Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
A few months ago I took a look an early Porsche 912 that while the price was right, had a bunch of issues known and maybe more than weren’t yet found. As luck would have it, another 912 popped up, this time an even earlier car, that has a little high price tag but perhaps is a much better starting point. Dare I say that this is even a turn-key example? I maybe won’t go that far since it is a 1966 after all, but heavy lifting is not required on this one.
What was the first special edition 911? It seems like the chicken and egg argument, if I’m honest. But certainly in the running must be the 1976 911 Signature Edition. Created to commemorate…Ferry Porsche’s signature, apparently….the Signature Edition treatment was applied to just 200 911s, all of which were finished in Platinum Metallic with color-matched wheels over a brown-beige leatherette and tweed interior. The pièce de résistance was the steering wheel, though, replete with Porsche’s signature embossed in the center. These are rare cars to find in the market today, so it was worth taking a look at this 911S Coupe for sale:
The winter months are here for some of us, but that won’t stop the seemingly never-ending offerings of Porsche 911s in wild colors. This 2018 Carrera 4S is finished in the slightly lighter hue of Riviera Blue with the matching brake calipers for extra points. Unlike Miami Blue that is an optional color on the 991 generation, Riviera is only reserved for the paint-to-sample program, so that means tack another $7,000 or so to the sticker. Of course, why stop there when it comes to the options, so a $112,000 base price for a Carrera 4S is now $156,970 when it is all said and done with the options. Now just 6,800 miles later, it is up for sale.
I don’t mean to harp on the Porsche 996 Carrera 4S so much, but the entire package of what they offer, especially at their current prices, always seem to draw me back in. Whether it be the wide rear end, 18″ Turbo Twist wheels, or the heckblende rear reflector, these cars just seem to do it for me. For what they were working with, I think Porsche nailed this design and pulled just enough pieces from the Turbo to keep you interested, but not so much that it was almost as expensive as the Turbo and no one would bite on it. Now, some 15 years later, this are at the bottom of the price curve and ripe for the picking. Time to snag one?
In terms of the “windowmaker” Porsches, the 996 GT2 certainly seems worthy of that title. Hard to believe that a 996 can be deemed scary, but that is exactly the kind of false confidence that gets you in trouble with these. Having a twin-turbocharged car that will get you to 60 mph in under 4 seconds without the help of traction control or stability control is the perfect combination for the result of “I just lost it” after getting a little too confident. I think Porsche knew this, and as a result only 303 examples of these cars made it to the US from 2002 to 2005. To put that into perspective, that is half of how many Carrera GTs there are.
