Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
By the time the 1990s dawned, the tap on gray market imports to the US had been closed off. However, a few cars still trickled in, especially via our neighbors to the north, Canada. This 1991 Mercedes-Benz 500SEC for sale in New Brunswick is a one family car, having been shipped from Germany to Canada. It looks to have led a pampered life, with under 40,000 miles on the clock.
Here at GCFSB we pride ourselves on featuring many of the most interesting German vehicles available on the second-hand market. The particular car we see here, a 1968 Porsche 911L Soft-window Targa Police Car, surely is the most interesting car I will have featured to date. It won’t be the fastest, or even the prettiest, though it’s certainly the rarest (since we cannot get more rare than 1 of 1) and it’s definitely the most peculiar. This Targa Police car was given the full treatment: double rear-view mirrors, a red police light affixed to the Targa’s roll hoop, illuminated STOP signal in place of the rear license plate, along with the electronics to control those lights and the siren. The look was completed with Dutch-inspired Tangerine over White paint and German “Polizei” script along the doors, hood and rear deck lid. It is, quite frankly, one of the most curious 911s we’re likely to come across and that hardly even includes the fact that it is a ’68 911L Soft-window Targa, an already very rare and interesting 911 in itself. It’s fantastic!
I’ve written up a couple Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG wagons in my time with GCFSB; even got fooled by a E500 doing a damn good AMG…
Comments closed
It seemed that Volkswagen was undergoing a bit of an identity crisis in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With the perennial Beetle getting a bit long in the tooth, VW was seeking a way to go from strength to strength in the sales race with a new model. How to go about that, however, was anything but clear. The Type 4, or 411 as it was known, was VW’s largest passenger car so far, available in a two or four door form with a fastback style or as a 3-door Variant. Just over 100,000 of these 411s were sold in a four year span in the US. That’s far from a sales flop but pales in comparison to the almighty Beetle. By 1974, the Passat, or Dasher as it was known in the US, would arrive on the scene and thus would begin the slow march towards the end of air-cooled engine production.
It’s rare to spot a 411 on the roads these days in any kind of condition, but this one for sale in New Hampshire has escaped the ravages of New England winters and Father Time. Rarely do you see one this good come up for sale.
Ah the late 1990’s, what a great time to be alive. I was in middle school, enjoying things like playing Quake II and Goldeneye 007, perhaps the occasional R rated movie if the right person was taking tickets at the local two plex. The US economy was booming thanks to a rapidly expanding industry related to a little thing called “the world wide web” and there were a whole lot of folks out there with disposable income who had no idea how to spend it. Like any good automaker, the folks at Mercedes-Benz worried about these youngsters with more money than sense and set about finding a way to capitalize on their new found wealth. The result was a juiced up W202 C-Class, the first car to be completely assembled by AMG and the first to feature a Mercedes Benz V8. The C43 AMG would set the stage for the next generation of AMG vehicles and without this car who knows if we’d have ever gotten the glorious C63 AMG.
