Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
I promise everyone, this is the last Mercedes-Benz R107 for awhile. I am just as sick of writing about them as you are reading about them, but I want to go full circle and look at this 1984 280SL up for sale in California. This European-spec car is the low man on the totem R107 pole but that doesn’t mean it is the worst of the bunch, at least not in my eyes. It uses the 2.8 liter M110 inline-6 that puts out a respectable (for the times) 182 horsepower and 176 lbâ‹…ft of torque.
I promise that this post wasn’t by design, but rather is completely a coincidence that it follows hot on the heels of the neat supercharged E34 540i 6-speed from yesterday. How do you possibly trump that potent hot rod? Well, starting with a M5 is probably a good bet.
If the E34 was a potent athlete, the E39 comes across as a consummate professional. It was immediately the new benchmark for sports sedans once again, and when BMW finally did make the call to bring a M5 to market they produced what many consider to be the definitive driver’s car in super sedan form. Whatever you had from the period, the M5 was just plain better. With 394 horsepower kicking out of is snorting S62 V8 and mated solely to a 6-speed manual transmission, it was hard to conceive how that package could possibly be improved upon.
That didn’t dissuade Steve Dinan, though. His S2 package fixed a car that wasn’t broken according to Car and Driver. Power was up to a massive 470 yet the car was still naturally aspirated. Bigger, better intake was met with bigger, better exhaust, and the whole package was kept up with bigger, better suspension and slowed down with bigger, better brakes. It was…well, bigger and better. 0-60 was dispatched in a tick over four seconds and it would do a standing quarter-mile in 12.7 seconds. These numbers won’t scare a Dodge Demon, granted, but are still really respectable today.
Of course, if “respectable” isn’t quite enough for you and you really need to surprise that Demon driver…
Rare color or undesirable color? It is a question that presents itself pretty much any time I come across a Porsche in one of the many less common colors Porsche has produced. Of course, in some cases a color may be undesirable during its period of production and then become more desirable years later as preferences shift. Yellows and greens kind of come in and out of favor in this way, likewise the many variants of brown from the late-70s and early-80s suffer under a reversal in popularity.
In the case of the car here, an Ipanema Blue Metallic 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS, located in Washington, we may have one of those situations. Available in the final years of 997 production, we see very few 911s painted in this color. Anecdotally it isn’t difficult to find stories of buyers getting nice discounts to take them off of a dealer’s hands after sitting on the lot for too long. Though a standard color offering its rarity does seem related to its desirability, or lack thereof. We haven’t moved far from its original production date so I’m not sure enough time will have passed for preferences to have changed. However, Ipanema Blue isn’t too far removed from a variety of lighter blues Porsche produced in the ’80s and those cars don’t seem to elicit much derision. So is it a color that might become more desirable or one that, like quite a few colors over the years, will fade away to be forgotten?
The M Coupe has moved from cult legend into one of the most desirable M products produced. Late production S54 equipped models can top up to $60,000 asking prices. Add in a rare color and great combination, and they’re all the more desirable. While not quite a 1:1, the M Coupe is like the Porsche 964, and the S54 models are the RS America of the lineup.
For most of us, that means if you want a ‘Clownshoe’ you’ll need to look towards early production when they were equipped with the venerable S52. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as lower running costs and higher production numbers mean much lower asking prices. Still, it’s not unusual to see atmospheric asks, such as this 2000 M Coupe in Estoril with Estoril leather. With only 56,000 miles on the clock, the seller wants $39,900. While it’s not likely that number will be even close to realized, good luck convincing them of that.
Yet occasionally a nice one pops up in a no reserve auction format to give us plebeians a chance to own a legend. So here we go, with this ’99. It’s the same Estoril/Estoril combination as above, which is fairly desirable – one of just 313 imported in this pallet. Condition looks very good and there are some high quality modifications, but is there a catch?
Back to basics for me here. This isn’t a special model, nor is it a special color or equipped with unique options. It’s not even terribly modern. In that regard it’s a relatively basic ’80s 911, but that does not mean it isn’t an exceptional example of what it is. This is a Guards Red 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe, located in Pennsylvania, with what I believe is a Linen leather interior. The condition looks excellent, the mileage, which comes in at just 45,085, is quite low and it appears to be almost entirely original. The only obvious non-original equipment is the aftermarket radio, but the original unit is said to come with the car. We aren’t shown the option sticker nor the CoA so we can’t say for certain that the equipment we see is its original specification, but it is purported to be and we can hope that a little more thorough perusal will lead us to one of those items. Overall, this appears to be a very nice example of one of my favorite air-cooled 911s.
