My friend Peter has asked me to help him to sell two of his Porsche 911s. First to be offered for sale is this stylish RHD 1988 Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera, finished in Guards Red with black sports leather trim piped in body colour and excellent red carpets trimming the floor pans and door pockets.
Originally registered on August 1st, 1988, this 911 has covered 96,275 miles from new and has an MOT until December 6th. A former PCGB concours competitor, it is in nice condition throughout. The previous owner had it for eighteen years and kept it in very good order. As a 1988 model, it has the sought after G50 transmission and other late 3.2 improvements, including the bigger dash vents.
Being a former concours car, it has not been messed with, so the bodywork and mechanicals are all to original specification. The correct Fuchs alloy wheels are in good condition, wrapped in recent Continental ContiSport tyres. The wonderful 3.2 sports seats with those shapely side bolsters are electrically adjusted and also heated: a rare option on air-cooled 911s. Other nice additions include the electric sunroof, front foglamps and rear wiper. It also has the three-point rear seat belts fitted for junior Porsche enthusiasts.
The majority of maintenance since 2001 has been carried out at Tuthill Porsche. I have a lever arch of service history dating back to 1994, including almost every MOT from new, which shows that it has been well maintained over the years. Over £5,000 has been spent on mechanical work in the last three thousand miles alone, including the fitment of the sleek Porsche Classic stereo with sat nav and bluetooth, and maintaining the Waxoyl underbody protection to keep rust at bay.
Tuthills carried out a major service at the start of last year to include spark plugs, all fluids and filters and valve clearance adjustments and the 3.2 has covered just a few hundred miles since then. Both front brake calipers have been replaced with reconditioned units, as the originals can get sticky with age. The DME and crank position sensor have both been replaced as one would hope at this age and mileage. The clutch was changed by a previous owner and the G50 transmission shifts perfectly.
We have set the asking price at £40k for a quick, no hassle sale. That’s well below the average asking price for apparently similar cars, but this is not a cheap Carrera. This is a very nice car in great condition, priced to sell to a serious buyer who has seen enough average examples. Nothing needs doing to this car and it is ready to be used and enjoyed. Air-cooled Porsche 911s of this calibre do not grow on trees and are a great place to put money; values are pretty stable and the ability to enjoy one’s investment portfolio does not come much prettier than a classic Porsche 911.
Please get in touch if you are a serious buyer keen to inspect a good car. The 911 is located near Banbury in Oxfordshire (straight train from Marylebone or Junction 11 of the M40) and available for inspection on any weekday morning, Monday to Friday.
Update: This car is now SOLD. Many thanks.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
As April draws to a close and we put the first proper month of the season behind us, the shape of the 2018 classic Porsche market has begun to emerge. While high-end 911s with low mileage, low owners and all the right spec are still enjoying some demand, only the bravest observer would describe things as buoyant at the lower end of the market.
The long cold winter across Europe was definitely felt in Porsche showrooms and what little fever there was around air-cooled classics towards the end of last year has not increased. This has tempered sentiment towards the most populous production models including all turbocharged 911s. This trend is shared across the pond: bids on two apparently nice 93os offered at the recent Amelia Island sale fell well short of bottom estimate, but the cars were sold nevertheless. The softer demand also seems to have spread to average 996 and 997 Turbos unless very well priced or gifted with excellent spec.
Normally-aspirated air-cooled 911s have not escaped the softer conditions. While the number of late-eighties Carreras offered to market in recent months has been lower than expected, prices for average examples are off the boil. 911 SCs in A1 condition have been holding up well, as the numbers are lower and demand for chrome-trimmed ’70s 3-litres remains healthy when the cars are priced right.
A quick look on Pistonheads shows the state of supply in the UK right now. Searching for air-cooled 911s up to 1983 listed by UK sellers brings up 96 results. Roughly 20% of those cars are listed as POA, with several listings detailing cars coming up for auction in the next month or two. Looking specifically at cars offered below £50k, there are just eight air-cooled 911s available in the UK and only five of those are SCs.
Looking at 1984-1989 911 Carrera 3.2s on sale for less than £50k in the UK right now, there are 24 examples listed on Pistonheads, with prices starting from £25k for a project and ending at top whack for a 150k-mile 3.2-litre backdate. Twenty four cars is six times the number of SCs up for sale on this site in the same price range. Eight 3.2s are listed from £50-70k and there are a couple more over that, making more than thirty cars available.
Porsche 911 supply dictates price limits
Supply of these cars is a big part of price. When there are more cars than buyers, anyone looking to sell will have to be competitive on the condition of the car they are offering and its asking price. While buyers are still out there for the very best cars, air-cooled 911 owners considering a switch into water-cooled during 2018, or away from air-cooled 911s altogether would be well advised to sharpen their pencils and spend some money putting their cars beyond reproach.
Get a classic Porsche Valuation
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
One bright spark in my inbox this morning was this nicely preserved Porsche 550A Spyder, which is heading for the Bonhams Scottsdale auction in January.
