Two red Porsche 911s caught my eye in the catalogue for the upcoming Aguttes sale in Lyon, France on November 9th. Values for both models soared when the Porsche market exploded but, as Orwell said, some pigs are more equal than others. Their potential selling prices are poles apart.
1966 Porsche 911 2-litre
Estimated at €180-200,000, this Polo Red SWB Porsche 911 – chassis number 304392 – was supplied through Sweden in May 1966 to a racer from Trollhättan. Built with triple Weber carburettors instead of the usual Solex, it lived in Sweden right up to the turn of the century, until it turned up in Germany.
Porsche 911 2.0 auction – photo by Aguttes
The car then sold to a museum in Austria and, when that closed, it passed through keepers in Switzerland and on to Normandy in France. By this stage it needed some money spent: the 2L market was buoyant in 2014 so it was fully repainted in the factory colour and restored to period spec.
Prettied up, it sold to another French collector and was sent to the racing mechanic, Pierre Modas, for an engine and transmission rebuild. Porsche dealers changed a few other bits and in total over €30,000 was spent on the mechanical restoration. The same work in the UK would probably cost a bit more, which perhaps suggests there was not much to do at the start or there may be a bit more to do now. Webers take less restoration than Solex, for sure.
1966 Porsche 911 2.0 interior – photo by Aguttes
The auctioneers claim this is an authentic example, but who can know without inspecting. A lot of 2-litres passed through various specialists while the market was freaking out and some work is better than others. The history is certainly interesting: particularly the Swedish angle.
1976 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 at auction
The other car in the catalogue that caught my eye was a 1976 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 Coupe. Estimated at €45-65,000, chassis number 9116600485 is a matching numbers example, first supplied by Dieteren in Belgium, that has been refinished in Guards Red/Indian Red from its original grey.
1976 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 – photo by Aguttes
Restoration or replacement of bits including half-floors, front crossmember (likely front pan) and the bumper mounts suggest the car was used well from new, or perhaps even caught a bit of damage somewhere, so the speedo reading of fairly low kms for the year may not be verifiable.
It has also had a new fuel tank (pretty standard for impact bumper cars of this era) and the suspension, brakes and steering have apparently been refurbished. The gearbox is also said to have been overhauled, though there is no mention of the engine or K-Jet being stripped. The car comes with bills for over €40k and plenty of photos for bidders to check.
1976 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 interior – photo by Aguttes
Owned by the current owner since 2010, this car was entered in the Hotel de Ventes sale at Monaco in July 2017 with an estimate of €60-80k at the time. It failed to sell for whatever reason and so returns to the sale rooms with a lower price tag attached. The drop of €15k on low estimate is where I see the market for a nice C3 right now: if I owned a car like this (assuming it is all as described) and if it didn’t fetch €45k, I would probably keep it. In a market as tough as this one has been through 2019, they could have done better pics to get interest going.
Porsche Colour Change vs Market Price
The factory colour is always what people get hooked on, but it is hard to say whether this 1976 Carrera 3.0 Coupe would offer a better sales prospect in original ‘grey’. Red is rare and looks good on early impact bumpers. The car also retains its original 5-bladed fan and has the 15″ Fuchs, which are more correct than 16s on a ’76. It’s starting pretty cheap for a C3 at €45k, so we’ll see how it goes on the day.
1976 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 engine – photo by Aguttes
My interest in this one is obvious – the effect of colour change on a Carrera 3.0 Coupe. My ’76 C3 was repainted in Continental Orange from the original Copper Bronze Metallic and, while I like the colour a lot, it will have to be redone at some stage. The option to refinish in the original or something completely different will therefore be mine somewhere down the road and more information may help make a ‘better’ decision.
Prices only matter when you sell and that is not something on my radar right now. Never say never, though. The clock is ticking and my kids won’t want it.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
It’s been a steady year for insurance claims: I’ve helped in several claims via agreed insurance valuations I supplied on various classic Porsche models. Some of these claims are still ongoing, so I won’t go into specifics, but a write-off claim for one client with a 1988 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2 G50 Coupe recently settled and he’s given me the OK to share details.
The car was a high mileage example that had been fully restored over time, with bodywork refinished in original Baltic Blue, rebuilt engine with a LSD in the G50 transmission, full suspension rebuild with Centre Gravity setup and front seats re-trimmed in correct linen leather. The car had certainly lived a life and the owner had toured extensively in it, clocking up 75k miles over ten years together, including a long road trip with mum as the navigator.
