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’ve found myself featuring more and more of the mid-year 911. I still don’t feature them all that often relative to other model years, but I used to never feature any model other than the Carrera so there is some progress. In part, I think this is due to more interesting examples being made available. I suspect that has occurred because, while these are still some of the cheaper models in the air-cooled 911 range, we’ve actually seen a few nice examples sell for values that at the time I found surprising. It’s still rare that it happens, but some of the neglect has waned. This all brings us to the car here: a Burgundy Metallic 1977 Porsche 911S Targa with Cork leather interior and 168,074 miles on it. That’s a lot of miles (though not necessarily for the age), but given that it’s been fully restored I’m not sure that mileage should be overly concerning. It will affect value though.
Almost any time I step away from the air-cooled 911 market to look at another Porsche I experience a brief moment of surprise about the value available. It’s the case even when all I’ve done is look at water-cooled 911s. Granted, the one we see here, a Black 2008 Porsche 911 Carrera S Coupe with Red leather interior, manual transmission and just 9,715 miles on it, is up for a reserve auction so it is possible the dealer will be asking too much and our sense of value might diminish. But experience tells me that’s rarely the case with the 997 and even if it is I would hardly expect bidding to go crazy. So what we have is a really attractive, and excellent performing, sport coupé that should be attainable for a decent price. This 911 won’t have the value upside of an air-cooled model, but we all need something to actually drive right?
Let’s go back to the 993 because this one, while not one of those wonderful Turbos, has its own fine qualities and a price that, like the Turbos, seems like it isn’t too bad. The 993 never really seemed to come down in value the way earlier air-cooled models did, but while the classic 911s showed steep increases (which have since regressed) the 993 stayed more or less where it was, rising more gradually. Here I’m speaking about the standard Carrera since, as usual, exceptions can be made for particularly rare models or extremely low-mileage examples. It’s still tough for us to say that the 993 has come down in value, but it does feel like we’re seeing more interesting examples pop up for the sort of asking price we used to see for a much more standard example. Like this paint-to-sample Ferrari Fly Yellow 1995 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe, located in Pennsylvania, with 39,638 miles on it.
We’re approaching the winter auction season when we’ll see a few of the bigger auctions take place and I always find it interesting to take a look at some of the cars crossing the auction blocks during this part of the year. In some cases these auctions will set the stage for market shifts that we’ll see over the course of the coming year, and in almost all cases we’re likely to see cars that we see almost nowhere else. Such as the example here: a Jade Green 1974 Porsche 911 Carrera Targa with Cinnamon interior and 58,949 miles on it. This is said to be the last ’74 Carrera Targa produced for the U.S. market, coming in at no. 246 of 246, and it will be up for auction Saturday January 14 at Mecum Auctions in Kissimmee, FL.
Could it be that there might actually be some value to be found on the 993 Turbo market? It has seemed like an impossible dream for a while as prices continued to elevate, but as I look around now I’m starting to wonder if there’s been a shift. Granted, we’re still not talking about inexpensive cars; after all north of six figures remains the norm. But we’re getting closer to crossing that magic barrier. I first had an inkling of this last summer when I featured this 911 Turbo and thought all things considered the price wasn’t bad. It wasn’t cheap, but it felt like prices had moved down a step. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but I think now we need to give them a little more attention. The two we’re going to look at here aren’t the only two Turbos on the market right now, but they’re two that stood out to me the most. I’ll begin with the cheaper of the pair: a Black over Tan 1996 Porsche 911 Turbo with 80,533 miles on it located in Denver.
