Frost & Furious • West Yellowstone • Porsche 944
The 944 IsMontana’s Porsche
Four 944s showed up to race on a frozen airport. Not one of them came wearing a car cover.
The Porsche Nobody Babysits
The 911 gets the posters. The 944 gets the miles.
Porsche showed the 944 in 1981 and built it through 1991. According to Porsche, dealers took 30,000 orders in its first year, it made up about half of the company’s output after that first year, and 163,302 were built in total, which made it Porsche’s best-selling sports car up to that point. Under the hood is a 2.5-liter four-cylinder that Porsche Club GB notes was derived from the 928’s V8, with balance shafts licensed from Mitsubishi. The engine sits up front, the transaxle sits in the back, and the whole thing is far better balanced than a car this affordable has any right to be.
That last part is the key. A 944 is still one of the least expensive ways to get a Porsche badge in your driveway, which means owners actually drive them. In Montana, that means winter. And at Frost & Furious, Jackalope Drivers Club’s ice races on the frozen airport in West Yellowstone, it meant four of them came to race.
#85 Brought Skis
The white #85 car was the most fully committed 944 on the ice. Blue and red stripes, a bank of four round rally lights across the nose, and a pair of skis strapped to the roof rack, presumably for the walk home if things went badly.
Things did not go badly. It spent the day hanging the tail out through the cones like a car with twice its horsepower. Front engine, rear transaxle, snow tires and somebody who clearly had done this before.
#05: Muskelpaket
The red-and-white #05 car wears “Muskelpaket” on its side, German for a muscle-bound guy, which is a big claim for a four-cylinder. It earns it anyway. It raced on the ice in West Yellowstone in the winter, then rolled into the Roly-Poly Daily Driver Show in Bozeman in September wearing a bar of rally lights, like entering a race car in a daily driver show was a perfectly normal thing to do.
It is. That’s the whole point of a 944.
Gute Fahrt
Then there’s the paint-splatter 944 with “Gute Fahrt” across the nose, German for “good trip.” It looked like somebody let a kindergarten class finish the bodywork, and it was the most photographed car in its row. Nobody walks past this car without smiling, which is more than you can say for most Porsches.
The fourth was a black 944, which spent part of the day parked in a row with a 356, a Beetle and the other 944s, and part of it getting photobombed by a Lancia Stratos. Not a bad place to park.
Why It Works on Ice
The layout is why it works on ice. With the engine up front and the gearbox in back, the weight is spread out instead of hanging off one end the way it does in a 911, so a 944 slides in a way that feels slow, predictable and easy to catch. It’s not fast by modern standards, and that’s the point. On a frozen airport, modest power and good balance beat big numbers every time.
If you’re tempted to buy one for exactly this reason, the usual 944 advice applies: the timing belt and the balance shaft belt need regular replacement, and a car with no records of either is a car with a surprise in it. Budget for that before you budget for skis.
Porsche Raced Them Too
If racing a 944 on ice sounds like abuse, Porsche disagrees. It gave the 944 its own race series, the 944 Turbo Cup, in 1986, and built 192 cars for it. A 944 Turbo also won a 24-hour production-car race at Nelson Ledges, Ohio, in 1984 by 42 laps. These were never meant to be garage queens. Montana is just keeping the tradition alive at below-zero temperatures.
The 944 also made the list in my Field Guide to the Montana Shitbox as Species One, and it earned the spot. Jackalope Drivers Club is bringing the ice back for 2 Frost, 2 Furious, February 19–21, 2027. I hope every one of these 944s comes back.
If one of them is yours, Find My Car has every photo I took of it.
Drive the Porsche.
Six More 944s on Ice
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