Building a Porsche estate car

I was chatting to Porsche mate John Glynn on Facebook when he mentioned his plans to build a Porsche 944 estate car (or shooting brake). Just the sort of mad idea I love so I shot over to his blog to read up on his plans.

Like John, I like the look of estate cars, especially small sporty ones. The Scimitar GTE was a good-looker while Volvo have long been master of this tiny niche with cars like the lovely 1800ES, the 480 and today’s neat C30.

Porsche, though, has never gone down this route, with the exception of a wonderful-looking 928 estate (above) built as a one off for Ferry Porsche (one of the perks of owning a car company).

However, that didn’t stop tuners creating their own shooting brakes, based on 924s 944s and 928s (I don’t remember seeing a 968, more’s the shame). Some of these were more successful than others, but my favourite was always the DP Motorsport Cargo (below), which I thought – and still do think – looked stunning. If John can create something this good, I’ll be impressed.

As an update, I’ve just been told that DP is offering to make more Cargoes, priced at a hefty €18,000 per conversion. The demo car looks good but it really needs those roof rails, I reckon!

Looking ahead, I wonder if anyone will produce a Panamera estate. There have been artists’ impressions but, to me, they have all the appeal of a Jaguar estate car. Just too big and, well, too normal. A sporting shooting brake needs to be small, cute-looking and not too practical.

Speaking of practical, the 924/944/968 is a practical proposition even without an extended boot. My very first Porsche was a 924 and at the time my girlfriend (now my wife) had a Vauxhall Nova. I could easily fit my mountain bike in the back of the Porsche without removing the wheels but it wasn’t possible to get it into the Nova.

Now it just remains to be seen whether or not John goes through with his plan… 🙂