There can’t be too many 550A Spyders left with the provenance of this one. Apparently the penultimate 550A Spyder produced, chassis number 0145 began its racing life in the 1958 season, including taking part in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, where it finished 11th. Eleventh was also last place but owning an ex-Grand Prix Porsche is a good story.
Going by some online detectiving, this particular 550A has been with the current owner since 2013, and appeared back on the market in 2015 with Fiskens at Retromobile Paris. Offered for sale at $6.5 million back then, it subsequently popped up again at Goodings Pebble Beach sale the following year, with an estimate of five to six million dollars – quite a bit lower. No estimate has been placed on 0145 for Scottsdale just yet, so Bonham’s sense of where the market might be for the car will be interesting. My own feeling is that they will match Goodings’ guidelines at 5 to 6 million dollars.
Porsche 550A Spyder race history
One previous sales text for the car says it was a works race car, competing at four events through 1958 before passing into private hands, but another text tells a different story, with the car being bought by privateer Count Carol Godin de Beaufort from new and raced all over Europe, including Aspern-Vienna airport, Nürburgring 1000kms, Dutch Grand Prix, Le Mans 24 hours, the 12 Hours of Rheims, Zandvoort NAV, Trento-Bondone hillclimb, 10 Hours of Messina, Zandvoort, the Rheinland Palatine Prize, Nürburging Grand Prix, Karlskoga Grand Prix, Goodwood, Innsbruck and more.
After Count Carol sold the car, it spent time in Canada and then sold into America, where it raced extensively. It came home to Germany in the early 1990s and then moved to Italy in 2002, with an owner who campaigned it on ten Mille Miglia reruns. Good times! Now it is back up for sale.
Scottsdale is always an interesting auction. It takes place at the start of the year, when many classic collectors may be feeling less certain about how tastes have changed through the end of the previous year. Some come into the new year feeling upbeat about prospects but hanging back on bidding just to see what their rivals think. Other buyers will be looking to score a bargain and this can encourage some competitive bidding up to a preset maximum, usually well below the reserve. It is then up to the auctioneer to keep bids coming in, with the backroom team trying to make a deal happen if the car fails to sell on the block.
550 Spyders are often a good signpost on high end collector sentiment. A nicely patinated but unraced 550 was offered at Goodwood Revival in Sep 2016 and sold for £4.6 million – just over $6 million at current exchange rates but well short of the £6.2 million top estimate. How this is estimated and what it actually tops out at (or sells for) will set a tone for the start of 2018. All very interesting.
Photos by Bonhams/P. Litwinski
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
First drive reviews of the brand new Porsche Cayenne have been popping up across the credible motoring sites and the reception is generally excellent. Porsche flew lots of reviewers to Crete for the European launch, which won’t have done their feedback any harm, but what the journos are saying makes sense.
The new Cayenne shares its platform with the Bentley Bentayga, Audi Q7 and forthcoming Lamborghini Urus. The Cayenne S has abandoned the beautiful big Porsche-built V8 that my old bus uses and gone to a group-derived 434bhp, twin-turbo V6 with eight-speed automatic transmission.
The 2.9-litre engine has an exceptional torque curve, with 405lb ft on tap from 1800 to 5500 revs! That is really something else and a chunk more than a standard V8 S, which had 310lb ft from 2500-5500. Mine has been ECU flashed, so maybe makes a bit more, but would love to try this twin-turbo with a car trailer on the back.
Matt Bird at Autocar gave the new truck just shy of a five-star rating, calling it “fairly tremendous at a great many things. The Cayenne’s cabin is a triumph, comprised of sumptuous materials, seamlessly integrated technology and considerable style.” The Autocar review goes on to rate the chassis pretty highly:
“Our test Cayenne S featured carbon ceramic brakes, adaptive air suspension, rear axle steering and 21in wheels. When you bear in mind that a standard car would use steel springs, half the amount of steered wheels, smaller rims and iron brakes, you can see how it is hard to make a definitive judgement on the standard Cayenne S. As you might expect, however, the test car delivered a stellar dynamic performance.”
I can’t say that ceramic brakes or rear wheel steering would be essential additions on what I use my Cayenne for, but if you want to hoon it while the kids are in the back trying to Snapchat each other then good luck to you – don’t forget to tick the wipe clean upholstery box.
For the 500 miles a year that a family man might get to really thrash a Cayenne hard with no one else in it, and given how well mine goes on steel springs and steel brakes, not to mention the lack of complexity, I think I would just spec it as standard, but that is not the press fleet way. If you’re going to fly hundreds of road test heroes to Crete at great cost, you must give them air suspension and 21-inch wheels to caress.
Meanwhile, regular people with cash will buy the S with nice paint, simple leather, smaller wheels and reasonable spec. The huge central screen is a must. Pano roof also nice but big glass roofs have a name for playing up in the long term. I don’t miss a leaky, creaky sunroof on mine.
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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