Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
At the beginning of the month, we took a look at a restored 1969 Volkswagen Beetle that almost seemed a bit over restored, given this car’s original intention as basic transportation for the people. Now comes along another restored Beetle of similar vintage, this time a 1968 example in Sahara Beige. If the aforementioned Diamond Blue Beetle was a bit over the top for your tastes and OEM is your thing, you’ll want to scope out this Bug.
As Porsche began to expand the range of its 911 offerings it released, for one year only, the 911L. That year was 1968. The L, naturally, stood for Luxury and marked these models as similar to the S in its trim and other fittings, but with the standard 130 hp engine found in the previous 911. It would be further differentiated by the introduction of the 911T, Porsche’s entry-level 911, which utilized a 110 hp engine and featured fewer of the creature comforts found in the L and S models. But one year later the L was gone, replaced by the mid-level 911E. That makes the L a bit of a rarity, though their values have never really took off any more so than other 911s of this vintage, and certainly not to the degree of the S. Still, like the E, these offer upgrades over the entry-level T without having to pay the sky-high prices for a S. Buyers looking for driver-quality examples could certainly find worse alternatives. The example featured here, a 1968 Porsche 911L Coupe with 105,572 miles, originally came in a special order Dark Green Metallic, but now sits in what appears to be Grand Prix White.
The peculiarity of the Soft-window Targa provides us a window into the way innovative designs and attempts to adapt can end up as short diversions that ultimately fail. Very few of these cars were ever made and fewer still exist today. Out of some concern for the continued viability of the convertible because of increasingly stringent safety regulations, Porsche engineered some Targa versions of the 911 and 912 with an attached roll-hoop and folding rear window, hence “soft-window”. With its combination of folding rear window and removable top these cars provided multiple ways to enjoy one’s open-top drive, yet it was always going to be more fussy to deal with than either a hard-window Targa or a Cabriolet. After a few years of production, the Targa was reverted exclusively to the hard-window version and the Soft-window exists as sort of an interesting anomaly. Ultimately, it seems these soft-windows showcase some of the difficulty the Targa has enjoyed more generally. Still, they were an interesting attempt at a solution to potential problems, even if those problems never materialized to the degree Porsche expected. The example we have here is a 1968 Porsche 912 Soft-window Targa, located in California, with 109,125 miles on it.
There are times when I feel like we feature quite a few auctions of a pre-1974 911 and I forget how truly rare it is to come across a quality example of these cars. Still here we are on back-to-back weeks featuring a 1968 Porsche 911 Sunroof Coupe, though this time in a lovely Irish Green exterior over Tan interior. The car featured here was originally a Sportomatic, Porsche’s early attempt at producing a clutchless manual, but the owner asked his dealer to convert it to the full manual transmission. There are some details to work out with regard to the work done on the car – perhaps specifically the statement of a “new interior” – but overall we have a good looking early 911 that has spent its days in California and sits with very reasonable mileage given the year.
Sometimes auctions on early Porsches seem to have almost as many questions as answers. The car we see here is a Steel Blue 1968 Porsche 911 Sunroof Coupe, located in Vermont, with just under 70K miles. For the 1968 model year Porsche produced 3 variants of the 911: the T, L, and S. It was also the last year of the short-wheel-base 911 as Porsche increased the wheelbase for the 1969 model year in an attempt to control some of the 911’s tail-happy and skittish nature. So which variant is this particular car? That hasn’t been made clear by the seller, but according to the VIN (and the VIN decoders I’ve come across on the internet) this should be a 911S. If any of our readers can provide some clarity here, please don’t hesitate to comment. The values of these early variants tend to vary significantly by model so a precise determination will be key in this case. Otherwise, what we have is a SWB 911 that has been in the hands of its current owner since 1990, who has faithfully attempted to restore the car over time, though there is a degree to which this restoration has been done a bit piecemeal.