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The legend of the 911 Turbo continues virtually unabated, with the most recent edition of the Turbo S bullying top-tier sport bikes in acceleration duels. Seriously, it does 0-30 in .9 seconds and hits 60 in a touch over 2 seconds. Two. I remember when breaking 5 seconds in the dash was a serious feat. The Turbo is is far from a one-trick pony, though, as it continues to demolish numbers – 100 in 5.3 seconds, the quarter mile in 10.1 at 137. It will hit 180 mph in 21.4 seconds, which is about the same time that it takes a VW T2 to hit highway speed. Of course, there’s also a price to pay…in this case, you’ll be out over $200,000 to leave the dealership in one. But it’s not like earlier generations of 911 Turbo are exactly pokey, right? Take the 2001 911 Turbo. That car disposed of 60 mph in 3.9 seconds with a manual, 12.3 seconds through the quarter mile, and it’ll ‘only’ do 150 mph in 21.6 seconds. Virtually stationary. On the plus side, they’re a whole lot cheaper than the newer 911 Turbos, to the point where people without trust funds could consider purchasing one. And this one certainly seems to fit that bill:
Santa is here and he drives 2003 Porsche 911 Turbo painted in Guards Red. Okay, maybe not. But if he did, I think he’d go classy with a Savannah Beige full leather interior with dark burl wood accents, and of course, the navigation system as well. Wouldn’t you know it, that is what we have today. This 996 Turbo up for sale in Maryland is finished is said spec and the best part, just has 11,000 miles on it. Basically a brand new car and certainly looks the part. Naturally this won’t come cheap, but I’m really surprised at what the ask is on this one.
Here we have a Zanzibar Red 2001 Porsche 911 Turbo Coupe. I have seen Zanzibar in the flesh only once. It’s quite rare, but I think it’s a wonderful color. The German version of its name is Orangerot perleffekt. It’s a somewhat complicated combination though does describe the color pretty well. As the name implies the color is an orange-red blend that has the added effect of pearlescent metallic that Porsche has utilized with a few different colors and especially in the ’90s. I suppose it’s kind of like if we took the old Blood Orange/Tangerine from the ’70s and then gave it some sparkle to somewhat diminish its overall showiness. On a 996TT it looks pretty electric!
I was scrolling through the Excellence Magazine classifieds and it seemed mostly typical. A lot doesn’t stand out and there was a lot that I had seen previously. I started to notice that there were a number of interesting cars available from Bologna, Italy. That seemed a little random. The cars were nice, but for the most part they weren’t really standing out to me given the high prices being asked. And suddenly I saw this one and stopped dead.
Ok, so the high price hasn’t changed, but I’d bet it’s near impossible to look through a list of Porsches and not take especial notice of this 2001 Porsche 911 Turbo Coupe. The color is listed as paint-to-sample Gelb Orange – meaning yellow-orange or perhaps amber orange. As far as I know it isn’t one of Porsche’s official offerings. I have never seen nor heard of it. It’s not quite Signal Orange nor Signal Yellow. The orange hue is a bit deeper than we see with Signal Yellow, but not quite as pronounced as Signal Orange. It sits almost squarely between the two.
Signal Yellow is my favorite Porsche color. It looks amazing on just about any 911 from any period. While it’s not fair to judge based off of a single car, I might actually like this one better.
Perhaps the excellent value has all but dried up. Granted with just under 20K miles on it, the mileage on this Black on Black 2005 Porsche 911 Turbo S is pretty low and that certainly is going to raise the asking price, but at almost $90K it’d be tough to put this one on your performance value radar. But frankly the low mileage 996TT have been moving well up in price for a while now so perhaps this is nothing new. Still, it was fun while it lasted.
The Turbo S itself is a fairly rare and special version of the 996TT. Available only for one year, they more or less were a version of the standard Turbo outfitted with the X50 performance package and PCCB. A few other cosmetic details help differentiate them as well. For some reason the majority of those produced were Cabriolets. A fair number of those Cabriolets came equipped with the Tiptronic S transmission. As such, manual-equipped Turbo S Coupes are always worth a look even if they can be a bit pricey.
