Away from the dramatic sale of the ex-Otto Mathe Type 64 Volkswagen at Monterey, the RM Sotheby’s auction gave us a good insight into how Porsche prices are doing, with several record prices for collectable Porsches offered for sale.
Record auction price for Carrera GT
The 2005 Porsche Carrera GT was not the most expensive Porsche sold by RM Sotheby’s in California, but the final price of $1.193 million including buyer’s premium for GT number 1021 established a new world record for Carrera GT at auction. Looking at the spec before the sale, it was obvious that the bidding would be energetic, as the car ticked all the right boxes including:
Low mileage of just 265 miles
Paint-to-Sample in a great colour: Arancio Boreallis/Metallic Orange
Huge options list totalling over $37k
Recent $25k service
In a world of identikit silver GTs, this car was the ultimate antidote. It rightly took home a pretty penny and established a new benchmark for the model at auction. By comparison, a two-owner Carrera GT in Silver with just 5,200 miles from new sold for over $400k less.
Another Porsche that took full advantage of the holy trinity of low mileage, low owners and paint to sample with Exclusive interior was the very last 1989 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2 Speedster. Presented with just 260 miles from new, and finished in custom Cinnabar/Zinnobar Red with beige suede trim (ooh), the polished Fuchs on chassis number 173786 couldn’t stop the car rocketing to $379k including premium. This must be some sort of record.
Water-cooled 911s also did well. The 2011 Porsche 997 GT3 RS 4.0 that changed hands at the 70th Anniversary sale in Atlanta during October 2018 returned to the market in Monterey.
Having sold at auction less than a year ago for $566k, it went for almost $100k more in Monterey: $665k including premium. One may view this either as 4-litres taking off in California through 2019 or Atlanta in winter having been the wrong place to sell this RS. It was a good result for a 4-litre RS either way, especially given that the car cannot be registered in CA due to smog laws.
Porsches that failed to sell in Monterey
Twenty-one Porsches were offered for sale at Monterey and only three failed to sell: the aforementioned Type 64 (sort of a Porsche), a 1973 RS with a bunch of Japanese history and a 1996 Porsche 993 GT2 that had previously changed hands at Amelia Island 2018 for over $1.4 million, but failed to find a new home at Monterey. Nothing too surprising.
Other cars that sold below expectations (my expectations, at least) all had restoration in common. When it comes to buying old cars, there’s still no substitute for originality.
After a great start for Porsche in the 2019 24 Hours of Daytona, heavy rain, 17 full course cautions and a collision forced the pole-sitting RSR back down the field to eventually be classified fifth overall. The sister car qualified fifth on the grid and enjoyed an eventful race. It was eventually classified third overall.
Porsche put great effort into Daytona, finishing the 911 and 912 machines in a great Brumos livery and piling drivers into the GT Daytona class in the new 911 GT3R. Nick Tandy took the pole in an RSR set up for dry running at top speed on the straights, and he and co-drivers Pilet and Fred Mako held the lead well into the night. When heavy rain moved in, the car was outpaced and started to struggle.
The sister car of Earl Bamber, new dad Laurens Vanthoor and Mathieu Jaminet lost four laps repairing a splitter mounting defect early on but made up places as the race progressed to finish fourth overall. A fuel stop penalty for the third placed GT40 of Richard Westbrook, Ryan Briscoe and Scott Dixon saw them demoted to fourth, putting Porsche up to third.
Westbrook and F1 retiree, Fernando Alonso, both described the conditions towards the end of the the race as “ridiculous”, with Westbrook describing the rain as the worst he had ever seen in racing. Alonso along with team mates Kamui Kobayashi, Jordan Taylor and Renger van der Zande eventually came home first overall, but Alonso had been calling for a safety car or a red flag while running in second, as cars drove with close to zero visibility at more than 200 mph.
“I called a lot of times when I was second, over the radio, that the safety car was necessary,” Alonso told Sportscar 365. “I think the last five or seven laps were not right for anyone on track. The visibility was nearly zero. We could not be flat out on the straights. The cars… were coming in sixth gear at 200 mph. There were parts of different cars at different points of the track because people were losing the bodywork here and there.”
“To achieve a podium result under such difficult conditions is a great effort,” said Steffen Höllwarth, Porsche IMSA Program Manager. “We led the field over long stretches, we coped impressively with a setback for the 912 car and we regained lost time. Now we’re looking ahead with optimism to the next race in Sebring. We are keen to repeat our victory there from last year.”
Porsche has unveiled its new Cayman GT4 Clubsport, which features a small amount of natural fibre bodywork. The move is in tune with Stuttgart’s aims to increase the use of sustainable, renewable materials following a 2015 Sustainability Report which showed Porsche had increased its use of fossil fuels and electrical power through the year.
Porsche says that 718 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport is the first ever production race car to feature body parts made of natural-fibre composite material. Both doors and the rear wing are made of an organic fibre mix, sourced primarily from agricultural by-products such as flax or hemp fibres and feature similar properties to carbon fibre in terms of weight and stiffness.
Three panels on a car doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a start. The technology obviously exists to do more, as demonstrated by Swiss firm BComp, whose partnership with the Electric GT sustainable racing project was announced back in 2017.
Bcomp’s proprietary material is a high-performance, cost-efficient product that can replace or reinforce carbon fibre and other engineering materials. It is said to cut up to 40% weight with no change in performance. The natural fibre composite bodywork developed by Bcomp can also be embedded with LED lighting to act as an information screen while the cars go around the circuit.
Bcomp’s powerRib and ampliTex reinforcement fabrics have been used throughout the sports and leisure markets, in products such as skis, snowboards, surfboards, canoes and guitars. Bcomp has also collaborated with the European Space Agency ESA on the development of lightweight space applications.
Porsche Cayman GT4 Trackday model not available in the UK
The Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport comes in two versions ex-works: the Trackday model and the Competition variant for national and international motor racing. The Trackday edition is not available in the UK.
Costing £130,000 (plus 20% UK VAT), the 718 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport Competition model weighs 1,320 kilograms and is powered by a 3.8-litre flat six producing 425 bhp. This is 40 bhp more than the previous model, but it didn’t stop Porsche selling 421 examples of that one over the last three years.
The transmission is a six-speed PDK with mechanical rear diff lock. Suspension is from the GT3 Cup and the bias-adjustable brakes are steel discs all round measuring 380mm in diameter. Air jacks and a fire extinguisher system are fitted as standard. The car comes with a 115-litre fuel tank for endurance events and lengthy Nurburgring sessions.
In usual reflective mood during the seasonal downtime, I’ve been looking back over some of my GT Porsche magazine columns from the last twelve months and checking where my head was at through the year. My first magazine column for GT considered the launch of the 911 Carrera T and what effect it might have on the Porsche populus.
2018 Porsche 911 Carrera T spec
370bhp/330lb ft turbcharged 3.0-litre engine as in base Carrera
Sports Exhaust and PASM as standard
7-speed manual has Limited Slip Diff and shorter final drive
PDK has no LSD
Reduced sound deadening
Thin windows and pull straps in doors
Rear seat and PCM delete (No Cost Option to put back)
Weight in standard form circa 1425kg
Many of the old guard treat new 911 models with a degree of suspicion, as it often feels like models are being released just to give magazines something to write about. This is most especially true when Porsche disinters old model designations. The 911 T was a good example.
Just 20 kilos lighter than a standard Carrera with similar equipment, the T didn’t seem to bring much to the party, but it was still likely to get a few writers excited. Most old hands were reserved in their reviews of this subtle run-out upgrade to the standard Carrera.
