Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
I love this one. This is a 2001 Mercedes-Benz S500 that has been modified by Brabus with their B11 package and is also armored to a B4 level. I suppose the extra power is needed given the weight. It is finished in the wonderful color of Mystic Blue Designo Metallic and the interior? Oh, wait until you see what they did. I was not prepared for this.
It certainly feels like the Porsche 968 Club Sport is having its moment in the US despite them never being sold here. I’ve seen well over a dozen come up for sale with varying prices, and you can see they aren’t exactly cheap compared to the little brother 968 coupe. Back in February, Carter did a nice deep dive into what makes them so special, and now another one has popped up, with this being a Speed Yellow example in New Hampshire of all places. The good news is that it is not $95,000 like the car back in February.
I’m curious what the legacy of the 911 generation Porsche 911 Speedster will be. Naturally, it is just a tribute in name only to the original 356 Speedsters, and towers over the tiny G-Body and 964 Speedsters. It does have a bit in common with the 997 Speedster, but make no mistake, this is a big, wide car. I give Porsche a ton of credit for building it, but it is much more of a 911 GT3 Touring convertible rather than what you would call a Speedster.
Now with a 992 Speedster rumored to be in the works, does this go down as an iconic model that will also sell for over MSRP? Well …
I think the Porsche Panamera has a problem. No, not a mechanical one, but rather an image problem. The thing with Porsches is that they’ve always been inspirational cars. Something you desire and work towards. Even if it wasn’t a 911, cool people still drove 944s and 928s. Even the 914 was a fun little sports car that certainly wasn’t fast but had a ton of style and uniqueness about them. But with the Panamera, that isn’t true. No kid has a poster of a Panamera on their wall. Nobody goes to the Porsche dealership to see a new Panamera. It exists to compete in a class with other mid-size sedans and hopefully steal sales from people who traditionally bought an E-Class or 5 Series every three years. That is fine, but it surely isn’t in the same league as all the other Porsche cars when it comes to collectability and long-term ownership. So what happens to them?
Sometimes I don’t know what to make of the 964 Porsche 911 Carrera 4. You can certainly appreciate Porsche moving to an all-wheel-drive setup, but that comes with a lot of compromises. The big ones being weight, complexity, and losing a bunch of power from all that driveline. Suddenly you have a peppy 911 turned into a heavier car that needs to divvy up its power to the front wheels. You may feel differently, but I think the juice isn’t worth the squeeze with that. The values seem to disagree with me.
