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Fancy owning a motorsport legend for road and track use? Paul Davies looks at true classics that made their names on stages and circuits, and still provide fine drives today

It’s the early Seventies, and Volkswagen wants to build a sports car. They commission Porsche to work on a few designs. Volkswagen changes its mind. Porscheneeds a replacement entry-level car for the lack-lustre 914. Agrees to take over the project. Porsche 924 arrives in 1976. Which, in a nutshell, explains why anything as grand as a Porsche should be so totally different from the rest of the range of the time from the Stuttgart manufacturer, and powered by an Audi manufactured engine that first saw life in the VW LT van (and the Audi 200-ed). But because it was a Porsche design the 924 – which with a production run of some 137,500 cars saved Porsche’s bacon at a particularly rocky time – was also pretty clever. True the two-litre, front mounted, engine was basic, but the use of a stiff torque tube to connect it to the gearbox positioned in a rear transaxle was genius. The 924 was as perfectly balanced as a race car should be.But the single cam motor only gave 125bhp. From the outset Porsche knew it needed a turbocharger (they’d already applied forced induction to the 911 with great success) and so they entered a blown version for Jurgen Barth and Roland Kussmaul to drive on the 1979 Monte Carlo Rally. But something went wrong, and the required homologation didn’t happen in time. The near-standard car did not disgrace itself, finishing 20th overall. Later in the year the duo would drive a similar, conventionally aspirated, 924 to 8th place on the tough Repco Rally in Australia. Once Porsche got the production (170bhp) 924 Turbo running, the development started seriously, with the 310bhp Carrera GT finishing 6th, 12th and 13th at 1980 Le Mans. The nonturbo 924 did make its mark in racing in its lifetime. Porsche GB ran a one-make series sponsored by dealers in 1978, motoring journalist Tony Dron taking the honours, and the following year Win Percy and Juliette Slaughter won Group 4 in the Brands Hatch 6 Hours race. In the USA, Al Holbert prepared cars ran in SCCA racing, with Tom Brennan winning the ‘D Production’ category in 1981. And that was the end of the competition career of the 924 – except ten years later a Porsche racer by the name of Jeff May invented the budget-price British 924 series for near standard (150bhp) cars. It was an instant success, even ran with Colway retread tyres for five years, and spawned well known racers, including Richard Lloyd, Ryan Hooker, James Neal, and Mark McAleer who won the Porsche Club Championship in 2007. After 17 years the series is as strong as ever, and with base cars for a couple of hundred quid, and fully race prepped ones for four grand or less, it’s probably the cheapest way to go proper motor racing and make a decent classic car into the bargain for road use. The cheapest way to go motor racing is in a Porsche! That’s got to be good enough to make the lowly 924 a Sporting Hero of the first order – even if it’s not ‘real’ Porsche…