Carpoint's Porsche 944 shooting brake finishes an idea from 1981
The Porsche 944 shooting brake begins with a Hanover one-off from 1981
Carpoint, a German supplier of parts for classic Porsches, is building the GT-K44, a Porsche 944 rebuilt as a two-door shooting brake. The first car is a 944 S2 in Oak Green with period Pascha upholstery. Ten conversions are planned, each on a donor the customer supplies, at €100,000 before tax for the bodywork alone.
Artz built a Porsche 924 Turbo Kombi in Hanover in 1981
The GT-K44 has a direct ancestor: the 924 Turbo Kombi that Günter Artz built in 1981, when he ran the Volkswagen dealership Autohaus Nordstadt in Hanover. Artz specialised in cars the factories would not make. He had already clothed a pre-production 928 in a widened Golf body, and the second of those went to Louis Krages, who won Le Mans in 1985 under the name John Winter. Carpoint founder Andreas Freund drove one of the rare Artz 924 Kombis for several months before deciding to build his own.
The GT-K44 rebuilds the Porsche 944 roof, B-pillars and tailgate
Each GT-K44 takes several hundred hours of hand-built bodywork. Carpoint extends the roof, reshapes the B-pillars and rear quarter panels, fits large new side windows and a completely new tailgate, then modifies the tail lights around the bigger opening. Freund drew the car with designer Michael Söhngen around the wider 944 body rather than copying the slimmer Artz 924. Inside, the door jambs are refinished and the headliner and rear trim panels are remade for the new roof.
Carpoint accepts Porsche 944 S2 and Turbo donors from 211 to 250 hp
Carpoint recommends two kinds of donor: the 944 S2, whose 3.0-litre naturally aspirated four makes 211 hp, or the 944 Turbo with 220 or 250 hp. Manual and automatic cars both qualify, but Carpoint will not swap a gearbox as part of the job. Buyers can specify wheels, suspension, interior trim and exhaust, and the company says it can help find a suitable car. The donor does not need to be a concours example, since the body is opened up and repainted anyway.
Ten GT-K44s against 163,192 Porsche 944s ever built
Porsche built 163,192 cars in the 944 family between 1982 and 1991, and it was the brand's best-selling sports car until the Boxster and 997-generation 911 arrived. The two recommended donors are much rarer: around 14,071 944 S2s and 25,245 944 Turbos. The S2 also had a direct heir, because the 944 S2 SE built for Britain helped shape the 968 Club Sport. Ten GT-K44s would convert less than one in a thousand S2s, so the supply of donors is not the limit.
The €119,000 Porsche 944 conversion price excludes the car
Carpoint charges €100,000 before tax for the GT-K44, which becomes €119,000 with Germany's 19% VAT, and the donor car comes on top. That puts it among the coachbuilt classic Porsches that German workshops now sell to collectors, alongside rebuilds such as TechArt's 964-based GTclassic. The difference is the base car: those projects start from a 911, while the GT-K44 asks a six-figure price for a body the factory never offered on its cheaper front-engined coupé.
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Carpoint has left the best parts of the 944 alone. The transaxle layout, the balance and the modest power that made the car so easy to drive quickly all survive, and the money goes into the one thing Porsche never offered: a body that makes a 944 genuinely useful. Basing the design on a car Freund actually drove, rather than on a render, shows in how settled the proportions look. The caveat is the bill, because a hundred thousand euros before tax is a lot of money to spend on a car that most collectors still see as the affordable Porsche.
Ten cars is the right number for an idea this specific, and it is also the honest ceiling. If all ten are spoken for by the end of 2027, Carpoint will have proved that the 944 has crossed from bargain to collector car, and it will be the body shape, not the engine, that took it there.
