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Continuing on the theme of lightweight, Europe-only specials of a fan-favorite chassis, here’s one I’m willing to bet a fair amount of you aren’t aware of. BMW launched several special variants of the E9x chassis, and we saw some of them – the Lime Rock Park Edition being the most notable – but in total BMW produced a hard-to-fathom 28 special variations of the E9x Ms. As a result, you’re forgiven if you didn’t remember all of them!
CRT stands for “Carbon Racing Technology”, but perhaps ironically it was BMW’s carbon-intensive road cars that led to the model. Spare cuttings from the carbon passenger cells of the i3 and i8 models were recycled and molded into body pieces for this special M3 sedan, while motivation came from the M3 GTS’s upgraded S65B44 V8. Stroked to 4.4 liters and with a lightweight titanium exhaust, the enlarged V8 was rated at over 440 horsepower (20+ over a standard S65B40), while torque was up 30 to 325 lb.ft at a lower 3,750 rpms. BMW produced a total of 68 cars, of which 67 were sold to the public, all in identical Frozen Silver Metallic with Sahkir Orange accented interiors:
Rare color or undesirable color? It is a question that presents itself pretty much any time I come across a Porsche in one of the many less common colors Porsche has produced. Of course, in some cases a color may be undesirable during its period of production and then become more desirable years later as preferences shift. Yellows and greens kind of come in and out of favor in this way, likewise the many variants of brown from the late-70s and early-80s suffer under a reversal in popularity.
In the case of the car here, an Ipanema Blue Metallic 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS, located in Washington, we may have one of those situations. Available in the final years of 997 production, we see very few 911s painted in this color. Anecdotally it isn’t difficult to find stories of buyers getting nice discounts to take them off of a dealer’s hands after sitting on the lot for too long. Though a standard color offering its rarity does seem related to its desirability, or lack thereof. We haven’t moved far from its original production date so I’m not sure enough time will have passed for preferences to have changed. However, Ipanema Blue isn’t too far removed from a variety of lighter blues Porsche produced in the ’80s and those cars don’t seem to elicit much derision. So is it a color that might become more desirable or one that, like quite a few colors over the years, will fade away to be forgotten?
Buried underneath all of my posts of brightly-colored Porsches exists a seeming enigma: my undying love of black cars. I don’t care if some think they’re boring; heck, my wife thinks they’re boring! Nothing will make me stop in my tracks more quickly than a well cared for black sports coupe. Sure, show me something in a wild color and I’ll definitely stop and look, but I don’t know if I’ll really lust after it. I can’t explain these reactions. This is just how it is.
Which brings me to this car: a 2011 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, located in Chicago, with 22,413 miles on it. We can’t really call this completely blacked out since the interior is tan, but with the black GTS wheels and a beautiful looking black exterior it really looks phenomenal. As a 911 for cruising somewhat unnoticed it would make for a fantastic choice. Oh, and it has a 6-speed manual transmission, something that is not easy to find on these 911s. I’m in love.
I don’t think I have featured one of the new 718 Cayman/Boxsters yet. They’re still fairly new so that’s probably not too surprising, but I see them all the time. And I have posted a couple of the new turbocharged 911s so I can’t put all of this down to newness. Maybe those I’ve seen haven’t seemed special enough? I think this one might be special enough.
This is a paint-to-sample Brewster Green 2018 Porsche 718 Boxster GTS. It has the 7-speed PDK transmission and Carmine Red stitching in the interior. While the car itself is excellent, mostly this is about the color. To my knowledge, with one exception Brewster Green has never been a production color available from Porsche, but has been available as a paint-to-sample option for a while. The one production exception was the extremely limited edition 2013 911 Club Coupe. So when we’re talking about rare Porsche colors Brewster Green is very rare. It’s one of a handful of non-metallic greens Porsche has produced. It’s similar in appearance to the more well known Irish Green and British Racing Green, though not quite the same as either one. Brewster is a darker and deeper shade of green. In shade you might think it black, but in the sun its green shines forth and is unmistakable.
I said previously that I’d try to pay a little more attention to the Porsche 928 so that’s what I’m trying to do. In truth I’ve featured this 928 before so technically this is a revisit. However, I wanted to shine a brighter light on it than the standard “hey look this one’s back up for sale.” It’s been nearly a year since I featured it and that’s usually long enough to revisit something in depth, but mostly this comes down to price and my own love for the color.
This is a Slate Grey Metallic 1994 Porsche 928 GTS, located in Texas, with Grey interior, 82,500 miles on it, and the 5-speed manual transmission. I know grey is supposed to be a boring color and I don’t think I’d call Slate Grey exciting, but I do love it as an exterior color. It just looks really good. There’s not much more to it than that. Regarding the price change: when I first featured this 928 it was priced at just under $130K. Manual or not that’s a lot of money, especially for a 928 with almost 90K miles on it. The price now has been slashed substantially to a much more reasonable $82,500. I think we can work with that.
