Even the most rotten air-cooled 911 shell fetches more than $4,000 Canadian, so here’s a transaxle car from the 1980s instead. Remember when these were everywhere for dirt cheap?
This 944 allegedly received a low-mileage used motor last year because hey, things go bad sometimes. Still, at least the current owner’s allegedly done things properly, by throwing a fresh timing kit and water pump on the replacement motor. This 944 also claims to have a new fuel pump and a new fuel filter, which totally doesn’t suggest that it was dormant for quite a while.
So, what’s explicitly wrong with this 944? Well, as we can see from the photos, the driver’s seat is properly ripped and the paint is in what can only be described as a condition. Still, it’s a running, driving Porsche sports car for $4,000, and it doesn’t even have the engine from a Beetle or a van.
There we have it, two cheap sports cars that can give you a slice of the high life on a Miller High Life budget. Alright, maybe that’s optimistic, but what are sports cars if not optimistic? Sure, you might end up on the side of the road, but at least you’ll do it with some goddamn style. Anyway, choose wisely.
(Photo credits: Kijiji Autos sellers)
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Stick all the way
I gotta say, as someone who has owned exactly one German car (former mk6 GTI owner) but has friends who own them, i think if a German car survives this long, it’ll be aight. Classic German complexity but if all those little pieces work out then you got a solid car for a long time. Porsche all day
The best of both worlds is buy the 944 and do an LS swap.
Back in the dim dark past, the powers-that-were at the lab I worked at decided to show us all that if you’re a “manager”, you can manage any business. They demonstrated this by hiring a guy from a fragrance company to run our place. He spent a couple of years being absolutely clueless about the place as and a laughingstock before leaving under a cloud. He was an idiot and he loved C4s, and that has forever poisoned them for me. That, and Hooters would be the only place I would drive that car.
944, no question about it.
Something about a person willing to put a carb on a C4…I want nothing to do with the rest of that hack-job mess. I actually have a line on a cheap 85.5 944 I’m thinking of picking up as a project, so it gets my vote here.
that vette would be an easy upgrade machine, im sold on the look of the 944 and its my choice.
Porsche for me for the same reasons as I went with the VW… it looks far less molested. Plus I prefer a manual. And I like the green colour on the Porsche way more than the stupid matte black on the Corvette.
Tempted by the Corvette because it comes from the year of my birth, but no… this one is pretty cut and dry.
But, they were sold during the 1983 model year, for some reason, 1984 was a very long year for Corvettes, they produced them for 17 months, delivery started in March of 1983. Yes, I’m old enough to remember.
I think that was because there was no 1983 Corvette. They skipped a year between the last C3 for MY 1982 and the first C4 for MY 1984.
Part supply problem according to Wikipedia, they built 43 pre production 1983 C4 Corvettes, and decided to just call production 1984 models when they could finally build them.
“cut and dried”
https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2021/07/cut-and-dried.html#:~:text=A%3A%20The%20expression%20as%20it,variant%20or%20less%20common%20version.
The ‘vette and I are the same model year. I can picture my sweet mullet blowing majestically in the wind as that 350 small block wheezes up to speed.
I unapologetically love C4s, but that thing needs more help than I’m capable of giving. I have driven a 944 exactly once, but it was a hoot. We’ll take the Parsh, and I’ll put Stef and Syd from OHOAT on speed-dial.
If only it was in “Jake Ryan red.”
That parsh is far and away my pick here, and not just because I own the parsh. I’d want to get a pre-purchase inspection regardless, but at least the owner knew enough to replace the belts and water pump as those are the usual problem items that 944 buyers will ask about. That’s a good sign!
It’s in cosmetically better shape than the ‘Vette, so you could polish it if you wanna. Scruffy but mechanically sound 944s make the best track 944s, though, and why buy a 944 if you’re not going to hoon it on track? That’s just a wasted opportunity.
Also, somehow I missed that the C4 was a slushbox on first breeze-through. PARSH PARSH PARSH PARSH PARSH all day long, not even a contest, pack it up, folks, this is an easy one.
Not a 4L60E, 700R4 back then
The 944 has probably already bankrupted someone, so it should be a fairly safe buy for the next owner who doesn’t have bank accounts in other countries. The ’84 ‘Vette is the poster child example of “never buy the first year of a GM”, plenty of ’85-an-ups with TPI for not much more money.
