Getting back into the blog flow for 2019 was not helped by the failure of my much-loved Macbook Pro last week. If you know someone who can pull email folders from an encrypted SSD with a damaged operating system, drop me a line. Apple’s Support team say it can’t be done but a local data recovery place managed to get 300GB of data off the drive this morning. Sadly no email folders as yet, but some clever person must exist who can do this.

Anyway, while I was off-blog waiting for a new Macbook Pro to arrive, we had some notable Porsche sales with lots of interesting data: more of this later. One sale in Phoenix, Arizona set a new world record for the 2010 Porsche 997 Sport Classic, when RM Sotheby’s relieved a lucky buyer of half a million pounds ($654,000) for the privilege of owning a 150-mile example.

Half a million pounds for a Sport Classic will leave a lot of people scratching their heads. Yes it is rare, and this was low mileage, and prices at the first Porsche sales of the year are often a little bit barmy, but that sort of money buys a lot of Porsche alternatives that can be driven. Odds are this purchase was to bolster an already substantial collection.

What is a Sport Classic?

First shown at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Porsche 911 Sport Classic was one of several limited edition models built on the Gen 2 997 platform (Speedster being another). An upgraded 3.8-litre engine with Power Kit equipped the car with over 400 horsepower to offer to the road gods through a six-speed manual transmission. The 250-unit Sport Classic edition also featured Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes and PASM as standard.

Several styling features set the Sport Classic apart. These included a Double-Dome roof, a ducktail engine cover and that evergreen Sport Classic Grey paint. The wheels were replica Fuchs (cast in a factory in Italy if memory serves). The Fuchs people told me that they were a bit ticked off that genuine forged Fuchs alloy wheels were not part of the recipe for maximum Sport Classic authenticity and that it was all down to price.

I was not that enthralled by the Sport Classic when it first came out and didn’t chase a test drive. The closest I ever got to driving one was in a feature on a replica that myself and Alisdair Cusick were commissioned to write for a 911 magazine sometime in 2010. Built by a Porsche place in Essex, the conversion was based on a well used Gen 1 997 C2, so not the widebody shell that the real one was built around. Thus the Sport Classic wheels (bought from Porsche) did not quite fit the arches properly and the bubble roof was a bit of a challenge. It had the right look side-on from a hundred feet away, but each step closer made it slightly less convincing, until you were standing next to it and looking through the window at tired leather and a Tiptronic shifter.

However wide of the mark that replica was, at least the owner drove it for a few thousand miles, which is more than the owner of the nigh-on brand new Sport Classic sold by RM Sotheby’s did. With just 150 miles on the clock, the car had been stored in California all of its life, so was offered in pristine condition. It sold for $654,000 including premium: a figure which made at least three people very happy. If you were thinking you might fancy a Sport Classic some time, you are probably not one of the three.

Photo by Patrick Ernzen courtesy of RM Sotheby’s