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Month: January 2018

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Tuner Tuesday: 1997 Porsche 911 Turbo – RUF Turbo R Conversion

Yesterday I featured a regular 993. It was very pretty. Today we’re going to take that design and turn everything up. The performance, the look,…, the price. But I have to say this one isn’t any less pretty than the other one. It’s a heck a lot more aggressive looking though.

The 993 Turbo already does great things with the 993’s lines. With a couple of small tweaks by RUF it looks even better. We all know RUF GmbH. In the tuner world they may be the most well known name around. For Porsches they are certainly the most highly regarded. Unlike some Porsche tuners that followed more in the footsteps of Porsche’s racing designs, RUF stuck mostly with subtle modifications to its road cars. The uninitiated might not have even known the car had been modified. While few Porsches could ever qualify as sleepers, a RUF almost could, assuming that others mistook it for a “regular” Porsche.

For the 993 RUF gave us the Turbo R: 490 twin-turbocharged horses directed to all four wheels through a 6-speed manual transmission. That’s 82 more hp than a standard 993TT and still 66 hp more than the Turbo S. Heck it’s even well up on power compared to the GT2 all while retaining a healthy does of civility. And here’s one such beast for sale!

This 911 began life as an Arctic Silver 1997 Porsche 911 Turbo before undergoing a conversion to the RUF Turbo R. At 37,500 the mileage is quite low, the condition looks great, and it’s said to come with its paperwork.

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1997 Porsche 911 Turbo – RUF Turbo R Conversion on eBay

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1973 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 4.5

I never get tired of a really nice Mercedes-Benz W108/W109. From the 2.5 liter up through the legendary 6.3 and with a bunch of options in between, you can get your fix just about any way you want with them. Honestly, this thing is so handsome it could have a tiny OM615 that makes 55 horsepower and I’d still be happy with it. The square contours on this thing are all sized perfectly but at the same time doesn’t feel like a small car. Despite only having an eight year production run from 1965 to 1973 and pumping out over 380,000 examples, these sedans have stuck around. You can find them in almost every condition for almost every price. Today’s example, a 1972 280SE 4.5 up for sale in California, is one of those better ones.

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1973 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 4.5 V8 on eBay

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2006 Audi A6 Avant S6 Conversion

Why not kick off the New Year with a few fantastic wagons? Sounds like a good idea to me!

A few years ago, I looked at a pretty tempting bit of forbidden fruit – a C6 Audi S6 Avant. Loaded up with enough tech to employ half of Palo Alto, the C6 moved the concept of the C5 S6 Avant a few notches ahead. The jump from C4 to C5 was 113 horsepower strong, and the next generation nearly matched that. With 95 more horses to net 435, the new C6 had one more gear, more space and even more luxury than the car it replaced. But thanks to very slow sales of the prior generation in the U.S. market, it never came here. Although they’re at least twelve years old now, that means we’re still a solid teenager away from seeing an easily legal import here.

Or are we?

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2006 Audi A6 Avant S6 Conversion of Seattle Craigslist

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1997 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe

This car grew on me quite quickly. When I first saw it I thought it was a nice enough 993 Coupe. The condition looks good and the mileage is pretty low. As I’ve looked at it more it’s not so much that any of those thoughts have changed, but rather that its overall appearance is much better than I thought. I believe I’ve said a few times before that I find white to be a color that works particularly well on some cars, while on others I don’t like it at all. I have never been able to figure out what makes such a stark difference to me – and I do think this is very much a personal thing.

As you’d probably guess I’m finding white to be particularly nice on the 993 and, of course, on this 993. Some of the 993 Turbos I’ve seen in white are even better! In this case it is the combination of interior and exterior that are really attracting me. This is a Glacier White 1997 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe, located in California, with Cashmere Beige interior and 58,690 miles on it.

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1997 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe on eBay

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1988 BMW 535iS

The main problem with yesterday’s 745i is that, while on its own it’s a neat car, you can grab many other more desirable BMWs from the same period for less money. The perfect case in point is today’s 535iS. Effectively, this was the U.S. version of the M535i – a M5 without the M88/3, for all intents and purposes. BMW sold about 10,000 M535i models making it a quite successful recipe. Equivalently, the iS model was specific to the North American market and gave you the look of the U.S.-bound M5, with deeper front and rear spoilers, M-crafted sport suspension and sport seats. It, too, was quite popular – between 1987 and 1988, just over 6,000 examples sold in the United States alone, and of those, a little more than half were the preferred manual variant.

While M5 prices have gone somewhat crazy, the 535iS remains quite affordable to most enthusiasts. You get superlative handling, great looks, fantastic reliability and build quality at a fraction of the price of the Motorsport version. And when you add a few choice mods, boy do they look the part:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1988 BMW 535iS on eBay

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