In a Danish ferry queue en route to Iceland this summer, the Carrera’s engine was started to move through check-in, then the engine cut out and smoke began to waft from the engine compartment. This was quickly followed by the stomach-churning woof of flame, as petrol from what is thought to have been a failed fuel hose ignited. Small flames became big flames and there was suddenly lots of activity, with fire extinguishers rushing in from cars all around. Here’s a video that no one wants to live through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nE_WMBZ7vc
Engine fires catch quickly and can be difficult to extinguish. The owner disconnected the battery sharpish when the starter began to engage of its own accord, but fuel pressure kept the fire going. By the time the fire trucks arrived, the damage was done.
The car was insured with Classicline in the UK, with European breakdown cover by ADAC. Part of my insurance valuation service is to make myself available in an advisory capacity if something goes wrong while the valuation is valid, so the owner got in touch immediately after the incident.
A quick look at the pics told me the car would end up as a write-off (an uneconomic repair). ADAC inspectors decided the same and declined to repatriate the car to the UK, in line with their terms and conditions. The owner was then left to sort things out via his insurers.
Classicline was very sympathetic following the traumatic event and the loss of a treasured 911: the firm gets a huge thumbs up from the owner in every respect. The car was brought back to the UK and inspected by an experienced assessor. The cost to repair using all new Porsche parts was put at £34k including VAT and the additional costs of repatriation and moving the car around the UK – including to the owner’s preferred specialist for a detailed inspection on site – put the total claim value into the write-off zone.
Insurers usually hold agreed valuation certificates as valid for two years at a time, but given the up-and-down nature of the market in recent years, the owner had been careful to update his agreed valuation annually. My most recent insurance valuation was at similar money to a car with half the mileage, but this car had been cherished and kept in superb condition.
History has taught me to prepare for the worst case scenario, so my policy is to set agreed valuations in line with recent data and independent market observations at as high a level as I would feel comfortable later justifying in court. This honours my professional responsibility and is fair to both sides. Classicline did not dispute the agreed valuation I had supplied, so it all came down to the final settlement offer.
The offer to retain the salvage came in at around the level expected. The final decision to repair or to take the full payout was not made lightly: there were some lengthy late-night phone calls discussing other options, especially considering current market conditions. After ten years and many miles, the owner decided to let the car go and move on to the next chapter. I’m not sure what might arrive in the garage next: a very nice Saab 900 Turbo is currently filling the hole.
Total Loss: nightmare vs opportunity
I have regular conversations with valuation clients who are thinking of selling their cars, or whose cars are subject to a total loss or write-off claim, so thoughts of what I would do with an insurance payout or sale proceeds are never far from my mind. I don’t drive my classics all that often, but losing any one of them would be a heartbreak and the last thing I want in the middle of that is to be battling with an insurer, so I use agreed valuations on all of my cars and motorcycles for maximum peace of mind.
As someone who has been working with owners and insurers and valuing cars professionally for almost twenty years, it never ceases to amaze me just how many classic cars are insured on market valuation rather than agreed valuation policies and how many owners recommend market valuation. This is madness.
If this car had been agreed on a market valuation, the owner would now be in the middle of a battle to get the best settlement and the final number would likely fall well short of what was achieved. Market valuation may save a few pounds at policy start, but these pictures of the damage, the repair estimate and the swift, no-hassle resolution put the one advantage of going with a market valuation (saving a small sum of money) into perspective.
I cannot stress strongly enough that people should agree their insurance valuations from the start. Get an agreed valuation from a trusted, independent source and don’t add to the misery of total loss. Contact me via classic-car-valuations.com or use the links below if you need any help or advice.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support my work or engage with me in other ways, you can:
I’ve always been a bookworm. From seven or eight years old, I pored over every issue of the legendary ‘Motor’ magazine, relishing the data and reviews. As a car-obsessed kid on the west coast of Ireland, there was no one to share any of this geekery with, other than a handful of less obsessed schoolmates. But that didn’t stop me from soaking it up.
Unforgettable ‘Car’ reviews had brilliant photos with text from a lyrical genius. Whether it was Aussies Cropley or Nichols, Austria’s Kacher or the brilliant George Bishop, their work seemed effortless – the words just flowed out. When you do the right homework, that’s how it goes.
Stuck in a place where these dream-sequence pieces could never come true, I absorbed them like sunlight. Exacting attention to detail went into these features and that shone from the pages: the least I as a reader could do was give them my undivided attention.
