Blog

Horn grilles – a rant and an attaboy

For decades, the pot metal 69-72 horn grilles on 900 series Porsches were a major source of pain. The originals pitted. The only replacement grilles on the market were about 5mm too narrow, so could not be made to align with both the turn signal lens and hood line. Many people answered this challenge by […]

Backdates

The enormous (disproportionate?) popularity of “longhoods” has prompted a lot of people to backdate later cars. Let’s consider a backdate by reviewing one I did in 2011. I had a 1985 Carrera coupe I bought for under $10K (times were different then). But it was below market for 2011 because 1.) it had 227K miles, […]

The color question

Colors come and go. There are institutions that tell car makers what colors will be popular over the next few years… In the 70s, Porsche embraced citrus and earth colors. Ironically, in the 80s, these colors fell out of fashion and many of the “period” colors were painted over with black, red or gray. So […]

Are you an owner or caretaker?

I’m guilty of having been a caretaker. I’ve owned 911s that needed just a bit of work to make them perfect… and then done that work just before selling (making it ‘ready to sell’). Meaning that somebody else got the full measure of enjoyment that I could have had. From 4 decades of experience, I […]

Market softness

For at least the last 5 years, people in the Porsche community have discussed the demise of the ‘bubble’ in Porsche 911 prices – especially 73 and earlier models. I am not on the ‘chicken little’ bandwagon. The very best cars are selling at unprecedented prices. If there is softness in the market valuation, it […]