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Few Porsches capture the imagination and turn heads like the 911 GT2. And among the various iterations of the GT2, the 993 GT2 is the most coveted. While engineering and technological progress naturally have rendered later models more powerful and sophisticated performers, the raw prowess of the original car remains the benchmark. Serving as both the first 911 GT2 put into production as well as the last and only air-cooled GT2 produced, the 993 brings with it the kind of rarity that rapidly elevates prices. Add in that it represented the highest performance among production 911s of its day and you’ve pretty much checked all of the boxes a collector could desire. The example we see here, a Speed Yellow 1996 Porsche 911 GT2 having traveled around 33K kilometers during its life, will be up for auction next Friday at RM Sotheby’s auctions in Phoenix.
This will be a rare feature for us, but like with most 911s I’m always curious to see colors and color combinations that I don’t come across often. With the 996, because of their generally lower appreciation among 911 fans, coming across those diamonds in the rough proves more rewarding since it provides an opportunity for an interesting 911 – something that will stand apart from the crowd (and there are a lot of 996s out there) – while still paying relatively reasonable prices. The one we have here, a Dark Teal Metallic 2004 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet with just 22,700 miles on it, would rank as the top-of-the-line non-Turbo 911 of its day yet now commands an asking price just under $40K. Even if not the prettiest 911s around that’s still fantastic bang for the buck. Following the trend that began with the M491 package in the mid-80s, the 4S basically is a 996TT in body and suspension, but with the standard naturally-aspirated 3.6 liter flat-six. So you don’t get quite as much power as the Turbo, but the appearance, stopping power and cornering are all on par and with 320 horses on tap the straight-line performance is still plenty attention grabbing.
I’ve been looking at the 996 GT3 a lot lately. Last summer I featured this Speed Yellow GT3, which I loved and which I thought seemed like it might be a reasonable value at the time given that GT3s have appeared to be on the rise. It got me thinking and recently I began looking at them again. Let’s say the GT3 has become my aspiration. Given that I currently own a car I almost never drive, and that I would not park a GT3 on the street, it’s more of a long term aspiration. That said, since I’m not likely the only one with such aspirations, and for those who might have a more current time frame for acquiring one, it seemed worthwhile to look at what I’ve been seeing and what’s currently available on the market.
The GT3 can be very hard to find. There aren’t a lot of them since they were only imported near the end of 996 production. Also, as track-focused machines many have been modified and/or driven hard. So the crop is limited, but here we have three currently available. We’ll begin with this Arctic Silver Metallic GT3, located in New York, with 15,329 miles on it.
I am very intrigued by this 911. The whole of it: the color is one of my favorites. Why is the mileage so incredibly low? And what will it sell for given that it’s a Sportomatic? There’s just a lot going on here and a lot for us to attend to.
So what do we have? A Signal Orange 1970 Porsche 911E Coupe with the 4-speed Sportomatic transmission and a reported 12,881 original miles. We aren’t told whether the paint and interior are also completely original so that might be question 1. After which documentation of the mileage will be paramount. From there we can begin to think about value. But, first, just look at it. It’s so beautiful!
I’ve featured a decent number of 996TTs lately, but they’ve all been of a different sort than what is typical for us. They’ve all been shifted toward the pricier end of the spectrum and more collector quality for those who want to speculate on the possibility of that market moving upward. In most cases these have been the one-year-only Turbo S. Here I’m going to hope to move back toward the performance value side of the equation. This is the reason we’re typically here in the first place after all. But that movement toward value doesn’t mean we have to make sacrifices in performance. While the Turbo S may wear a different moniker and command more attention and value it’s not really fundamentally different from a standard Turbo equipped with the X50 performance package. And what do you know, look what we have here: a Midnight Blue Metallic 2003 Porsche 911 Turbo, located in Knoxville, with Cinnamon leather interior, 79,700 miles on it, and that highly desirable X50 package. It is the higher mileage that will keep this Turbo’s price in reasonable territory, but the condition shows us a very nice 911 that could compete with those lower-mileage examples and their higher prices.
