Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The Midnight Blue 1994 Porsche 911 RS America we featured in early March is back up for sale and again looks to be struggling to garner sufficient attention to meet the seller’s asking price. With one of the rarer color choices available on these cars and pretty reasonable mileage we’ll have to see if this one can finally find the right buyer.
Boy, it’s been too long since I did a Wednesday Wheels – amazingly, it seems like late January was the last wheel roundup. But it’s something I love and with the sun shining and most of the potholes on their way towards repair in Rhode Island, I can finally shift my attention from snow chains to summer tires! Today I returned to my favorite subject; BBS wheels, with a roundup of some of neat ones that appear. There are the eponymous 80’s semi-aftermarket wheel choice, the BBS RSs many manufacturers offered at the dealer. This is a set of 16×8 and 9s for a 944 Turbo. Equally neat to see are the the 4x100mm BBS RM wheels; not as prevalent as RSs yet with a similar look, these were the perfect fit for the 16V GTi in 1991 and 1992. If you were looking earlier, you might have been interested in some BBS Mahle wheels; these are a pretty early Mercedes-Benz specific set that would look great on a SL. In more modern times, BBS was still a great option – Volkswagen specified the RXII 2-piece model for the Jetta Wolfsburg 1.8T, and again the BBS RC seemed to be the go-to option in the mid 2000s for a great looking performance wheel – this set is for an Audi. What’s you’re favorite and why?
Perhaps like a neglected middle-sibling, the mid-range model of any car can live a somewhat precarious existence. Lacking the comfort or performance (depending on what sort of car we’re talking about) of the top-of-the-line model and more expensive than the entry-level model, that car in the middle can sometimes seem neither here nor there. They’re stuck and sometimes go unnoticed. For much of the 911’s life there was only the entry-level 911 or the high-performance 911S, but for the early cars we had another option: the 911E. First released in 1969, the E took many of the aspects of the 911T and simply made them better. It featured a mechanically fuel-injected flat-six engine, similar, though with less power, to that of the 911S, rather than the carbureted engine of the 911T. In addition, a more comfortable strut suspension was made available along with ventilated disc brakes, while the interior was upgraded to improve comfort and refinement. By the time we arrive at the final model year in 1973, all 911 engines had increased to 2.4 liters and featured Bosch fuel injection with the E and S being mechanically injected and the T eventually using the CIS system that later 911s would employ until 1984. During its brief run the E served as the refined, luxurious, counterpart that was to balance the decidedly sporty experience of the S and the more basic experience of the T for buyers who wanted more from their 911, but leaned toward the luxury side of the spectrum. The example we see here comes from the final model year: a Sepia Brown 1973 Porsche 911E Coupe, located in California, with 87,000 miles on it.
You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts. Here we have a paint-to-sample Riviera Blue 1997 Porsche 911 Turbo, located in Montreal, with 21,465 miles on it. It is beautiful and head-turning in a way that only a pastel colored 993TT can be. It’s stunning. It also has an asking price that is more than $349,000! It’s a reserve auction so we do not know exactly what that asking price might be, but since the seller has set the starting bid at $349,000 then we know it is above that number. Yeah. This isn’t the craziest asking price I’ve come across on a 993 and if you were ever going to set your price in the stratosphere, then a Riviera Blue Turbo is just the sort of car to attract the right kind of attention. Still, it’s too high, but everyone needs a little insanity in their life now and then.
I have always been drawn to the 911 Targa for its balance of open-top motoring with a fixed rear window and as such I’ve written up a wide variety from the air-cooled market. Yet, rarely do I come across and write about the 964 Targa. I’m not sure whether that’s a function of their relative rarity or simply a matter of happenstance, but without going back through the archives I think I’ve only written about one once, if at all. On the 964, the Targa formula remained unchanged from the design we had become familiar with since Porsche originally introduced the hard-window Targa in the late ’60s. This formula would change dramatically on the 993 before having a more intermittent presence within the 911 model range, with the original design finally returning on the 991 – though in a much more technological package. The 964 took the traditional Targa staples of a removable panel with a fixed roll-hoop and large rear window and integrated them into the newly designed body. The rest was pure 964 Carrera: a rear-mounted 3.6 liter flat-six mated to a 5-speed manual transmission delivering power either to the rear wheels or to all four wheels in the newly released Carrera 4. The example here comes from near the beginning of the 964’s run: a Guards Red 1990 Porsche 911 Carrera 2 Targa, located in Brooklyn, with 112,901 miles on it.
