Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
911 mania continues, with more highly original examples turning up seemingly every day – balanced by highly modified, purists-be-damned examples like we have here. Today’s Porsche started life as a ’86 930 Turbo coupe that was heavily modified by Rob Ida Concepts. It’s got RSR-style modifications and is finished in 356-spec Aquamarine, and a host of suspension, wheel, and engine mods back up the racey look. Is this your ideal resto-mod 911?
Oh boy. Today’s car might be a nice refresher on how not the sell a car. In general, the modifications you make to a car do not appeal to other people when it comes time to sell. If they do, they very rarely add any value. Let me repeat that. They do not appeal or add any value to said car. Unless the modifications fix a problem factory, i.e., an aftermarket charge pipe on a BMW 1M after the OEM one explodes, you are better off selling the car as stock. This only increases as the value of the car goes up. $7,000 Honda Civic with wheels, coilovers, and an intake? Someone on Craigslist might bite. Lime green wheels and accents on a 997.2 Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet? Grab a heat gun and start pulling.
The legend of the 911 Turbo continues virtually unabated, with the most recent edition of the Turbo S bullying top-tier sport bikes in acceleration duels. Seriously, it does 0-30 in .9 seconds and hits 60 in a touch over 2 seconds. Two. I remember when breaking 5 seconds in the dash was a serious feat. The Turbo is is far from a one-trick pony, though, as it continues to demolish numbers – 100 in 5.3 seconds, the quarter mile in 10.1 at 137. It will hit 180 mph in 21.4 seconds, which is about the same time that it takes a VW T2 to hit highway speed. Of course, there’s also a price to pay…in this case, you’ll be out over $200,000 to leave the dealership in one. But it’s not like earlier generations of 911 Turbo are exactly pokey, right? Take the 2001 911 Turbo. That car disposed of 60 mph in 3.9 seconds with a manual, 12.3 seconds through the quarter mile, and it’ll ‘only’ do 150 mph in 21.6 seconds. Virtually stationary. On the plus side, they’re a whole lot cheaper than the newer 911 Turbos, to the point where people without trust funds could consider purchasing one. And this one certainly seems to fit that bill:
I had a dream that one day I’ll own a Porsche. Well, to be fair, I have dreams that I’ll own a lot of cars. But a Porsche is definitely on the short list of “top 1,000 potential cars”, anyway. It probably won’t come as any surprise that I’d like to own something not quite like what everyone else owns. And that brings me to today’s car.
The 997 Turbo was introduced in 2006 and, once again, redefined and raised the benchmark for performance in its category. With the best part of 475 horsepower on tap, it produced nearly 10% more power out of the box than the X50 package had only the prior generation. Porsche being Porsche, that was not enough; in 2009, the car was redesigned and the lighter engine was now up to 493 horsepower. And in 2010, Porsche kicked it up another notch with the introduction of the Turbo S.
The Turbo S had all of Porsche’s cutting-edge technology. Carbon-ceramic brakes, the PDK transmission, torque vectoring; if you could name it, it was on the Turbo S. These cars had 520 plus horsepower and 516 lb-ft of torque; pound for pound, these cars were quicker than the supercar Carrera GT had been just a few years earlier. Today, pricing has come down as they’re not the biggest and brightest star anymore, but they still seem pretty special – and this one is just plain gorgeous to me:
I can’t say I’ve seen something like this before. This 1988 Porsche 911 Turbo started off innocent enough, but was converted to a Speedster body and I really don’t know how I feel about it. I actually enjoy the standard G-body Speedster quiet a lot and thankful that Porsche actually produced it. But this? My mind is struggling to process it. I think I know why.
