The front-engined Porsche 924 was a bit of the unloved member of the company’s lineup, falling well short of the driving experience promised by the air-cooled 911 and the brutish 928; heck, even its sibling, the 944, delivers a bigger punch. But Porsche did some work to change this perception by introducing the turbocharged 924, which is a high-performance option that appears for sale far less frequently than its naturally-aspirated underlings. This 924 Turbo is a rare bird indeed, made rarer for apparently remaining in stock condition after the current owner discovered it and made several mechanical improvements to the tune of $5,000. It’s a smart purchase, in my opinion, especially with an asking price of just $12,000. Find it here on craigslist in Phoenix, Arizona.

Thanks to Barn Finds reader Rex M. for the find. The 924 Turbo was more than just a slight boost in performance when Porsche decided to release the upgraded model – it was damn near a revelation. At least compared to the base model, the performance was improved dramatically, resulting in a 0-60 run of 6.9 seconds and a top speed of 142 m.p.h. As any number of online sources report, this effectively had the homely 924 nipping at the heels of the 911. In those terms, it wasn’t just an impressive performance car but also an outright bargain compared to its rear-engined sibling. Like almost every high-performance offering of standard Porsche models, the rest of the chassis was thoroughly improved and updated along with the tweaks under the hood. But don’t get too excited: those numbers were for the European market car.

The interior still looked like any other 924, aside from the nicely bolstered Recaro seats. While I hate to be a Debbie Downer, the U.S.-spec cars faced a significant drop-off in performance, with reduced power output and heavier curb weights to contend with. It’s a serious bummer when you consider just how impressive the car was from the factory, but it’s a story many of us who cherish European performance cars know all too well. My junkyard find Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth is a fine example of this, losing several horsepower over its European cousin. Fortunately, there are ways to improve performance and lower curb weights, but then you get into a scenario of whether it’s more sensible to simply import the European-spec model.

The seller has poured some money into what sounds like a garage-find example. He notes that recent maintenance work includes cleaning the gas tank, installing a new fuel pump and sending units, servicing the fuel injection, and installing a new battery, among other fixes. All of this seems pretty standard for a car that’s been sitting for a while, and if it’s been parked somewhere around Arizona, rust shouldn’t be much of an issue. Surprisingly, he indicates having a thick stack of records and all associated service manuals and books with the 924, so it sounds likely this example wasn’t so much abandoned as much as the previous owner – who likely loved it – simply didn’t drive it as much any more. This is a hard car to find and one that sounds worthy of a light cosmetic restoration and simply being enjoyed.