If you wanted the wildest Porsche available for the road in 1986, you didn’t go directly to your Porsche dealer. Even the mega 959 was no match for the aftermarket tuners of the day, like Design und Plastik. who pumped out the wildest race-inspired designs for the street imaginable. Take for example this DP 935 Targa. It has lightweight fiberglass bodywork to give it the ‘show’ while it has over 400 horsepower and uprated brakes, wheels, and tires to provide the ‘go’ to back it up.
DP Motorsport offered a full bevvy of options that Porsche wouldn’t even touch in the mid-1980s. If you wanted a cocktail bar in your car, DP could do it. If you wanted a cathode-ray tube television in your dashboard, DP could do it. Wild leather, crazy colors, exaggerated bodywork, and big power numbers were all well within DP’s milieu. That is, so long as you could pay for it. And so many people could pay for it.
That was the whole point of the 1980s tuner movement. Everyone wanted bigger, better, more, and there were plenty of aftermarket sources to provide it. Following the boring and staid 1970s, there was a need to step out of the shadows and be an ostentatious peacock. Nowhere was that more clear than in the automotive world. Is this really any more wild than the Greenwood Corvettes that could be found pounding the pavement of the American heartland? Or, even later in the Motorweek clip below, the tuned and plastic-bedazzled Ford Thunderbirds of Kolb.
I’m not sure I’d get a silver Targa with blue stripes, but it certainly screams 1980s excess, doesn’t it? I think I’d have mine in mint green with dark green stripes. And make it a coupe. With as much power as you can throw at it. Hold the television, please.
