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Getting into the world of historic Porsche race cars is fairly easy. All you really need to do is have a seriously large bank account, and virtually any day of the week a historically important factory race car will be for sale somewhere in the world. What that means most recently in the market is that when you’re viewing those great classic 911 silhouettes from Spa and Le Mans to Laguna Seca and Watkins Glen at classic motorsports events is that you’re looking at – at minimum – multi-hundred thousand dollar vehicles with multi-hundred thousand dollar restorations being run on liquified trust funds. The costs of running vintage cars hard are simply staggering. However, there’s a second tier of vehicles that gets you accepted into the lofty Elysium of vintage racers – period cars that were run by privateers. Today’s 911S is one such car; built in period and raced against the full factory efforts, it has some pretty significant names and achievements attached to it:
For some time, one of the most popular race car trends with Porsche 911s was updating them; for the most part, people would take 1970s and early 1980s 911s and dress then in 964, 993 or in rare cases even the 996. With prices the way that they are on early 911s today, that may seem sacrilegious to many! So it’s not hugely surprising that with the surge in prices of early 911s – in particular, some of the rare racing models – increasingly instead of updating many modifying the venerable track tools have instead started to backdate the cars to earlier looks. Without a doubt, one of the most popular looks in the 911 scene is the RS and RSR models from the early 1970s – a time that really defined the Porsche legend as the defacto street to track weapon. Today’s example is one such backdated car; starting with a 1986 911, the builder selected the early 70s RSR look with IROC body panels. But the transformation of this 80s icon is more than skin deep, as underneath we find a 964-sourced 3.6 flat-6 good for 250 horsepower:
Backdating an air-cooled 911 to resemble one of its much-beloved long-hood brethren has become quite popular and it’s always a joy to see the various ways in which builders choose to pick and choose from the 911 parts bin in order to create these special cars. The nature of the 911 market means these are never an inexpensive proposition as sourcing the car from which to create the build can itself set you back quite a bit. When done well a builder can affect quite a transformation and produce a car the details of which force us to pause over every angle to get a sense of just how everything has been put together. The car we see here, a 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe backdated to resemble a RSR, certainly is not perfect, but it possesses the vintage look of an early 911 combined with the softer curves of the more modern designs and has just enough detail without coming across as over the top.
About two weeks ago, I wrote up two ex-Turbo 911 racers that took the builds in different directions; one, an ultimate street car with track potential and a crazy V8 LS7 swap, and the other a more traditional RSR-inspired PCA club racer. Well, today we’re back at it with another ex-930 that has been converted to more traditional RSR style, with a big IROC whale tail and some pretty trick Jongbloed wheels, along with some Skoal Bandit/Group 44 inspired decals. What do you think?
So you want a classic 1960s/1970s Porsche 911. Well, it’s not a great time to jump on the bandwagon. We’ve watched prices on these early 911s jump to unprecedented levels – values on models such as the 1973 Carrera RS have tripled in the past year, where now Hagerty Insurance values a top condition example at $800,000. So, sufficed to say you won’t be getting one anytime soon; and even if you could afford it, then what? Would you feel comfortable taking your million dollar Porsche for a stroll with all those Camry “drivers” more intent on the latest recipe on NPR than signaling to change the three lanes over the to exit they just missed? Don’t worry, they’ll back up to take it. So, what’s an enthusiast to do? Well, many have been inspired by the model of Singer; backdating modern cars to look like older and more valuable examples. As a side bonus, you get improved performance and luxuries that the early cars just didn’t have – items that honestly make the drive more enjoyable. A few weeks ago, I saw a Singer-inspired car at Lime Rock Park that just looked awesome – an updated RS that was dependable and, more importantly, a car that could be driven and enjoyed on a reasonable budget. Today, there’s a similar example for sale on Ebay:
