Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The Grand Prix White 1976 Porsche 930 Turbo Carrera we featured back in May is back up for sale this time with the price reduced by $10K. I don’t know if that reduction will be enough to see it sell, but with its sport seats and wider wheels this 930 has a few interesting options added to what is already a very nice car.
An enduring myth in the car world is the old lady. You know, the car whose current owner – and ideally this is long-term ownership – is an older woman who has only used the car sparingly for shopping trips and other weekly tasks. These cars will be low mileage and have been very well maintained. Many times they are also well documented. The car will have seen almost no inclement weather during her ownership. To be clear, this is not myth in the since that such cars don’t exist – they most certainly do – and seeking them out can lead to some truly good bargains and fantastic cars. Why bring this up here? Because it’s exactly the case we have with this 1976 Porsche 912E located in Oregon. All of the basic typologies are present: 33 years of ownership, driven lightly on the weekends, excellent cosmetic condition, a huge stack of receipts. Perhaps even better? It’s a no reserve auction and bidding remains quite reasonable.
I’m always a little wary of posting cars when the seller gets certain major pieces of information wrong – obviously a lot of issues are raised – but I think here barring that inaccuracy everything else with this 911 looks in good order and given that it’s a no reserve auction, buyers who put in the necessary legwork can know they have a legit shot at the car. The major error: the seller lists this as a 911SC, which it clearly is not based upon, well, everything. Here we have an Emerald Green Metallic 1976 Porsche 911S Targa, located in Oregon, with Cinnamon partial leather interior and 54,953 miles on it. This is a really nice color combination as the Emerald Green exterior – which reminds me of a toned down version of Viper Green – contrasts really well with the Cinnamon interior. And it is on these cars where I really enjoy the Targa. The roll hoop stands out really well and that little bit of openness allows the interior and exterior colors to show against one another to great effect. While I don’t expect it to remain there, with current bidding around $30K this 911S may even be had for pretty reasonable value.
I’m fairly certain that the very first Porsche 912 I featured here at GCFSB was one of the single-year 912E. In the three years since then, I’ve never featured it again. That is in part because the long-hood models are simply much better looking, but also they’ve tended to make more sense when their values are compared with those of their long-hood 911 brethren. Because mid-year 911s haven’t shown nearly the same high values the 912E doesn’t attract our notice quite as much. However, the long-hood 912 has begun to rise enough that they no longer seem like the wonderful values they once did. Perhaps the 912E can begin to make a little more sense. In that regard, I’m curious to have a look at where one might sell. We come across them pretty rarely, and frankly most of them are in pretty bad shape. But the one we see here, a Sepia Brown 1976 Porsche 912E with Tan interior, looks in pretty good shape. It needs work, as the seller readily admits, but the overall condition appears quite sound and perhaps the value it shows will begin to bring these into greater favor.
I’m not sure what it is, but lately I’ve fallen out of love a bit with most BMWs from the last 15 years or so. I think a lot of it is the continual business travel abroad that I do, always seeing and riding in interesting Italian, French and miscellaneous machines that we can’t buy new here in the US market. In my drive to be different, I usually buy my clothes outside of the US, but sadly, I can not do this with cars. What to do then? Create something yourself, such as this 1976 BMW 2002 with the 2.7 liter inline-6 eta engine swapped in for sale in California. It’s rather interesting that someone decided to swap in the longer stroke economy engine, as it’s not the usual go-to engine for a 2002 swap. But the overall package is quite pleasing.
