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For all the days I wish I had a Porsche 911 GT3 to crawl into the sport bucket seats and shift my own gears, there are some days when I just don’t want to think at all. For a lot of people, that is most days. A comfortable convertible with an automatic transmission and soft suspension sounds pretty good! If that is your thing, you are in luck given they are by far the least expensive way to get into a modern 911. Today’s car, a 2005 911 Carrera finished in the rare Carmon Red Metallic, checks in with 42,000 miles.
Yellow is not a color that works in every situation. It needs to be the right brand, the right model, and the right shade. A yellow Mercedes-Benz S-Class just doesn’t work. It’s fun and quirky, but not exactly the color you want to look at everyday. However, a yellow Porsche 911? Now we are talking.
This 2018 911 Carrera coupe is just your base model of the 911 line, but still offers a ton of punch from the twin-turbo 3.0-liter flat-six. If you want the extra excitement, this one has the 7-speed manual if shifting gears is your thing. Only one problem – a nearly five-year old base 911 still has an asking price of over sticker. What the … ?
While Porsche might be the king of à la carte optioning, in the early 2000s they offered a series of packages lumping some desirable extras together. The two most commonly seen are the Technic and Comfort packages, which added things like Bose audio, power-adjustable seats, and xenon lights. But one that is rarely seen is the GT package. Basically, this gave you a turned down GT3; you got M030 suspension, Aerokit, and stainless-steel exhaust tips for a visual approximation of the higher-spec car. Today’s example takes that one step further with also GT3-specification 18″ Sport Design wheels and sport seats. It also has only 34,000 miles and yeah, the IMS was replaced. What’s left to complain about?
The 997.1 Porsche 911 is probably my favorite “budget” 911. I wish I could put “budget” in size 82 font quotation marks given we are talking Porsche here, but in the grand scheme of things where a new base 992 C2 is $100,000, your buck doesn’t go very far these days. Now you are probably saying, “What about the 996?” And yes, you are right. But given the very small price difference between the 996 and 997.1, I think it is the perfect sweet spot of having a modern 911 without spending over $50,000 just to get a seat at the table. Today’s 997 has my favorite Lobster Fork wheels and isn’t a boring color. There’s only one problem though – the transmission.
For some reason, I feel like I need a distraction today. Let’s look at some fun cars!
Following on the heels of the Carrera 2.7 MFI, Porsche introduced two hot 911s in 1975. Of course, the big arrival was the 930 Turbo Carrera. But Porsche took components from the 2.7 MFI and the Turbo Carrera, backed out the turbocharger, and produced the car you see here – the 200 horsepower Carrera 3.0, a healthy bump over US-spec cars. They are quite rare, having been built only between 1975 and 1977, and a total of just 3,687 are claimed to have been built. There were numerous changes between the 1976 and 1977 model years, with the ’76 being the more rare of the two. Of course, these were European-specification cars, and as a result were not imported to the US. So it was a bit of a treat to stumble across one of the roughly 1,100 ’76 Coupes (maybe…see below) for sale in Arizona:
