California is set to reassert its credentials as the epicentre of the classic Porsche universe this August, when RM Sotheby’s offers what it is calling the first-ever Porsche for sale at the Monterey weekend.
Sotheby’s refers to the car as “the only surviving example of the Type 64 Porsche and the personal car of both Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche,” but the honorary title is at odds with respected Porsche historian and friend of the Porsche archives, Karl Ludvigsen, who describes this car and its stablemates as Type 60K10s rather than Type 64s. This car is noted by Ludvigsen as one of three 60K10s built in preparation for the Berlin-Rome race, which was planned to run in September 1939. The historian explains things as follows:
“When, in 1941, Porsche compiled a book covering the activities of its first ten years, it conflated the Types 64 and 60K10 under the “Type 64″ heading. Understandably, this has led to confusion for later historians. This author prefers to maintain a clear distance between the two projects, which were in fact distinctly different and played contrasting roles in the Porsche sports-car saga.”
Type 64 Origins
The origin of the Type 64 Volkswagen is well documented. Ludvigsen’s must-have work ‘Origin of the Species‘ describes how, in 1937, “Porsche designers sketched the specifications of another member of the VW family, the Type 64, listed in the Porsche annals as VW-Rekord (Sport)”. However, circumstances surrounding the Type 64 plans were difficult.
Building one-off sports cars didn’t suit the PR tastes of the German Labour Front, overseers of the KdF-Wagen (Volkswagen) project that the Type 64 was based on. Nor would the organisation sell KdF parts to Porsche for the design house to build its own Type 64s. As Porsche could neither obtain the parts or the funding to take the project further, no Type 64s were ever built.
Enter the KdF 60K10
When the first Autobahn was opened from Berlin to Munich, a race was planned for Autumn 1939, to highlight the feat of civil engineering. After sprinting south through Germany along the new highway, the competitors would continue through Austria to the Brenner Pass before racing closed roads, all the way to Rome.
With deliveries of the new Volkswagen/KdF-Wagen scheduled for early 1940, the race was tailor-made for PR. A racing car built on the Volkswagen was now an entirely different proposition, and the Labour Front was now all in favour. Ferdinand Porsche decided that the cars should be built on the standard Type 60 VW chassis with a special aluminium body hand built by Reutter.
Much of the engineering for Type 64 was integrated into the Type 60K10, allowing a short development cycle. The first of three cars was finished in August 1939, with the second completed a month later. The race was officially shelved after Germany invaded Poland the following month, but one more car was finished in June 1940. Based on the damaged chassis of car number one, that is the car being offered for sale.
First-Ever Porsche: The History
Sotheby’s press release tells how “the third Type 64 was retained as a personal family car and driven extensively by Ferry and Ferdinand Porsche. When the company was forced to relocate headquarters to Gmünd, Austria from 1944-1948, it was kept alongside No. 2 at the family estate in the picturesque lakeside town of Zell-am-See. No. 3 was the only example to survive the war, and Ferry Porsche himself applied the raised letters spelling out ‘PORSCHE’ on the nose of the car when he had in registered in Austria under the new company name in 1946.
“In 1947, restoration work was commissioned by Porsche and completed by a young Pinin Farina in Turin, Italy. Nearly one year later, Porsche demonstrated the Type 356 roadster, no. 1, on public roads in Innsbruck, with the Type 64 by its side. Austrian privateer driver Otto Mathé completed demo laps in the Type 64 and fell in love, buying it from Porsche the following year. He enjoyed a successful racing career with the car in the 1950s—the very first to do so in a Porsche product—and kept it for 46 years until his death in 1995.
“In 1997, the Type 64 changed hands for just the second time in six decades and appeared at a handful of vintage racing events with its third owner, Dr. Thomas Gruber of Vienna, including Goodwood and the Austrian Ennstal Classic. Dr. Gruber is the author of the renowned Carrera RS book and one of the most respected Porsche specialists worldwide. Delightfully patinated, the streamlined 1939 Porsche Type 64 is now offered in Monterey from the long-term care of just its fourth owner, who acquired the car more than a decade ago, and is accompanied by many original spare parts, as well as extensive period images and historic documentation.”
Previous efforts to sell the Type 64
Instagram threads on this car throw up a few stories regarding previous efforts to sell it privately. One commenter on the RM thread suggests that Mathé’s guys may have altered a chassis number back in the day (quite common on older Porsches) and classic Porsche dealer, Maurice Felsbourg, commented that “The Otto Mathé car has been for sale by owners for years now. Each time asking price was met, they either raised it or changed their mind. They play golf with Piëch & Porsche, they surely won’t buy it. I hope bidding stalls at €5m.”
Sounds slightly like sour grapes you might think, but it is true that the car has previously been offered to specialists. One contact showed me an email from 2014, when he was offered the car at €12 million. Plenty of people will know about recent efforts to sell and that will influence some bidders. It if often the case that collectors reject the opportunity to buy in open market when the seller has made things difficult behind closed doors.
Whether you call this car a Type 64 or a Type 60K10, assuming the car all checks out, this is the most significant VW-Porsche to come up for sale since the last time it changed hands. Sotheby’s press release says that it could get up to $20 million: we’ll see how that goes.
January 2019 has been a busy month for Porsche insurance valuations and market discussions activity. Porsche 964 prices have popped up in conversation several times. As serious buyers seem to be gathering data and preparing to compete for what pops up for sale during 2019 and insurance valuations for standard Carrera 2 models in good order now touching £60k, this year could be an interesting one for 964 prices.
Porsche 964 Production Numbers
Manufactured from 1989 to 1994, the Porsche 964 had a comparatively short production life versus its predecessors. The model years spanned a global recession, so sales were relatively low. The German publication, Deutsche Autos seit 1990 (Eberhard Kittler) gives global Porsche 964 production totals for volume models as follows:
Model
Total
964 C2 Coupe
18219
964 C2 Cabriolet
11013
964 C2 Targa
3534
964 C2 Cabrio Turbo-Look
1532
964 C2 Speedster
936
964 C4 Coupe
13353
964 C4 Cabriolet
4802
964 C4 Targa
1329
964 C4 Jubilee Coupe
911
964 Turbo 3.3
3660
964 Turbo 3.6
1437
964 Carrera RS Coupe (3.6)
2282
A document put together in the early 2000s by the Porsche Club Turbo Register of the time is said to show that just 130 RHD 3.3 Turbos and only 42 RHD 3.6 Turbos were sold in the UK. I have not checked this data but it would not surprise me, given the scale of the recession at the time and the astronomical cost new of the Turbo models.
However, with both 964 Turbo and 930 prices retreating from the highs of 2015/16 and no sign that values have settled as yet, buyers are wary of these models. Instead, most potential buyers I speak with are considering standard C2 and C4 Coupes. Good examples of both are in short supply.
Pistonheads currently has 96 ads listed under the heading of 964 for sale. Removing the non-964s and silly POA ads gets us down to 64. If we look solely at narrow body cars being sold in the UK with an advertised asking price, then here is a summary of what is available as at January 30, 2019:
Porsche 964 C2/C4 Cabriolet (manual plus Tiptronic)
13
Porsche 964 C2/C4 Targa (manual plus Tiptronic)
4
Porsche 964 C2/C4 Coupe Manual
8
Porsche 964 C2/C4 Coupe Tiptronic
3
Distilling the stock available on what is probably the biggest advertising portal for these cars in the UK to solely non-RS narrow body 964 models, we end up with a total of 28 cars, less than half of which are Coupe models. Just 8 of the 28 cars are Coupes with a manual transmission and several of those cars are either modified or optimistically priced, such as the 66k-mile C2 Coupe for sale by an OPC at £80k. This reduces the choice even further.
The low supply creates a problem for buyers. Low supply pushes prices up, but the general market trend is still downward, as the investors who were fuelling the spiralling prices cool their spending or spread their asset portfolios across other brands or hobbies and the classic Porsche market unwinds due to lower demand.
Potential buyers are therefore faced with a gamble on what the future holds for 964s. Will low supply and persistent demand keep things as they are, or, faced with an entry cost already higher than other air-cooled options, will buyers eventually move on to different 911 model lines including well-priced 997s, causing the micro-market to capitulate and bring 964 prices down with a bump? Hence the conversations this month with potential buyers and a number of potential sellers.
If a 964 Coupe is your must-have 911, then you are not alone: many others share your desire. While the supply of air-cooled cars in January tends to be lower than later in the year, there is a marked preponderance of soft tops and Tiptronic Coupes amongst the available stock. This is probably a true reflection of what is available in the UK and may not shift to any great extent as the season gets started.
As the low supply supports Coupe prices (within reason) – particularly for the holy grail of a low mileage 964 C2 manual Coupe – buyers will have to decide whether the 964 is ultimately worth the current premium over a well preserved 3.2 Carrera Coupe or a nicely priced 993.
No doubt the 964 makes a fun car to drive when modified in the usual ways, but the £55-60k start price on a decent 964 Coupe is a fair chunk of cash for most of us. I can’t say that I would opt for an average 964 at this price point given the available alternatives if investment was a priority, but it will be interesting to see how 964 market trends play out through 2019.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
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.
Porsche has released the first pictures of the new Porsche 911 Cabriolet (992 model). The new model’s power hood can be operated at speeds up to 30mph and completes its closed to open cycle in twelve seconds. It also comes with an electric windjammer. All good for hairdressers.
Except the 911 Cabriolet is not a so-called ‘hairdresser’s car’. I had a 911 Cabriolet and would have another in a heartbeat. I did track days and long tours in mine and treasure memories of spirited drives on warm summer nights. Commuting was cool in the Cabriolet, although really hot days kept the roof up. Soft tops can be counter intuitive.
The new Porsche 911 Cabriolet offers optional sports suspension for the very first time: a benefit of the improved torsional stiffness from a new mounting position for the engine in all 992s. C2S Cabs have been widened so they share the same body width as the C4S versions. Both models have the sexy rear light bar and all panels bar the bumpers are made of aluminium.
The new Porsche 992 Cabriolet is a good looking car, available to order now priced at £103k for the C2S and £108k for the C4S. But which to buy? Fantasy buyers lean toward 2wd 911s, but the 911 Cabriolet has never been a lightweight, so the performance difference from 2wd to 4wd is negligible: a 2mph slower top speed from C2 to C4.
The modest premium has been a small price to pay for C4 surefootedness with the curvy wider body up to now. I would certainly be a C4S buyer at a £5k premium if a new cabriolet was within my grasp. Stuttgart’s decision to widen the C2S Cabriolet and give both models the C4S bodywork should shift the sales balance and strengthen residuals for the new Porsche 911 Carrera 2S Cabriolet.
It is not easy to find out the UK sales split from Coupe to Cabriolet models. Registration data is also unhelpful. Howmanyleft shows a falling number of Carrera 4 Cabriolets (160 in 2001 to 121 in 2018) to a lower rate of attrition for 2wd models (74 in 2001 then up and down to 68 today), which seems to support the common belief that more C4 models (Coupe or Cab) are exported or broken for spares versus C2 models.
The used market views two-wheel drive 911s as the more desirable, but the only obvious data falls well short of my best guess of total 911 Cabriolets on the road, so many later cars are likely registered as Porsche 911s rather than 911 Cabriolets. This makes it difficult to know where the line is.
With the 911 C2S Cabriolet (£102,755) priced roughly £10k more than the C2S PDK Coupe (£93,110), the Cabriolet looks set to remain a supporting derivative in the UK, but it’s still my favourite everyday 911.
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A quick surf through eBay last night showed some cheap classic Porsches for sale including this 1984 Porsche 911 Turbo (930) for under £50k at £47,500. There were several more expensive cars, and dearer ones often make more sense based on the cost to professionally restore rough examples, but if you’re a DIY restorer looking for an apparently complete example to play with, this one may be worth a look.
While there is no real detail in the ad other than it is an American import of an originally German-market Porsche 930 from January 1984, and some of the pics show it needs cosmetic assistance at the very least, it seems a complete car in running order with an MOT, the correct Recaro sports seats and all the right bits apparently intact.
Porsche 930 asking prices soared well over the £100k mark for cars like this in good condition during the market boom of 2012-2015, but they have eased in recent years. Of course, a spotless and unrestored 930 in original condition still commands serious money and is a wonderful thing, but the perception that a 4-speed 3.3-litre 930 in honest condition should command a price equivalent to several similarly well preserved standard 911s of the same vintage was a bit of a worry at the time. It’s good to see prices edging back towards reality and keeping these cars accessible for people to use and enjoy.
Having driven many standard and modified 930s over the years, I lean towards the upgraded cars, as a modern turbocharger, new CDI box and updated fuel injection with the right changes to the chassis and running gear bring the car to life. That said, getting a 930 or later 964 Turbo running properly is really the key to maximum enjoyment, so it is critical to get these cars to a K-Jet expert.
Only those with a detailed knowledge of this system who have the specialist equipment required to properly diagnose K-Jet injection should adjust the system on a 930 or 911 SC of the period, where the running condition is critical to avoid engine issues. I don’t work for JZM Porsche, but, if K-Jet was a concern, I would send my car to Steve McHale at JZM. Steve’s expertise on K-Jet systems and the workshop diagnostics going back to the early days of Bosch injection is second to none.
Anyone looking for a spotless 930 with mega provenance to cherish for posterity is not going to be interested in something like this. But, at under £50k and assuming the shell is not a disaster, this Porsche 911 Turbo for sale on eBay could be the base for something special without paying silly premiums for a car you ultimately want to chop and change.
The price, LHD and current GBP exchange rates may make this attractive to European buyers, but we will see how long the ad lasts before coming down. The ad text is below – I have nothing whatsoever to do with this other than it popped up on my radar and was worth a mention. The car is in Preston, UK.
1984 Porsche 911 930 Turbo for sale
Guards Red with black leather. Electric windows, sunroof. Registered January 1984. US import originally built to German spec. MOT until September 2019. US CarFax report available. Porsche spec printout available. Very solid car which requires some cosmetic attention. Trade Sale.
I spotted this cheap Porsche Boxster with LPG conversion (LPG: liquid petroleum gas) on one of my regular valuation trawls through the classifieds last night. Even if you take the conversion off and run it on petrol, it’s still a Boxster for less than £2,500. This made it worth a little look.
First registered on April 26, 1999, this 986 Porsche Boxster 2.5 manual was supplied in Arctic Silver with Boxster Red leather trim. The combination is quite common on 986 Boxsters: Arctic Silver was available on all model years, while the Boxster Red option was a popular choice with the Silver. It has covered 144k miles and allegedly comes with a lot of history.
Online MOT history for T747 LYB shows that the mileage in 2005 was a mere 51,280 miles. In the twelve months that followed, that total leapt to 70,449 miles overall. It did another 9k in 2006, then 10k more in 2007. Here the MOT bills started getting expensive, with worn brakes, suspension, headlamp issues and emission flags amongst other bits. Pretty normal for the model and mileage.
The annual mileage then drops: presumably due to a change of keeper after that pricey MOT. 1k, 1k, 6k, 4k a year and more flags for brake pipes and brake force, until it crosses 100k miles at the July 2012 MOT. Then the mileage picks up again: 2014-’15 shows 9k, 2015-’16 is 12k, 2016-’17 7k and from then to now is circa 10k in total, taking it to a current mileage of 144,000.
Boxster friends report an average of 26-27 mpg (imperial gallon) for a 2.5-litre 986 Boxster and my local Shell station charges £1.35 a litre for V-Power. At that price, 10k miles in a 26mpg Boxster works out to £2,357. 144,000 miles like this works out to just under £34,000. £34,000 pounds spent on fuel with 66% of that price being tax: that is £22,440 fuel tax in this example! Ridiculous.
What’s the point of converting a car to LPG?
LPG is most commonly used in the UK to cut fuel costs and to create fewer emissions, thus reducing one’s carbon footprint. I have run an LPG-powered car for these reasons ever since switching from diesel in 2007 and would not run anything else day-to-day, so it is always interesting to see what cars other people choose to fit LPG systems to.
