Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
Time for another Honorable Mention Roundup of the cars we just didn’t have a chance to get to this week. In addition to a few reader submissions in this edition, I found a few affordable performance options that caught my eye. Which is the one we should have spent more time on?
This one will take some sussing out. Let’s start with what seems definite: here we have a Slate Grey Metallic 1993 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6 with just under 40K kilometers on it (~25K miles). It has a couple of nice options from Porsche Exclusive including a two-tone black and grey interior with sport seats and rootwood accents. While the rootwood doesn’t necessarily fit the performance character of the Turbo 3.6, this is one of the few instances where I do think it provides a nice contrast and looks pretty good. They didn’t overdo it and that is most definitely to this 911’s benefit. All around this is a gorgeous looking example and the more I come across it the more I enjoy Slate Grey (whether metallic or not) on the 964. Now for the big question: the seller, which is a pretty well regarded classic car dealer in England, has listed it as one of the very few examples of the Turbo S that Porsche produced. But is it?
With the 993, Porsche took a decidedly different path when it came to the Targa model. Gone was the famous roll hoop and targa panel over the front seats in favor of a large glass roof that slid open and concealed itself behind the rear window. The traditional Targa profile reappeared with the current generation 991, with a complex mechanism to handle the removable top. Ever one to favor simplicity, I could only imagine what such a mechanism would cost should it fail years down the road. The 993 Targa had what some would consider a large sunroof which retracted behind the rear window. Some complained of decreased rear visibility due to the glass panel’s tint, but others reveled in the open air enjoyment provided while keeping much of the Carrera’s signature roofline in tact. This 911 Carrera Targa for sale in New York is a one-owner example owned by a member of the Porsche Club of America, showing less than 40,000 miles on the odometer.
In the pantheon of very striking cars this Ferrari Yellow 1994 Porsche 911 Speedster has to rank pretty high. It doesn’t have the wild looks of the Italian counterparts from which it got its color, but it is nonetheless an eye-catching machine that I doubt would go unnoticed for long on any street. Furthermore, we really don’t see many Speedsters in these sorts of colors. They tend to be much more subdued. Some may look at this Speedster and think there is good reason for those typically subdued hues, but if you’re going to go for a rare car, then why not go all the way? As a potential part of any collection this Speedster should garner a good bit of attention.
We naturally have a certain predilection toward rare cars here at GCFSB even if most of the cars, especially those made by Porsche, remain well beyond the means of those of us frequenting these pages. But that doesn’t make them any less cool to see. The model we see here, a 1991 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Lightweight, was one I did not even know existed. The ad description is long, but it does a good job of providing the genesis and details of the build for the 964 C4 Lightweight. To summarize: the interior was completely stripped of everything that wasn’t essential, race seats and roll bar were added, and the weight savings were completed with aluminum front and rear deck lids and plexiglass side windows. Altogether 770 lbs were removed from the car, making it lighter than its rear-drive brother the Carrera RS. Mechanically, these were fit with an AWD system derived from the 953 Paris-Dakar rally car with controls to adjust the differential bias front to rear and left to right. A single-plate clutch, light flywheel, and shorter gear ratio would help deliver the power, and power itself was up to 265 hp in standard form (the example we see here is said to have an uprated version of the engine producing 300 hp). The 964 C4 Lightweight was in almost every way a racer designed simply to meet the demands of some enthusiastic collectors. What is perhaps the best part: from the outside the C4 Lightweight looks like a 964 with a whale tail and lowered suspension. There’s very little to suggest everything at play here. It’s wonderful!
