924Board.org

[Keaton]

hey does anyone know how porsche does the numbering (what it means)??
914, 924, 944, 928, 968, 951, 931, 933, 911, 956, 959.......so on and so forth

[StienbargerR]

some of them have the number of cylinders the cars has (I think...) Such as the 924...944...928, and the 914 maybe. I could be wrong tho.

Ryan

[chris24]

Started off as the 901 and Peugeot kicked up a fuss as they had a 'thing' for cars with zero as the middle letter. This was renamed the 911. It was the first production car that Porsche had designed from scratch, the 356 being largely based on the VW beetle, a creation of Ferdinand Porsche.
They had designed other race cars up to 8xx and so this new, eagerly anticipated car had to be the 9xx. The third numbers rarely match up, maybe the 924, 928 and 944 weren't by chance. Like the 914 and 916 (or 914-6...).
Then there are loads of factory codes for the cars and some of the gearboxes are numbered in a similar way 901, 915...
_________________
1983 - 924 (185K miles) - not mint
1985 - 924 (148K miles) - mint
1990 - 944S2 cab (52K miles)

[Khal]

[dpw928]

They are the project numbers which are sequentially assigned when a job/task is started. There are many projects that never made it to production and others for different manufacturers such as the HD V-Rod engine. i.e. the 924 was four projects before the 928. In the case of the 911, Porsche has kept the 911 designation (except for the 912) but also used a project number such as 993, 996, etc.

Dennis
_________________
81 931 5 sp
78 928 5 sp Silver
78 928 AT Euro Black

[Khal]

[dpw928]

Khal,

The project 924 was started for VW before the 928. It was bought back from VW after the 928 project was started, but the same project number was used. Same as the 931 being the project number for the 924 turbo. Look at the timeline lines for the 917's, 930's, etc up to the 993's, 996's and 997's. There are some that are skewed but don't confuse project starts with production dates.

Dennis
_________________
81 931 5 sp
78 928 5 sp Silver
78 928 AT Euro Black

[Khal]

[dpw928]

EA425 was the VW project number. I have a CD of the Porsche book titled Projeck 928 that has a short history of Porsche during that period. I'll try to dig into it to check for anything pertinent to the 924.

Dennis
_________________
81 931 5 sp
78 928 5 sp Silver
78 928 AT Euro Black

[Mike924]

[Mike924]

[Mike924]

[dpw928]

After going back and reading the leadup in "Projeck 928" it appears that projeck 924 was a conceptual study to develope a replacement of the VW project EA 266 (914). The mid engine was ruled out due to limitations on seating and the rear engine was ruled out due to safety, steering and stability concerns with the 356 and early 911's. The actual design phase ran parallel with the 928 design. When VW backed out of the EA 425 projeck, Porsche bought it back and assigned the original projeck number 924.

The last digit of the project has nothing to do with the number of engine cylinders. The projeck number 928 was assigned before the decision was made to install a V-8. Actually four cylinders and V-6's (like the Porsche designed Studebaker V-6) were tried before they settled on a low profile V-8. Is the 931 a one cylinder or what happened to the other four cylinders in the 968? Ever see a 7 cylinder 917?

Dennis
_________________
81 931 5 sp
78 928 5 sp Silver
78 928 AT Euro Black

[Khal]

[dpw928]

Maybe somebody in the engine design department thought it would be cool to match the cylinders to the project number. Guess they caught him after the 944.

Dennis
_________________
81 931 5 sp
78 928 5 sp Silver
78 928 AT Euro Black