“Unfortunately, Porsche has somewhat mis-sold the T as a sort of hardcore, purists’ missile rather than embracing its true purpose as a cracking all-rounder in the best tradition of low-level 911s,” said Richard Porter in The Sunday Times. “It gives you a few extra tasty treats such as the trick suspension and diff that make it nicer to drive, without any trinkets you don’t need. It’s not sparse, but there’s a pleasing simplicity to it, right down to the seats that are wrapped not with leather but in cloth, striped like a 1980s banker’s suit. It’s all you need, and nothing you don’t.”
“If you were hoping the Carrera T would be a mini-me GT3, look away now,” wrote Andrew Frankel in Autocar. “But that’s not to say there’s nothing interesting going on. Before Porsche’s T-squad laid a finger on its flanks, the 911 was by some distance already the most desirable and effective performer in its category. The T is a car with just a little more edge.”
Porsche 911 Carrera T investment prospects
The 911 Carrera T rang a bell with buyers: latest UK registration data suggests that 219 Carrera T models were put on the road in 2018, with a 2-to-1 bias towards the manual.
The seven-speed gearbox in the 991 was widely viewed as inferior to the sweet six-speed fitted to Caymans, but as early reviews suggested the car was a 991 GT3 for £30k less and given the spec difference from manual to PDK, most Carrera T buyers/investors were obviously going to pick the manual. The residual premium could take a decade to materialise a la 997 Carrera GTS, but it was the one to have.
Residual values for the 911T (which sold with a cost new some ten percent higher than a standard Carrera) have yet to find their groove, but 219 RHD cars registered year-to-date does not make them super-rare amongst the 2018 911 cohort. That said, in a year-to-date figure of over 11,000 registrations up to the end of November and against a whole-life registration total for RHD 991s, 200 is a fairly small number and should help this model car to build a bit of a following.
There’s been good interest in Porsche tractors at auction all year, so it will be interesting to follow this 18hp Allgaier Porsche tractor through the auction at Brooklands Historics on November 25th. Porsche tractors are a fascination to me and, while prices have still not gone crazy, their simple, honest and ego-free nature makes them a superb place to put a bit of cash in my view, especially if you have a bit of land to enjoy them on.
Having kicked off the people’s car concept with the VW Beetle, Porsche turned its focus to the land, creating a range of strong and reliable tractors for the masses. The first designs were registered in the early 1930s, but after WWII, only companies that had been making tractors before and during the war were allowed to produce agricultural machinery. So Porsche put its clever designs up for licencing and partnered with two companies: Allgaier in Germany and Hofherr Schrantz in Austria.
Produced as “Porsche System” products, more than 125,000 tractors were built under this arrangement from the 1950s until 1963. The old Zeppelin factory was used by Mannesmann, who took over Allgaier production from the mid-1950s.
The Brooklands tractor is an 18 hp, two-cylinder model from 1957. Originally supplied to an estate in the south of France, it eventually passed to a Belgian doctor in 2009, who restored it to immaculate condition and stored it in his drawing room. It was later sold to an historic racing driver and is now coming up for auction.
Brooklands estimate the tractor at £10-15k, which sounds about right to generate interest. The end result probably depends on how much activity it attracts amongst European buyers, so it could even go higher that that. I spoke to my friend, Michael Hodges, at Brooklands and got his take on the current classic market, which is broadly in line with how I am finding things.
“Things remain buoyant as far as historics are concerned, with a consistently high sales ratio. Last sale was a little down, but the market has hardened. As you know, the market has been high for a very long time. We find that classic Porsches remain good when realistically priced, but some sellers have unrealistic expectations.
“Some market commentary – generally from the less informed – is not helpful, nor accurate. Certainly, at the high end of the investment market, buyers are more cautious but it’s inappropriate to suggest that’s representative of the market as a whole.”
I am hoping to make it to Brooklands and watch the tractor go through. With 140 lots including 44 vehicles consigned for this sale, there are a few more interesting cars open for bidding, including a LHD Gen 1 GT3 in Viper Green with 39,500 kms, which is estimated at £115-140k. The sales results will make interesting additions to my Porsche Valuations database. More news from Brooklands later.
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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