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The ’70s and ’80s certainly possessed their own sense of style and few things make that more clear than when we look at tuners who were popular during those eras. Not all were so crazy. Looking at a few RUF models we can see that they were content to retain the general style of Porsche themselves, though in fairness a 930 isn’t exactly a shrinking violet. But here our attention will be on the other tuners; the tuners who delighted in bringing their own sense of audacity to the automobile market. Koenig Specials is one such tuner and though they’ve been around for four decades now I think most of us would be familiar with them from their earlier years when they produced complete packages to transform both the appearance and the performance of many cars. On these pages we’re most familiar with them for their work with Mercedes-Benz, but there are a few rare Porsches floating around as well. One of those is the one we see here: a Koenig Specials modified 1991 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Coupe with a mere 19K kilometers on it. It is said that only eight such examples were built, making this a very rare commodity on the 911 market.
As Rob mentioned in his Jade Green Targa piece the other day, we’re entering in quickly to auction season. Mecum, typically the purveyors of more muscle cars than European rides, nonetheless had quite an impressive lineup of signification Porsche race models that cover a few decades and many changes in the company’s history, so I thought it would be pretty neat to take a look at them. It’s very interesting to see over a relatively short period of time the many changes that Porsche’s motorsports programs have gone through.
Not too surprisingly, the German car market has quite a lot of Porsches running around. Looking through the listings shows us all kinds of rare models or interesting colors and option packages. In some of the best cases, I’ll come across configurations that I’m completely unfamiliar with and this will lead down a long rabbit-hole of reading and history. Those are a lot of fun and generally involve cars that never made it Stateside. However, most searches just show us cool versions of cars we’re used to seeing. Here, I’ve stuck with that theme as this is a standard 3.2 Carrera, but I was really taken by the color combination and the condition does look quite good. I’m not sure this asking price would make sense for anyone in the U.S. given the additional costs of bringing it here, but who knows. Here we have a Meteor Gray Metallic 1985 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe with Burgundy leather interior and around 39K kilometers on it.
I’ve found myself featuring more and more of the mid-year 911. I still don’t feature them all that often relative to other model years, but I used to never feature any model other than the Carrera so there is some progress. In part, I think this is due to more interesting examples being made available. I suspect that has occurred because, while these are still some of the cheaper models in the air-cooled 911 range, we’ve actually seen a few nice examples sell for values that at the time I found surprising. It’s still rare that it happens, but some of the neglect has waned. This all brings us to the car here: a Burgundy Metallic 1977 Porsche 911S Targa with Cork leather interior and 168,074 miles on it. That’s a lot of miles (though not necessarily for the age), but given that it’s been fully restored I’m not sure that mileage should be overly concerning. It will affect value though.
Almost any time I step away from the air-cooled 911 market to look at another Porsche I experience a brief moment of surprise about the value available. It’s the case even when all I’ve done is look at water-cooled 911s. Granted, the one we see here, a Black 2008 Porsche 911 Carrera S Coupe with Red leather interior, manual transmission and just 9,715 miles on it, is up for a reserve auction so it is possible the dealer will be asking too much and our sense of value might diminish. But experience tells me that’s rarely the case with the 997 and even if it is I would hardly expect bidding to go crazy. So what we have is a really attractive, and excellent performing, sport coupé that should be attainable for a decent price. This 911 won’t have the value upside of an air-cooled model, but we all need something to actually drive right?
