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It’s always great to hear from a reader who appreciates the blog or just sends in a link to a neat car that they spotted. While I don’t always take enough time to acknowledge them, I’ll let you know now that we always are thankful that you’re out there thinking of us! But it’s really special when one of our readership buys a car that we featured, and last fall that exact thing happened with this cool 1984 Volkswagen Jetta Turbo Diesel:
1984 Volkswagen Jetta GL Turbo Diesel
I caught up with its new owner, Jesse, who was kind enough to share his story and some images of the car!
I don’t get to feature these 911s a lot. That is partly due to there not being a ton of them around these days, but also those few that I do see never seem quite right. They’re either not in great condition or simply priced much too high, and while high prices aren’t typically something to dissuade me from writing up an air-cooled Porsche I usually end up passing them by. They just sit in a funny place in the market.
This one doesn’t seem to possess those issues, though even here where the price is at least somewhat reasonable I think it makes for a pretty tough sell. Here we have a Grand Prix White 1974 Porsche 911 Carrera Targa with Midnight leatherette interior and a reported 68,124 miles on it. These U.S market 2.7-liter Carreras must be distinguished from their much more expensive European counterparts, which shared their MFI engine with the 1973 Carrera RS. Those 911s were basically a Carrera RS Touring with impact bumpers. These 911s are not quite that. However, that lack of a shared pedigree means prices are far lower and while their collector potential also is a good bit lower, pricing is at least such that they can make for a worthwhile consideration for those who desire a ’70s 911.
The 2001 Mercedes-Benz S500 had the job of carrying on the legacy of being the best sedan in the world for the past 40 or so years. It failed miserably. Not only was the design a soft, mushy shape, but the materials inside were less than stellar. Thanks to unproven things like Airmatic suspension (as opposed to hydraulic), reliability wasn’t great and legacy buyers were jumping ship for cars and SUVs from rival brands. Don’t get me wrong, people still bought these but the S-Class was no longer than the standard of full-size luxury and technology and more-so just another blob sedan in a now very crowded market. So why am I featuring such a forgettable car today? Well the interior, of course.
In many of my features of newer Porsches the focus has been on the exterior color. Usually one of Porsche’s historic colors selected as a paint-to-sample option. This one isn’t really about the exterior color, even though Lava Orange is quite nice. This one is more about the interior color and the way it combines with that orange exterior. It also has a true manual transmission rather than PDK and that in itself is a rare thing on these new Targas. So I guess we could say that I find the total package here quite appealing even if the individual pieces aren’t incredibly special in their own right. This was a solidly put together Targa and one that remains unique enough to stand out even within the rarefied air of PTS builds.
So what do we have: a Lava Orange 2017 Porsche 911 Targa 4, located in Texas, with a Saddle Brown leather interior, 7-speed manual transmission, and 3,307 miles on it. The interior also features Lava Orange accents through deviated stitching along with painted console and trim pieces. It comes together quite well!
One of the greatest crimes in automotive history were the 5 mph bumpers mandated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1973. As a result, our favorite cars from Europe went from being great designs to cars with massive underbites. Arguably no car was hit harder by this mandate than the Mercedes-Benz R107. A great, boxy design was totally transformed because of these massive bumpers. Thanks to another ridiculous rule at the time that required sealed beam headlights, the R107 design was basically decimated. Thankfully, there are enthusiasts out there who told the NHTSA where to go and swapped back on the slim bumpers and non-sealed beam headlights. This 1986 560SL up bid in California is one of them. Thank goodness.