Wow, I’m voting for a Teutonic Bankruptcy Machine over a trusty trooper from the General? I must be sick.
This one selection strikes a chord…if that vette was a ’74 or a ’64 in that condition everybody would be tripping over each other to pick it up. But and ’84? Meh will be the average. HOWEVER, I would argue that you can get every single part for that car for cheap and online…and find yourself with a real nice project for a budget. The Porsche? be it a ’64 or a ’74, or an ’83…the brakes will still cost you 10k.
I’m voting for the chevy.
Where in the world do you get $10k from?! You’re just regurgitating myths you heard somewhere.
So we head over to FCP Euro… 1983 Porsche 944…
Complete front brake kit (rotors, pads, and brake lines) $236.54, and a complete rear kit for $335.32.
So, $571.86 all in.
I think that’s on par with any new car on the road for complete rotors, pads, and brake lines! (Edit: For OEM quality or equivalent.)
https://www.fcpeuro.com/Porsche-parts/944/Brake-Kits/?year=1983&m=20&e=803&t=6&b=9&d=&v=12
Oh, it’s a $4000 car, so let’s save money and go cheapest aftermarket at Rock Auto.
$29 for pads all around.
$90 for 4 new rotors.
$119 all in.
$10k indeed.
dealer installed? I don’t think so….you must live in germany.
Dealer installed? What are you talking about?!
Why in the world would you take a 40 year old car to the Dealer for a brake job? Your not going to take that ’83 Corvette to a Chevy dealer for brakes, are you?
Even then, a couple hours at a very generous ~$200/hr still puts you around $1k, or $500 with aftermarket parts, and isn’t getting you anywhere close to $10k.
You tried to use hyperbole to make a point, and got called out on it. Just move on.
I don’t know, I’ve never owned a porsche…I’ve just been told it takes 10k to do brakes on them…I don’t do brakes myself so I take it they are telling the truth? Maybe a different model? I can’t dispute what Canadian Porsche guys tell me…maybe it’s cheaper elsewhere? on this model? but seriously it’s just a shitbox showdown…take a valium
I picked up a cheap Jaguar this summer, and my daughter picked up a cheap Corvette. Picking up a cheap Porsche for the wife just seems like the right thing to do.
I like the cut of your jib sir!
I’m a simple man. I see a green car, I vote for a green car.
This is the way.
As an owner of two C4s, I’ll take the Vette. That one is pretty rough and an auto (ick) but they are easy to work on and fairly cheap to keep running. That one would need a bit of work, though.
“Chevrolet and Porsche have been locked in a battle for sports car supremacy for decades.”
Hilarious, really?
Let’s see, Porsche has made one of the best sports cars of each year, every year, since 1948.
In contrast, I think there have been some good Corvettes every now and then? The C8 seems to be pretty good for the money?
EDIT: But I own a Porsche, and just might be biased.
Almost every Corvette has been awesome. Even the awful malaise-era sloggers were, in that day, the coolest cars on the road.
Now THAT is comedy.
I have no doubt that all Corvettes have been awesome to many people. That’s cool.
I just don’t think that subjectively “being awesome” equates to sports car supremacy, and that instead one might consider actual racing pedigree, in which case… Porsche: there is no substitute. 🙂
All good points, but no sports car has been as affordable and reliable as the Corvette, for over 60 years now. Certainly not any Porsche, cars that are a little too well-acquainted with post lifts for my taste.
Now, not every Corvette is awesome. The ’84 sure isn’t. But hey, how many Apollo astronauts drove Speedsters or early 911’s?
I think we understand where we’re each coming from.
Overall affordability is a good point, but that’s very different than “sports car supremacy”.
Also, Astronauts drove Corvettes because they were given to them by GM for marketing.
Also, Porsche is far more reliable than they are given credit for (numerous endurance racing wins, and a higher percentage of older cars still on the road; although that’s also an artifact of residual value).
And also not nearly as expensive to maintain as the myths (if one does their own work; see my posts on brakes above). But yes, they are more expensive than a Corvette.
But they’re also a superior sports car. 🙂
Normally, a Corvette would win the the reliability battle with an old 944. But, a crap tastes crossfire setup replaced by an archaic carb setup dooms this car. The Porsche wins with a “lower” mileage refreshed engine.
944: I’ll be The Bloody Broke Baron.
The Porsche by a Kilometer. . . no question.