Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The Pastel Yellow 1997 Porsche 911 Targa we featured back in late March remains for sale. The price is still very high, but at least it has been lowered by $21K. Still, it’s a very pretty (and rare) color on a 993 with very low miles, the first of this Targa design and last of the air-cooled Targas, so there is sure to be some interest if the price can be brought into more reasonable territory.
This makes for a few days in a row of very expensive 911s, but I wanted to throw this one out there as another alternative to yesterday’s GT3 RS 4.0 for those shopping in these high-priced waters. The asking price here is another step up from the RS and a Turbo S is aimed directly at collectors, but just as the GT3 RS 4.0 looks like the last manual GT3 RS, the 993 Turbo S stands as the last air-cooled Turbo. While these days the Turbo S seems an almost ubiquitous part of the 911 lineup, this was not always the case and the early examples of these models have been very highly prized. Whether in the guise of the extremely rare variants of the 964 Turbo or the still rare 993 Turbo we see here, the Turbo S raised Porsche’s ethos of performance and luxury to the nth degree. For the 993 the combination of twin-turbocharging and all-wheel drive also raised the bar for usability. The rear-drive monster was now somewhat tamed, or put more charitably the Turbo was now more exploitable for the everyday driver. Here we have the classic combination of Black and Tan on a 1997 Porsche 911 Turbo S, located in Cleveland, with just 9,307 miles on it. While not as absolutely eye-catching as some other examples we’ve featured, there is a classic look to this black Turbo that certainly will strike broad appeal.
The E36 M3 Sedan holds a very special place in my heart and played a large part in turning my attention away from Audis and VWs towards BMW M-cars. Colloquially known as the M3/4/5, one car specifically turned the tide: an Estoril Blue M3 with 4-doors, 5-speeds, and some Dinan bits that was the fastest car I’d driven up to that point. It was smooth, connected, and aggressive, packed in a beautiful sedan that is subtle enough to blend in but aggressive enough to put plenty of distance between it and the base-model E36. I had a chance to buy that car a few years back with 47k miles for $14k but I didn’t have the money. A few years on, this red on black example with similar miles is asking almost $11k more. The red/black isn’t quite as sexy as the Estoril/Caramel combo, but the M Double Spoke II wheels are personal favorites. Despite (or because of?) high production numbers, most E36 M3s have been run hard and disrespected. This one looks to be in great shape but not perfect. Are low-mile E36 M3s chasing the E30s, or is this seller hitting the pipe?
Time to look at another infrequently selected color on a popular affordable enthusiast car! I’ve run through a few different shades of M3 Sedans recently and today another one graces our pages. It’s been a bit since we’ve looked at either Daytona Violet or the replacement Techno Violet Metallic but they’re hues I love to see every time. Unlike last week’s automatic Byzanz Metallic, this Techno Violet sedan is a sought after manual sedan and thankfully doesn’t have the rear spoiler which often looks clunky on the design. It’s also one of only a claimed 227 manual Techno Violet sedans:
The very rare Cobalt Blue Metallic 1997 Porsche 911 Turbo S we featured back in October remains up for sale. The original auction was bid to $295,100, a figure a good bit below where we’d expect it to sell and far below the seller’s current asking price of $795,000. Given the rare color and other features of this Turbo S a high price is to be expected, but I feel like the more likely result will lie somewhere between those two numbers. That puts us pretty far away from a sale here, but for one of the more interesting examples we’ve come across we can expect that it will garner quite a bit of attention nonetheless.
