Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
I love a good story, and I love even more when those good stories involve Porsche 911 Turbo S cars. This wonderful 1997 Turbo S for sale in Munich, Germany is the reportedly press car for all of the 993 Turbo S literature and events thus built with some very special parts. Boy, do I love these cars.
For me, the 993 generation of the Porsche 911 Turbo just gets it right. Clearly I’m not alone in feeling this way given the way values have gone in the past year and a half or so. There will never be another aircooled 911 Turbo unless the air is coming from fans cooling giant battery packs. Even watching those old MotorWeek reviews, they even went so far as to call the 993 Turbo “one of the most capable road cars ever built.” I certainly don’t disagree given over 25 years later it can still call itself “fast.” However, is it worth the massive buy in and higher-than-average repair bills?
I suppose one of the great things about cars is there is always more to learn. Today’s car is one of those moments where I was pleasantly surprised to learn something totally new. You might be looking at that photo above and saying “Yes, that is a 1997 911 Turbo S.” I also as a reasonable person with Porsche knowledge jumping to that conclusion also. Why? All the 993 Turbo S cars have unique venting in the rear quarter panels I thought were only used on that model. Not even the standard 993 Turbo has it. Well, the car we are looking at today is a 1997 911 Carrera S. How did it get those vents in the front of the rear wheel arches? Apparently, it was a very rare option. If you ordered “X79 – Side air vents on rear wings” you could have those little vents, but considering this is the first non-Turbo S I’ve ever seen them on, I’d say they are pretty rare.
About a month ago I took a look at a 2003 Mercedes-Benz CLK55 AMG that you wouldn’t think to be all that rare, but was actually just one of about 750 cars for the model year. Keeping with the rare Mercedes-Benz coupe thing, I wanted to rewind the clock back to the mid-1990s and check out a car that is even rarer — the S600 Coupe. Towards the end of the W140 run, Mercedes really cut down production on the V12 cars for North America much more than you would think. This 1997 up for sale in Georgia is just one of 348 for the model year. The lesser S500 Coupe was nearly triple that number with 933 cars imported, while 3,510 S500 sedans were sold in 1997. Now that these are reaching full-on classic status, demand for them is high and so are prices for the low-mile cars.
I’m all for wild interiors. Give them to me all. If it is between beige or turquoise, I’ll take the turquoise any day of the week. Although the caveat here is that it has to make sense. I don’t want any Ronald McDonald-looking interior or some creation from “Crazy Rick’z House of Leather” that the fourth owner decided to go with. Today’s car, a very rare 1997 911 Turbo S, has one of those wild interiors. Although different, it misses wildly on one thing.
