Fast times, dim end for once-loved Porsche

This is the story of a car. She was born in 1983 in a throbbing Porsche assembly plant in West Germany, and she was a striking beauty.

Appointed with tan leatherette seats, artfully flared fenders, and a shimmering blue paint called Vesuvio Metallic, this was a car destined for drama, or at the very least the fast lane. And she lived large in her early years, hurtling along the Massachusetts back roads, preening in the sun, and bewitching at least one man who owned her before she turned seven.

But, from there, the little car's life went awry. Last month, the Porsche 944, her windows shattered, the vesuvio blue gone battleship gray, and her once lush carpet sprouting grass, was sold for $425 at a public auction of cars abandoned at Logan International Airport. She had lived in the airport's remote tow lot, forgotten and ignored, noticed only by the boys who, for 15 years, hurled rocks at her for sport.

Each of the 130 cars auctioned that day had a story behind it. This is hers. It is a startling tale of love.

She sits now in her final resting place, an automobile salvage lot in Carver called Autogator, where she was towed on a chilly day in November. She is nestled in the shade of a pine grove, next to a blue Cutlass Supreme in even sorrier shape than she.

Sometimes, lot owner Mike Snow finds himself eyeing the small clues to her mysterious past -- the tattered Teamsters sticker on her bumper, the tiny police supply notepad tucked on her dash, the Vanilla Air Freshener slung on her gear shift -- and wonders how a once-sleek sports car came to such a sorry end.

"She ain't going anywhere now," declared Snow. "But you got to figure she had a pretty exciting life at some point."

She did. The blue car was born of a marketer's vision. In the late 1970s, Porsche moved to expand its clientele beyond the province of the well-to-do, and thus was born the 944. It had four cylinders, a powerful engine, and an exceptionally large trunk. If it lacked the svelte lines of its predecessors, it was nonetheless a model with widespread appeal. With a base price of $21,000 in 1983, it wasn't a car for Everyman but, by Porsche standards, it came close.

This particular vesuvio blue left the production line in Germany in August 1983, but her first claimant remains something of a mystery. Porsche records show that she was owned by a Quincy businessman for the first seven years of her life. But the colors of his car -- both inside and out -- do not match the vesuvio blue.

Then in 1990 came Humberto Morales, a handsome 21-year-old with a passion for cars. Now in military service in Korea, Morales was a quiet fellow with seemingly simple tastes. He kept his newest acquisition a secret. He apparently never told anyone in his family about the exotic sports car he kept in his Clinton garage for just over a year. But Porsche and town tax records show the vesuvio blue was his.

"I can't believe he owned a Porsche!" exclaimed his stepmother, Rosa Morales. "He always liked cars and had trucks. But he never told anyone that he had a Porsche."

He didn't for long. In May 1991, the blue car was sold through a dealership to James A. Pike for $5,500. And with that sale, the little car's wheels turned down a rocky road. Pike was a New Bedford drug dealer, according to court records. Three months after he bought the car, he was convicted of trafficking in more than 200 grams of cocaine. And truth be told, he never really loved her.

"I thought she was a nice-looking car for cheap money," said Pike, 45, who was released from prison in 2000 and now lives in North Dartmouth where he does housing restoration, according to his lawyer. "What do you mean, did I love her?"

Nonetheless, the little car did what Pike asked of her. On a hot August morning in 1991, she rolled into terminal A at Logan Airport, bringing Pike and his girlfriend to a meeting with Howard "Cappy" Crudell, a Maine fisherman. Pike and Crudell, according to court records, had been trafficking in drugs for two years.

On that summer morning, Crudell was meeting with Pike, who was about to fly to Atlantic City, to collect some cocaine, according to court records. Pike's girlfriend left and the two men drove the Porsche "randomly about the airport" until they came to a stop sign. Pike gave an undetermined amount of cocaine in a carry-on bag to Crudell who in turn gave Pike $5,000 in cash, according to court records, and they then drove the car to the fourth floor of the terminal A garage. And that is where the blue car's story ground to a halt.

Well, sort of.

Crudell drove by himself to another terminal in his truck. There he shot up some cocaine, according to the records, and was arrested by a state trooper a few hours later. Crudell told State Police that Pike had supplied the cocaine, and later testified against him. Twelve years after that, Crudell, then 38, was lost at sea in a fishing boat that disappeared off the coast of Nantucket.

For Pike, there were a few more twists and turns in the road. Pike turned himself in to State Police a few days after the transaction with Crudell and was sentenced to 15 to 17 years for trafficking. In 1996, however, Pike was granted a new trial. The judge ordered the blue car -- still waiting at the airport -- returned to Pike, according to a torn State Police report found by a Globe reporter last month stuck in the car's window. But within one month of that order, Pike was back in court, this time charged under federal law with four counts of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.

Pike never made it back to the airport. Even if he could have, he wouldn't have gone back for the blue car.

"Are you kidding?" he said. "Who knows how much I would have owed in fees."

(Answer: $40,150 at the current rate of $22 a day.)

And so, the car sat and sat. The 1996 police document found on the car says it was housed at the State Police K9 Kennel at the airport, apparently during the first five years it was at the airport. But a State Police spokesman, Sergeant Robert Bousquet, says that Massport was responsible for the car the entire time it was at the airport. The State Police, he says, merely had the car moved to a different lot for safekeeping.

"Someone put a note put on it saying the owner was going to claim it," said Bousquet.

Danny Levy, Massport spokesman, says Massport knew nothing of the vehicle until State Police turned it over in 1996. The car was never included in the auctions of cars abandoned at the airport over the years because, Levy added, "Everyone thought the owner would come back."

But, Levy conceded, "after two years you would think that we would have realized that the owner wasn't coming back. But I guess no one really paid attention to it. The car was just forgotten."

What, now, awaits the blue car? Snow has another Porsche, a 1988 black turbo, sitting underneath a pile of tools and magazines in his garage.

His plan is to use the blue car as a parts vehicle for the black car -- well, one of these days.

"The blue car ain't going anywhere in a hurry," he acknowledged with a grin. "She's pretty much come to the end of the line."