If the laser-beam focus that we shot into the pages of the magazines of our youth was absorbed as raw spirit energy, then a solution to climate change is stacked all around me. I have thousands of old magazines on shelves and in boxes: decades of Autocar, piles of Car and Performance Car, the complete works of Street Machine, Custom Car and hundreds of Bike magazines. The energy contained within these pages must be pretty incredible.
Much as I love what these magazines encapsulate, most will be recycled at some stage. While I enjoy leafing through tokens of my well-spent youth, they are not a must-have reminder of my boyhood fascination with car reviews. Somewhere along the journey from young reader to driver, I realised that comparing one new car to another no longer mattered to me. The story mattered – it always does – but the actual product was less of a draw.
Nothing much interesting happens with cars until you drive them out of the showroom and into the world. It’s a bit like having kids: the delivery is special, then a few days of bright fascination, then the glow of strapping them into their child seat and heading home from the hospital. But then, the newness softens. Months go by where not very much happens. Of course you are bonding, but really it’s just clocking up the miles until they get interesting.
Then they start moving, and failing. Every fail is a thrill: fail, fail and succeed. Progress is swift – you learn fast when you fail. Their failure exposes vulnerability and brings out our empathy. As the days pass with small fails and small wins, thoughts of what life was like before this empathic connection starts to fade. It begins to feel like they have always been around. The energy pored into them begins to shine back. They tell part of your story and you contribute to theirs. Your part is a privilege.
As such a huge percentage of my emotional life has been wrapped in the romance of cars, I find distinct parallels in connection. Car stories worth telling have cracks in the windscreen. Memorable protagonists come with a back story. A life well-lived is defined by the stone chips and the stories I love come with this as the subtext.
Of course, second-hand stuff is not for everyone. Some people love the no-story of newness and, having owned and sold many new cars in my life, I get that. But newness is not my primary trigger. I like things that are scratched: the wear on a camera or the cracks in the leather. In the same way that I liked it when my kids would fall over, I take some pleasure when they ring me in tears: they are living a life and writing their story through authentic experience. When the question is new versus used or shiny versus scratched, there is simply no contest for me.
New Porsche Macan is a thriller
Used car admirers would be pretty stuck without new car obsessives, so hats off to them. New Macan is out and about and, as someone who has run 4×4 SUVs for decades and can see no impending end to that, of course I like it, but of course I would only buy used. The used Macan I would buy is still thirty grand and unlikely to fall into my price range anytime soon, so I scratch the vague itch vicariously, by chatting with friends who own them and watching Stuttgart’s Youtube content.
The latest Macan video wants to talk about thrilling. Printer paper and water coolers: they are not thrilling. A Macan at dawn on a twisty road: that’s what thrilling is like. But that viewpoint depends on the watcher.
Printer paper carrying the first draft of a book is thrilling. Rising from a long desk stint for a cool cup of water: also good. An empty Macan on a twisty road first thing in the morning feels like a bit of a waste. My early morning drives are all about taking the dog to the woods or heading out to collect yet more reclaimed architectural salvage. An early morning drive in a Macan with the dog in the boot and an empty trailer on the back? Now that would be cool.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog and engage with me in other ways, you can:
RM Sotheby’s end-of-year London sale takes place this Thursday at Olympia in Kensington. Fifteen Porsche cars are amongst the lots on offer and half of those cars are being sold without reserve. Here’s a look at three of the no-reserve Porsches that caught my eye.
1965 Porsche 356C LHD Coupe – estimate £50-60k
Chassis number 221132 is a Porsche 356 C 1600 Coupe. Finished in Light Ivory, Sotheby’s website doesn’t offer too many clues, but the car had previously sold at Goodwood Revival in 2008, so I dug out those details.
This ‘65 C Coupe began its life in California, where it was sold to a policeman from El Cerrito. In 1971, it passed from one policeman to another and stayed with him until it sold to the third owner in 1996. The third owner brought the car to the UK and kept it until 2008. It is offered for sale by the fourth owner.
The history includes an engine rebuild with 1700cc barrel and piston set at 112k miles, a transmission overhaul at 114k miles and a bare metal respray in its original colour, which was carried out in the UK. MOT history shows that the car has not been MOT’d since 2008, when it passed with a list of advisories including oil leaks and split CV boots. Interested parties should therefore proceed with caution, but a potentially solid 356C with sensible ownership since new and sold no reserve is worth a second look.
Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet – estimate £80-130k
Chassis number WP0ZZZ93ZJS020221 is a 1988 Porsche 930 Cabriolet with two owners from new. Presented in Diamond Blue Metallic with Cashmere Beige leather trim, the odometer shows 26k miles but, as Sotheby’s description doesn’t mention the mileage, assume it’s unwarranted.
I put this four-speed Turbo Cab on my watch list, not because it is a great example of the breed, but because 930 prices are an important benchmark for air-cooled 911s and the market has been a bit shaky.
The 930 had the highest cost new in period and open sale prices for these cars highlight real-time premiums for turbocharged vs normally aspirated 911s. The 930 market has been under pressure since the high water line of 2015, so this unrestored car in an elegant colour mix offered with no reserve will lay down a useful data point.
1992 LHD Porsche 968 Club Sport ex-factory press car – estimate £35-50k
The car I am most keen to follow is chassis number WP0ZZZ96ZPS815075: a left-hand drive 1992 Porsche 986 Club Sport in Speed Yellow. This 968 has a super interesting history that was recently shared in 911 & Porsche World magazine. The auction entry may have been encouraged by enthusiasm around the piece and that enthusiasm could be rewarded on Thursday.
Detective work by the current owner with assistance from the Porsche archive revealed that this 968 Club Sport was the factory press car used in several notable articles on the model. Walter Röhrl drove the car in a four-way road test printed in Auto Zeitung and called it ‘the best handling car that Porsche makes’. The history is very well documented and includes several Porsche factory service stamps, a top-end rebuild, clutch and flywheel at Parr and a huge list of work carried out by its current custodian over almost two decades.
I have a side interest in cars like this one that passed through the hands of well known racer and dealer, Nick Faure, as my early 944 Lux is one of those cars. Faure is a true devotee of the transaxle Porsches and those who love these cars tend to love them for life. I adore the 924, 944 and 968 models and there can’t be too many 968 Club Sports with such enjoyable provenance.
The light blue 930 has a fairly bullish estimate at £80-130k given the condition seen in the photos, while this apparently perfect 968 Club Sport at £35-50k feels relatively conservative in comparison. I suspect it may do slightly better: everything depends on who’s in the room when the cars come over the block in Kensington and whether there’s any hangover from the Type 64 debacle in Monterey. I would love to be there in person, but the dentist is calling…
Pics by Tom Gidden, Dirk de Jager and Adam Warner for RM Sotheby’s
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support this blog or to engage with me in other ways, you can:
Details have just arrived for a rare 1995 Porsche 993 Ruf BTR 2 that will be offered at Brooklands’ Historics auction sale on Saturday, November 23.
Ruf chassis number W09TB0367SPR06006 is one of five 420hp RHD BTR 2s produced. First delivered to Top Marques in Singapore and sold to a local businessman, that aspect of provenance could make it quite an attractive prospect for re-importation into a famously locked-down export destination where Porsches command serious prices.
The original car was finished in Aventura Green, but a later owner refinished the body in Guards Red. Personally, I love dark green cars but red is quite rare and suits the 993 shape. Somewhere down the line, the engine was also rebuilt by a New Zealand specialist. The original Ruf EKS automatic clutch system (think Sportomatic-ish) has been replaced by a more conventional arrangement.
The Guards Red 993 came to the UK in 2015 and sold to a retired engineer who took it to his place in France and maintained it in-house. It is now back in the UK. The sales description says it has been MOT’d but the MOT database says the last test expired in 2016, so crossed wires somewhere. The mileage is low at less than 30k from new.
Offered for sale with history including the original book pack, the auction’s pre-sale estimate is £68-84,000. We’ll have to see what the market is like at the end of November and how the changes to the Pfaffenhausen spec – including a colour change and non-Ruf engine rebuild – affect the car’s desirability.
A factory 993 Turbo with less than 30k miles would be pretty good news, even in the current slow market. What’s the price jump (up or down) from a Ruf BTR 2 to a factory Porsche 993 Turbo, and what’s the net effect on that number of diluting the original Rufness through later modifications to an already modified car? Will we be able to look at the eventual auction result and say ‘that’s the correct answer’?
The last RHD BTR 2 to come through a UK auction was a one-owner example with 68k miles that was offered in September 2018 but failed to find a home. The market has been on a bit of journey since then, so it will be interesting to see how this one gets on.
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