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This has inadvertently become “Red 911 Week” for me here at GCFSB. While I do enjoy a bright Red 911 my interest lies in a few other areas with the car we see here. Most notably this 993TT provides a nice market contrast to the 996TT featured on Tuesday. It is simply amazing to compare the relative value of these two Turbos and there are very good reasons for the differences that probably are not necessary to regurgitate here. We know what’s driving 993 values. I am also interested in the value of this particular 993TT as the bidding has brought the price up fairly high and it isn’t too often that we see these low-mileage examples come up for an auction; typically they are listed with a sky-high asking price, making it difficult for us to get an accurate gauge on real world values. So this one will be one to keep an eye on: a Guards Red 1996 Porsche 911 Turbo, located in Florida, with Beige interior and 23,805 miles on it.
Stare at a BMW E39 estate long enough and I’m pretty sure you’ll forsake all other wagons, perhaps even all other cars depending on your level of longroof love. This car was just one of those times when the designers got it so right it’s almost scary. The artists over at BMW took one of the greatest sedan designs of all time and molded it into the greatest family hauler of its time. The seller goes so far as to say the 540i Touring is the best looking wagon ever made, now or then. He certainly has a point if you focus on the competition of the era but as far as best looking wagon of all time, I’d have to give that to the beastly RS6 Avant. I will however give the 540i Touring the silver medal without a second thought. The proportions on this car are wonderful and it looks good from any angle, the hallmark of a truly exceptional design.
The positives extend far beyond the appearance of the vehicle, it is equally as impressive inside and under its skin. The 540i Touring is powered by a 4.4 liter V8 churning out 290 hp and 340 lb-ft of torque, not too shabby even by today’s standards. The superb handling dynamics of the E39 sedan carry over to the estate which makes the car even more desirable. It is by no means a canyon carver but from what I’ve read these cars handle with far better precision than one would think, especially since the damn thing weighs in at 5,043 lbs. When you consider that torsional rigidity was increased over the E34 5 series by 40 percent, the reasoning behind the affinity for these cars becomes quite clear. Â It’s a big steel caged missile that bests a car held in high regard for its handling capabilities. Having a hot rod that can haul will always be an attractive proposition to me and many other German car enthusiasts, the hard part is picking the right one. I’m always torn between the quintessential 90’s design of the E34 and the slightly more modern E39 but when push comes to shove, I seem to end up envisioning myself in the latter. I’m not sure why but the addition of a few more curves and rounded edges pushes the overall look of the elongated 5 series from great to all time classic.
Such is the value of the 944 Turbo, it has become almost a cliche on these pages. I suppose that I could go back and count the number of phenomenal 944s that have rolled across my computer, but I’d say that it’s on par with the amount of overpriced, over-hyped E30 M3s and 911s. It seems that we keep saying the same thing, too – “values are certain to rise”, “finding another in this condition will be hard” and the like. Turbocharged performance with a classic Porsche kick, stunning through corners, capable of high-speed long distance rides with ease and even semi-practical as a daily driver, the 944 is arguable the Jackest of all-trades from classic Porsches. From an aesthetic perspective, there were very few changes to the U.S. bound Turbo models; outwardly, all that changed over the run were the wheels and a few special colors. While that hides some updates like ABS and more power under the skin, early and late Turbos have a decidedly different flare. While I enjoy the performance and look of the later “S” specification cars with the forged Club Sport wheels, there’s always something about a clean Fuchs equipped 1986 model. 1987s wouldn’t have the Fuchs option anymore as ABS meant the offset of the wheels was different. It’s one of the very few applications of black wheels that somehow is just perfect:
While the first generation BMW M3 kept a lot of its DTM racing roots in tact, the second generation E36 M3 moved the chains a bit. More power was dialed in but a bit more softness was added to the equation. Gone was the high strung, race derived 2.3 liter four-cylinder powerplant in favor of a six-cylinder engine that was related more closely to its lesser siblings than any other M engine had been before. Still, 240 horsepower was nothing to sneeze at in the mid 1990s. This 1995 M3 for sale in Connecticut represents the first year of US sales for this sports car icon. Its odometer reads less than 50,000 miles and it has the super desirable M Cloth interior.
Vintage Porsches are some of the most collectable cars out there on the market these days, but for those looking to kick up the collector quotient, there are plenty of options. Chief among these options are colors. Porsche is known for its color palette and perhaps the heyday of this was the 1990s, in the twilight of the air-cooled 911 era. One of the most affordable ways into the air-cooled 911 game is to opt for the Targa version. The 964 Targa still had the classic removable roof panel before Porsche switched to a powered glass roof for the 993 Targa. This 1992 Targa is reportedly one of two Mint Green examples in the world. The color might look very 1950s, but I pine for the days of the imaginative hues carmakers used to offer.
