A rare vintage Porsche 944 has been spotted in Ho Chi Minh City, with its paint still looking fairly new, and even more impressively, the driver was none other than Dang Le Nguyen Vu, the top car collector in the Asean region with a collection of over 700 vehicles.
The Porsche 944 is a sports car that was produced in both coupe and convertible versions in Germany from 1982 to 1991. In Vietnam, only a handful of these cars exist, and “King” Vu’s car stands out with its rear bumper, featuring an additional rubber protrusion, indicating it was imported from the North American market.
The car featured in this article is the coupe version, painted in silver, the owner’s favorite color. It is understood that “King” Vu purchased this Porsche 944 almost a year ago but has only now taken it for a drive. Before it caught the attention of Vietnam’s “Coffee King”, this 944 had been gathering dust in a garage in Dong Nai.
The 944 is an intriguing addition to the businessman’s Porsche collection, which already includes dozens of 911 models from various years, as well as the 918 Spyder supercar, and numerous Cayenne and Panamera models, from Turbo to Turbo S and 365.
Porsche introduced the 944 in 1982 as a replacement for the 924. The company claimed a 0–60 mph acceleration time of under 9 seconds. The car’s weight distribution is almost perfectly balanced from front to rear (50.7% front/49.3% rear) thanks to its rear-mounted transmission counterbalancing the front-mounted engine.
Cars destined for the North American market had larger bumpers and a bigger rubber strip on the front bumper, along with sealed-beam headlights as required by North American regulations.
In mid-1985, the 944 underwent its first significant changes, including a new dashboard and door panels, a new radio antenna, an upgraded alternator (from 90 to 115 amps), an increased fuel tank capacity, new front and rear cast alloy control arms, a larger fuel tank, optional heated and power-adjustable seats, a Porsche HiFi sound system, and modifications to the transmission mounting to reduce noise and vibration.
The front windshield is now a flush-mounted unit. The “cookie cutter” wheels of the early 944s were upgraded to new “phone dial” wheels (Fuchs wheels remained an option).
For the 1987 model year, the 944 Motronic DME was updated, and anti-lock brakes (ABS) and driver and passenger airbags were introduced as standard equipment. The 944 Turbo was the first Porsche to offer airbags as standard, and they were optional on other 944 models. Due to the inclusion of ABS, the wheel offset was changed to 52 mm, and Fuchs wheels were no longer offered.
In early 1989, just before the introduction of the 944S2, Porsche upgraded the 944’s engine from a 2.5-liter four-cylinder to a 2.7-liter with a 104 mm cylinder bore and a 78.9 mm piston stroke, producing 165 PS (compared to 160 PS for the 2.5-liter version in 1988) and significantly more torque. In addition to the increased displacement, the new engine featured siamese-bore cylinder blocks and different cylinder heads with larger valves.
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