Every automotive journalist has a personal favorite car — and for about half of them it’s the Porsche 911.

That may overstate the matter, but not by much. It’s certainly true for me, and to my eye there’s no better era for the 911 than the late 1980s.

Porsche’s signature car has become more of a grand touring machine since those days — bigger, faster, more luxurious and more geared toward road trips than tight mountain switchbacks. Today, the smaller and cheaper Boxster/Cayman may be closer in spirit to the 1980s 911.

To my delight, Porsche seems to always bring one or two of its classics to the L.A. Auto Show. One recent year, it was a white 930 (a pointy-nosed, even faster 911) with the famous whale tail. This year, the storied German automaker brought a far more modest, medium gray 1988 Targa top 911.

And just look at it: the bug-eye headlights, the clean sloping profile, the flat-topped roof. It looks better today than it did when I was in high school.