Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
I love the 996 Porsche 911, right up to the point where the amount you pay for one can buy another 911 that is much more appealing to me. As the years go on, that seems to happen more and more. Today’s car, a 2005 911 Turbo S, is one of those. On paper, the best 996 out of the widow making GT2 or hard-as-nails GT3. For a long time, they seemed like a reasonable buy, but in 2022? How does a six-figure pricetag sound?
Even though Porsche produced almost 200,000 G-Series cars from 1973 to 1989, that doesn’t mean they are getting any less expensive. Looking back ten years ago, you could grab a regular Carrera coupe in the $25,000 – 30,000 range be totally content with your purchase. Today? Double that. This is the reality of buying cool old sports cars in the year 2022 and it seems like there are plenty of buyers out there for them. Today’s car, a 1986 Carrera coupe in White Gold Metallic surely has all the looks, but the price? Well, it’s tough to swallow.
Remember these? Yeah, I tried not to either. Way back in the year 2001, Mercedes-Benz had their “cut off half their hair and dye it purple” moment when they came out with a really odd C-Class coupe. Converting the sedan to a coupe, which in reality is a hatchback, costs the car 7.3 inches of overall length – but in reality you lost much more. The W203 was a hot piece of plastic garbage to begin with, and somehow Mercedes made it cheaper by finding $5,000 to cut off the price. Base price was under $26,000, and to put that into perspective, was just $2,000 more than an Acura RSX Type-S. These were clearly targeted towards the younger, more impressionable buyers, and the crazy thing is that it somewhat worked. Yes.
Mercedes-Benz claimed that 40% of these buyers opted for another Mercedes-Benz product after owning their Sport Coupé. That sounds great, but I have to wonder if a large percentage of those owners did so because the Sport Coupé was so bad and they had to get out of that thing and into something nicer. I’m not kidding.
Hard to believe we are coming up on 10 years since the launch of the 991 Porsche 911 chassis. Even though they are officially 2013 model years, production of them began in mid-2012 and they were called “The new 911 Carrera” because there were some leftover 997.2 Turbos that were still produced as 2013 model years. There were no GTS or GT2/GT3 cars for this model year, so if you wanted the best, you had to go with the Carrera S model. Naturally, some who really wanted the new 911 and all the toys that went with them really went all out, and this is an example of one of those cars.
This 2013 C2S up for sale in Syracuse, New York was loaded up with a paint-to-sample exterior, carbon-ceramic brakes, the sport suspension and exhaust system, adaptive sport seats, Burmester audio, and a whole other laundry list of options. How much? Base price on one of these when new was around $120,000, but this one came in just north of $160,000. I wonder if they traded it in on a GT3 the next year?
The 997 Porsche 911 generation continues to age gracefully in my eyes. It certainly won’t get mistaken for a new car, but I certainly think it a soothing and classic shape that will go down as a “win” for the design team at Porsche. As with almost cars, the facelift model years always get the first look, but I really like the pre-facelift examples just as much as the later cars. Today’s example, a base 2005 C2, is finished in the classic Guards Red over black leather and has just 39,000 miles. The price? Well … at least it is in the ballpark.
