Porsche Transaxle Management Triangle

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Since there's a daily "should I get an old Porsche as my first car" thread then I guess this might be pertinent. Have you guys noticed how the 1970s-1990s transaxle era Porsches all seem to fall into a sort of a Project Management Triangle? As in, instead of having to choose two out of three in the "Fast, Cheap and Good" scheme, you have to choose between these:

>Performance
>Reliability
>Affordability

The 924 is by far the most affordable Porsche and, since it was mostly engineered with sturdy Volkswagen and Audi parts that are widely available on the aftermarket, you can at the very least expect some reliability, but the performance is nowhere on the pace of its successors. It was conceived as a slower and mildly affordable touring car to succeed the 914, much like the Boxster is nowadays, rather than an actual performance car. The North American version is particularly bad in this regard, for some weird reason it had 1/3rd of the horsepower cut down from the original European version, hence why so many Americans disdain it as not being a "real Porsche".

The 944 is still pretty affordable and the handling is widely praised as being amongst the best for a 1980s sports car but relying on it as a daily drive without any form of back-up is pure madness. Same goes for the 928, it's even more powerful than the 944 and, despite being slightly more expensive, you can still find one in decent condition for less than 10k, but don't expect anything but pain when the rare and expensive engineering intricacies and the incredibly obsolete engine computer dies down on you. Both are cheap and perform well even for modern standard but don't expect reliability from them.

The 968 is easily the most well engineered out of the four, it has superb performance (especially the Club Sports version) and, being the most recent, it is also easily the most reliable, but you're certainly not going to find one in proper working condition for less than 10k.

So yeah, take your pick, fools.