Today we have a nearly immaculate survivor of the best E21 model BMW brought to America. With some handling and cosmetic upgrades, the 320is was a tidy little package. It’s amazing that after 32 years and 117k miles this Hennarot example looks as showroom fresh as it does. The paint, chrome, interior, engine bay, and even the toolkit all look virtually unused. The E21 generation has its own distinct charm, a bit more quaint than the E30 but still a playful little sports sedan, and this is among the best examples we’ve seen.
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We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.Month: May 2015
When I think of Porsche I think of the 911, then the Boxster and then the Cayman. I’d wager that much of the general public thinks the same way, perhaps with the Cayenne and Panamera thrown in there instead of the Cayman. For those folks who aren’t automotive enthusiasts, any name that isn’t 911 might not ring a bell when talking Porsches and that’s too bad because as we all know, there are a ton of other great models in Porsche’s historical lineup. The question I’ve been asking myself of late is if the 924 is one of those models.
I’ve never been a big fan of any Porsche with a front mounted motor. The Macan Turbo S and Panamera GTS have certainly softened my stance on the matter but overall, I like my Porsches with a mid or rear mounted power plant. The ever expanding bubble of the air-cooled 911 market has given 924 prices a bit of a bump as well and we’re seeing examples trading at premiums usually reserved for cars with a bit more, well, panache. I suppose that of all the 924 models out there, a red 924S with tan seats would be one worth the jacked up price of admission, especially with under 10k on the clock.
CLICK FOR DETAILS:Â 1988 Porsche 924S on eBay
2 CommentsIf you haven’t watched the Petrolicious segment highlighting Road & Track Senior Editor Jason Cammisa’s Volkswagen Scirocco, it’s worth a watch. In this short clip, he discusses how after driving some of the most high-dollar, powerful vehicles on the market currently, he years to step back into his Scirocco for pure driving pleasure. One point Cammisa touched on was the issue of steering feel in the Scirocco and how that kind of experience is lacking in new cars. I couldn’t have agreed more. Thankfully, we can always look back to the modern classics, such as this 1987 Scirocco GTX 16V for sale in The Netherlands. With just under 30,000 miles on the clock, it’s tempting to consider importing this VW and turning back time.
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1987 Volkswagen Scirocco GTX 16V on Mobile.de
Comments closedI still remember trips with my father to the track in the early 1990s. We were on a mission; he wanted to look at every single E28 M5 and was dead-set on getting one. 1993 would be the year he finally would; to me, the amount of money he forked over seemed to be pretty astonishing for a used car, but at that time it was the newest car the family owned. Still, it seemed dated already; hard to consider seemed that at that time it was only 5 years old! But this was the time when ever successive generation of car made huge leaps in terms of innovation; frankly, exterior design and interior design haven’t become nearly as revolutionary as they once were. If you step out of a E28 into an E34, certainly you can recognize the DNA; but one feels very surely designed in the late 1970s, and the other is much more modern. The same can be said outside; clearly the E28 is a great looking design, but by 1988 it was quite dated and the last of the German holdouts for non-integrated bumpers to my knowledge. Even Volkswagen did a better job of hiding and integrated the 5 m.p.h. bumpers! The E34 was really a modern revolution to the 5 series; aerodynamic, refined, luxurious and handsome, it once again reset the bar for the mid-sized luxury sedan. And as it had before, the M5 also set the bar for performance sedans, with the same S38 inline-6 under the hood. It was magical still, even if it felt a little less raw compared to the earlier editions. While the E28 long languished as the unappreciated M product from the 1980s, slowly but surely it has gained more appreciation. Today, it seems the of the original pre-E36 cars, the one remaining value is the E34 – ironically, the upscale replacement for the aging dinosaur E28:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1991 BMW M5 on eBay
3 CommentsPorsche’s Sonderwunsch Programm – now known as Porsche Exclusive – provides customers with a wide array of options to make their car just that extra bit more special. The most well known vehicle to pass through their doors probably was the original Slantnose 930, which took the excessive performance of the 911 Turbo and gave it a front-end to match. Then there are even rarer, but less obviously special ordered, examples like the 993 Speedster, commissioned by Jerry Seinfeld, but most commonly cars ordered through the Sonderwunsch Programm showcase one consistent feature: color. There is, of course, a (significant) cost associated with making such choices and we always enjoy coming across these cars with their unique color combinations, especially in the interior where we are more likely to see greater diversity among the various trim pieces, carpets, and seats. Occasionally these Special Wishes cars are tame with only an external color choice that most may not even realize was specially ordered. In other cases they can be downright wild – for better or worse. The one we see here, a 1996 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe, located in Alabama, appears to have found a nice middle ground with plenty of details that set it apart from any standard 911, but without going crazy. The color combination may not be to everyone’s liking, but I would assume that would have more to do with individual color preferences rather than the particular choices made here. I think the choices made here were fantastic: