Porsche's 'Project: Secret' Will see the Company Exhibit Secret Prototypes

Porsche has announced plans to stage a special 'Project: Secret!' exhibit at the Porsche Museum, Stuttgart. Designed to highlight some of the company's lesser known projects, the exhibit will feature cars such as the 984 which was envisioned as a small and relatively inexpensive sports car that would appeal to younger buyers.

Development started in 1984 and the model was slated to feature a rear-mounted 2.0-litre four-cylinder boxer engine with outputs ranging from 118-148bhp. They even played around with the idea of a convertible and an all-wheel drive variant but the project was shelved in 1987 when the value of the dollar plummeted.

There will also be a 989 which was billed as a family sports car. According to the people at Porsche, work began on the model in 1988 and it was slated to be launched in 1995 with a 4.2-litre V8 engine that produced 345bhp and this meant that it could top out at 279km/h. However, the math didn't work out as internal calculations suggested the car would need to cost 150,000 deutsche marks - which was 50,000+ deutsche marks over earlier projections - and the company would only sell 15,000 units annually.

The Project: Secret! Exhibition runs from September 17th to January 11th and will feature fourteen never-built studies, unknown concept cars and camouflaged prototypes. The exhibit will also have miniatures from the Porsche archive as well as films showing early testing on the prototypes.