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 often wonder if you need the real article, especially when discussing rare automobiles. I can think of a few cases where having the replica wouldn’t bother me very much; generally, they’re replicas of rare cars that are just hard or very expensive to come by. For example, I’d love to own a 917K or LH, but first off it will never happen due to monetary considerations, and secondly if I did own it, I’d be afraid to take it anywhere and drive it in anger. But Race Car Replicas make a pretty convincing replica of the 917 that can be had for around $60,000, and to me the look is good enough that I can deal with it not being the real item. The same goes for Daytona Coupes, some rare Ferraris and even some factory-built replicas; Audi’s Auto Union Type C streamliner comes to mind. But what about road cars? If they’re rare, difficult to come by or expensive to keep running, I think the case can be made that a replica is just fine, especially when executed well:
The 1970s Porsche 911 Carrera RSR are without a doubt one of my favorite race cars. Stretching the limits of that rear-engine design, Porsche employed both monstrous rear tires and aerodynamic aids to help tame the serious amount of grunt they were able to extract from the race prepared flat-6. And while I’m not alone in loving the RSR, not many were made leading to a fair amount of replicas of the various iterations. Some, like the last RSR replica we featured, take the iconic IROC cars as their inspiration, while others replicate more unique examples. But over the past few years backdating Carrera 3.2s and 964s has become popular, and it comes as no surprise to see today’s example – a 1984 Carrera 3.2 that’s been given the full-on RSR look – but unlike many other replicas, has remained streetable:
