It’s been a great weekend for a drive. I took my old Boxster out for a run through the Hocking Hills with a variety of far more interesting machinery ranging from a Ferrari 308QV to an original-condition MGA Coupe, plus the various Porsche variants that you see above. One of them really captured my heart; no, it wasn’t the one that would fetch just over $1.5 million at an auction.
Imagine that you let some self-styled Porsche racing expert borrow your car for a trackday — and he money-shifts the engine. What would you do? If you’re like me, your first answer is something like this. But the fellow who owns this 993 decided instead to turn it into a Turbo RS clone. The sad part is that you could probably build this car for $75k — if you started by buying your 993 for $30k. Today, $75k just gets you a plain 993 with low miles. And don’t even get me started on what Ferrari 308s are going for. I’ll be writing about that in the week to come.
This week, Bark was extremely prolific. Some of his pieces, like his 135mph track drive of the McLaren 570S, didn’t resonate with TTAC’s practical and prosaic audience. So he explained to readers how dealer inventory cost affects final pricing and told them how to maximize their trade-in value before breaking the Internet with a Taurus rental review.
I did an autocross recap and analyzed the interaction between a Tesla and a motorcycle. That one brought out my detractors in force. If you can call it force.
At R&T, I gave the readers a heads-up about how the brain figures out cornering speeds before asking them to buy their next M6 with just two doors, please.
Next week, I’ll be talking about the pricing explosion that seems to be affecting Porsche and Ferrari in entirely different ways. Maybe I’ll even talk about the drive I just did — not much to say, other than it’s always great to drive great roads in the company of great people.
Detractors are just jealous losers .
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-Nate
Remember when Ferrari 308s were $25k? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX14MNfF62I It was about the time I traded in my New Edge Mustang and a rather generous tax return on an E90 325i which then turned into an E90 335i currently worth about $10k on a good day. Man, I wish I had either of those transactions back . . .
Oh well, the decision has been made, air-cooled 911 all the way for me (before they all crest over 50k)
I grew up in a blue-collarish suburb during the tail end of the Malaise Era, so we were still obsessed with muscle cars. Pining for a Porsche or Ferrari was for the kids in the Grosse Pointes. Back then, regardless of how tepid most cars were from the factory, you could still assemble something reasonably fast from a bondo-queen F-body, a junkyard small-block Chevy, and some smart shopping from Ramchargers and/or Summit.
then we watched in awe as the prices of good condition cars like the Hemi ‘Cuda started poking into six figures. History repeats itself, I guess.
And it’s only getting worse. Mecum has a ’70 Hemi ‘Cuda Convertible listed on their site which was “estimated” to go for 2 to 3 million dollars.
O_O
First cars & coffee of the year was Saturday. I went thinking it would be sparse, it was a gross day, but I guess these are the beaters for these folks. When a Carrera GT showed up, the zombie-wave of people (myself included) who followed it as it drove in was as fun to watch as the car.
As you can tell, not a lot of money in the neighborhood. Also, there was only one FiST in attendance…
https://goo.gl/photos/LCUSUxafHbTdRKKX6
THANX ! .
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I’ve not been to the Lars Museum since the 1960’s .
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-Nate
It’s still a great place to walk around on a weekend morning for sure, and the museum puts on interesting exhibits. I’m actually kicking myself because I forgot to go inside and check out the motorcycles they have in there now.
If you enjoyed that link, here are some more crappy cell phone pictures from a few of these events:
https://goo.gl/photos/ZSmFi1RbvR6yHCEz9
https://goo.gl/photos/T8wgLeyMQ1QLC9Wf8
https://goo.gl/photos/x5Uy2iAKFdSqP96P8
That Testarossa looks like a compact car next to the GT-R!
I’ve given up on trying to capture the impression of width a Testarossa gives off, it’s impossible. The only way to know is to stand behind one. The GT-R looks like a Grand Caravan next to it.
One interesting point on the air-cooled Porsches is that the prices for track-prepped ones have stayed seemingly constant. 5 years ago a long-hood 911 RS clone with a built-up twin-plug 2.8, or a 993 with a PSS9 kit and an RS 3.8 body kit, went for a lot more than their street-car equivalents, but now the street cars have overtaken them in value.
Frankly, I can’t imagine having an old 911 and not wanting to take it to a track, or at least an autocross. At which point you want at least a few mods to improve performance. I wonder if the market will get around to thinking the same way.
The track cars are going to start getting a reconversion to street spec.
The kind of people who are spending $159,000 on ’96 Turbos and ’69 long-hoods don’t have any interest in tracking them.
I wonder where the buyers for really old valuable cars will come from. They aren’t particularly desirable to me, and assuredly everyone else must think the same way I do*