Welcome, one and all, to the very first installment of Build of the Week, where I feature cars that throw all caution, common sense, and budgets in the trash and you comment about how your modified Jetta GLX could beat it from a 40 MPH roll on the highway.
If you’d like a chance to be in the Build of the Week drawing, send an email to my government-issued Jalopnik email address and I’ll judge them to see whether the build is good enough to grace the eyes of the thousands of bronies currently perusing this corner of the internet.
This week’s submission comes to us from Nick, a reader that probably treats the words “numbers matching” like a competitive barbecue grill master treats the word “vegan”, as you’ll see with his slightly less than stock Porsche 928.
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Nick writes,
Before I get into any details, this car was build by myself with assistance from my brother but nothing was done out of our shop. Paint, engine, electrical, roll cage, etc. Everything was done by ourselves and that is something that means a lot to me. I was 20 when I finished it and my brother was 23. This was completed in September of 2013.
The Porsche, that started life as a bone stock ‘82 model year 928, is known lovingly as Risky Business—probably less to do with the Tom Cruise movie and more with the fact that Nick threw out the Porsche powerplant and shoehorned a fully built and carbureted Chevy V8 in an early ‘80s Porsche, which translates into skids for days.
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The car is completely stripped and has a built small block Chevy (brodix aluminum heads, cams, roller rockers, bored, 750cfm double pumper, and much more.) The car uses a corvette bell housing but retains the porsche transmission in the rear.
Coilovers for these cars cost more than a good set of kidneys so we spent some time in the machine shop and have it set up to use adjustable coilovers from a circle track car. This let us use less expensive components for great results!
The car has only a roll bar instead of a full cage to reduce overall weight. The dash is fully custom and has been flocked to remove glare. The rear window and both side rear windows have had glass removed and it was all replaced with lexan.
The body has had some items shaved and is painted in a flat black with metallic flake. The engine bay is fully shaved and sprayed white with a metallic flake.
While the car as a whole doesn’t reflect my tastes specifically, there are a few things that I really, really like about this Porsche 928 if I’m brutally honest. First, it takes the questionable reliability of early ‘80s Porsche electrics and expensive mechanical components out of the equation altogether and replaces them with the tune-via-screwdriver dependability of an all-American drivetrain that has been made for the better part of a century.
It’s also a middle finger to the by-the-book Porsche establishment and although it may have decreased its future resale by a few decimal places, it doesn’t apologize for it. In a nutshell, it’s what modding your car is all about.
For those of you inspired by Nick’s magnum opus and willing to start your own 928 project, prices are still relatively workable and in the four figure range, but they might not be for long, so get to steppin’.
If you’d like me to write a few nice or not so nice words about the bank account black hole that is your project car, you can comment here or email me with any of your suggestions. Make sure to write “Build of the Week” in the subject, because everything else will not only be deleted, but incinerated with extreme prejudice. You have been warned.
(Photo Credits: Nick Fera)
Tavarish is the founder of APiDA Online and writes and makes videos aboutbuying and selling cool cars on the internet. You can also follow him onTwitterand Facebook. He won’t mind.
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