Warning!
We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.
This site contains Ebay partner affiliate links, which may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.
I have been enjoying my romp through the Porsche paint spectrum and I will continue with that theme with today’s car. Love or hate these colors, I think we can all agree that Porsche does an excellent job of keeping interesting options available to allow customers to set their cars apart from the many silver, black, white, and red vehicles of the world. On the air-cooled market these cars can be particularly noteworthy. This brings us to the car we see here, another paint-to-sample color that certainly will not appeal to everyone, but which we so rarely will ever come across: an Amaranth Violet 1996 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S, located in Maryland, with 43,000 miles on it. Like the last paint-to-sample car I featured the original buyer selected a previously available color for this Carrera so there should be a sticker to verify the color itself. Any shade of purple is rare on a car and its variants make up some of the fewest offerings Porsche has made available. There is one consistent feature amongst them: they are incredibly eye catching. Like with orange, there is almost no subtlety to these cars and draped over the curvy figure of the 993 C4S Amaranth Violet should attract even more attention.
The rebirth of the S provided some renewed invigoration to the 911 lineup, ironically just as the days of the 911’s air-cooled engine were coming to a close. It had been nearly 20 years since an S badged 911 had rolled out of the factory and Porsche chose during the initial re-entry into the market to offer it only as a Carrera 4. These cars were quickly dubbed the “Turbo-look” as they shared the wider rear body and braking of the Turbo, but retained the standard 993’s naturally aspirated 3.6 liter flat-6. A year later a Carrera 2S would hit showrooms, providing customers an abundance of choice when choosing their 911. At that point you could get just about whatever configuration you wanted. Here we will look at an example of each of the S models, which share some significant similarities outside of that basic model designation, though with one significant difference between them. Similar color, similar mileage and they appear to be in similar condition. We’ll start with the Carrera S:
The Aventurine Green Metallic 1996 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S we featured in early January is still looking for a new owner and is back up for auction. Pricing remains more or less the same, though the seller has now provided some leeway by making it a No Reserve Auction with a starting bid of $72,500, while keeping the Buy It Now price at $75,000. I can’t help but think that the lack of quality pictures is holding this car back a bit, but at the moment the ad remains unchanged.
The below post originally appeared on our site January 2, 2015:
I am consistently amazed by the value many examples of the 993 can command. I fully understand the reasons these beautiful 911s command such values, but that doesn’t stifle my amazement. That these cars would attract the attention of collectors was virtually guaranteed once Porsche decided to switch to a water-cooled engine in the 996 and given such an attraction the lower-production models have always garnered quite a bit of interest, especially low-mileage examples such as this one. Here we have a Guards Red 1996 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S, located in North Carolina, with a scant 18,900 miles on it. The C4S is, effectively, the Turbo-look version of the 993, though in this case it doesn’t complete that look as the C4S lacked the Turbo’s rear wing. But with braking sourced from the Turbo, along with those wider rear fenders, these come pretty close to replicating the look, though not the performance, of the last of the air-cooled Turbos.
Narrow body versus wide body, rear-wheel drive versus all-wheel drive. These are the choices Porsche buyers are presented with when considering a 993. While there were no power differences between the standard and S models there were still performance differences as they received revised suspension and in the case of the Carrera 4S, the 993 Turbo’s larger brakes. So whether you care only about performance or aesthetics or, as is most likely, some combination of both there are plenty of choices. While from time to time I will comes across a narrow-body coupe that looks just about perfect, my preference almost always leans towards the wide-body, especially on the 993 where the smoother curves of the car suit that wider rear really, really, well. Here we have one of those wide-body coupes, a Black 1996 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S, located in Brooklyn, with Cashmere leather interior and 60,127 miles on it.
