Low-Buck, Period-Correct Speakers for Our Period-Correct Porsche | Project Porsche 911 Carrera

Update by David S. Wallens to the Porsche 911 Carrera project car
Feb 11, 2021

Sometimes it’s the little things.

And with our 1984 Porsche 911 Carrera, a "little thing" involved the rear speakers.

Are speakers the most important thing in an air-cooled Porsche? Probably not. The engine provides the soundtrack, right?

But, somewhere along the line, our 911 received some modern speakers–and by “modern,” we’re talking about something pretty tacky. Spokes. Silver cones. So much silver. Chrome. Too much chrome. Their appearance bugged us. Sorry, we can be easily bugged.

Someone changed the size, too, replacing the original 4x6-inch rear deck speakers with 6.5-inch rounds.

New 4x6-inch speakers are readily available from the aftermarket. Even Porsche Classic offers OE replacements. Porsche Classic also sells OE speaker grilles–perfect for that all-original restoration.

But those concours-perfect grilles along cost about a hundred bucks each, and we lucked into an alternate solution: A pair of RetroSound 6.5-inch round speaker grilles retail for $6.99 each, and we happened to have some new ones on the shelf. Call us lucky.

Replacing rear speakers in a 911 isn’t too complicated: unscrew the old ones from the rear deck and simply reattach after slipping the new grille mounts between the speakers and the rear deck. Then snap the grilles themselves into place.

But between the tight confines of the rear glass and the fact that the rear seat of a 911 cannot be described as luxurious, well, it’s not the most fun job. A right-angle screwdriver will be your pal here. So will some choice swear words.

But we did it, gosh darn it. For further camouflage, we even darkened our speakers’ chrome tweeter rings while everything was on the bench. (Black Sharpie for the win.) One day, we figure, we'll upgrade the speakers themselves. At least they no longer stand out.