Let’s check back in on my favorite quirky Porsche: the Soft-window Targa. As I’ve mentioned before, the Soft-window Targa was Porsche’s engineering solution to a problem they anticipated would occur, but never actually did. It’s sort of a window into the development process that even made it into production, if only for a short time. Because Porsche suspected that increasingly stringent safety regulations would render the cabriolet obsolete they sought to get out in front of these regulations and produce a model that would provide both the full open-cockpit feel of a convertible and also the safety of a fixed roll hoop. The Soft-window Targa was both an ingenious and somewhat ridiculous solution to that problem. I say ridiculous because to me these have never really looked right; they’ve always look like someone’s garage project, even if a well executed one. The idea did work, but Porsche quickly introduced the fixed hard-window version with which we are all familiar and the soft-window drifted off into the sunset. We do still see them from time to time and they are generally pretty popular with collectors due to their rarity and, I think, in part because of their interesting engineering. They certainly make for a fine talking piece. For whatever reason we’ve seen quite a few more examples of the 912 of late rather than the 911 and today is no different. Here we have a very pretty Irish Green 1969 Porsche 912 Soft-window Targa, located in California, with what appears to be 109,000 miles on it.