A Porsche Boxster is not the most obvious choice for an LPG conversion, but I have seen many converted to gas. As a long-distance solo commuter, it makes sense. The cars are fun to drive, but Porsche’s 2.5-litre flat-six engine is not the cheapest to run, even when it doesn’t let go. LPG as duty paid road fuel can be half the cost of petrol in the UK, meaning that your fuel costs are effectively halved overnight. All good so far.
LPG burns with less of a bang so you lose a bit in MPG, but the difference in performance is barely noticeable. The only real downside of an LPG conversion is having to fit a second fuel tank, and a heavy one at that. LPG tanks are several times heavier than petrol tanks due to crash regulations. If you have a spare wheel well for a toroidal tank to drop into, it’s not so bad space-wise, but the weight would be noticed on a Boxster. The tank weight’s not that obvious on my 4×4 daily drivers.
A typical installation on a car like the Boxster would involve tank and filler, supply pipes, evaporator and injectors. The ECU piggybacks onto the car’s ECU and no changes are required there. Cost would be something like £1000-£1200, so you have to earn that back through fuel cost savings before the real fuel savings kick in.
LPG fuel savings calculated
My previous daily driver Cayenne S V8 cost £1300 to convert and went from 17mpg average on petrol to 15mpg on LPG. My current daily driver – a 2006 Honda CR-V – cost £800 to convert and went from 26mpg on petrol to 24mpg on gas. Fuel costs for both come down from V-Power at circa £1.34 a litre to LPG at 68p a litre. While the mpg fell by about 8%, the fuel cost dropped almost 50%.
Benchmarking fuel costs per 1000 miles, the CR-V costs £235 to do this on petrol and £128 on LPG. So every 1000 miles saves me £107. The £800 conversion cost divided by £107 saved per 1000 miles is 7.47, so I earned my conversion cost back after 7470 miles (about 6 months or so) and am now into savings. I ran my Cayenne on LPG for almost 50k miles: that works out to saving approximately £6500 in fuel (i.e. over £4k in fuel tax) at current prices when the cost of the conversion is taken off. Plus I got to drive a petrol V8 with lower emissions for 50k miles.
This Boxster is already converted and has reaped similar fuel savings benefits: a substantial sum of money if it was converted early in life. As with any Boxster, high or low mileage, this car would need careful checking before a purchase, but the main thing to check would be the engine and gearbox. LPG does not lubricate and cool valve seats, so the fuel can cause valve seat recession if the head material is not hard enough. My LPG man flagged this as an issue on Porsche, so the gas should have been run with a valve saver lubricant to compensate. If this has not been done, or the owners were lazy about keeping it topped up, it will be uneconomical to repair.
Porsche Boxster buying notes
Now more than twenty years old, the fuss-free styling of the first Porsche Boxsters have made them true modern classics. Collector preference is always for low mileage and the lowest mile non-S in the UK is a 2001 2.7 car in Guards Red with a mere 22k miles for just under £9k from a dealer in Scotland. Perhaps a little rich given what else is available at the same price point, but you don’t have to spend nine grand to find a nice example. The effortless chic of a simple early Boxster can be bought for less than £5k.
All low-priced Boxsters come with a job list and it is often more cost effective to buy an expensive car in good order than a cheap car needing tidying. The bodywork on this one looks a little patchy and the leather is tired with a hole in the driver’s seat bolster, but it has the hardtop and is MOT’d until June 2019. It would probably break for spares fairly easy if it fails its MOT big time. An asking price of less than £2500 is certainly interesting to those of who like cheap Porsche projects.
144,000 miles with loads of service history receipts etc.
M.O.T TILL 8th JUNE 2019
Starts and drives great with no issues. Well maintained example, bodywork is great, also interior is very clean and has just been fully valeted ready to go.
Alloy wheels, CD player, remote key locking, air conditioning, full leather seats, onboard computer and much more
ANY TRIAL OR INSPECTION WELCOME
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Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
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