I live in a 15 minute city and because of this, I walk a lot. It is always interesting what I see. I live about 200m from Vancouver General Hospital, and I would wager this car is owned by a doctor or some other professional.
Who doesn’t love a whale tail? The plate shows this is a collector car. It appears to have been restored.
By the wear on the interior, it seems this beauty has been enjoyed for many years.
What other colour could this car be? Red suits it perfectly and is wonderful in our sea of grey, silver, white and black.
I’d guess it’s 100% original, not restored, 930s were always rare-ish and expensive unless crashed. That looks like a circa 1985 one, here’s a pic of its twin from the 1985 LA Auto Show. Nice street find!
And here’s the current iteration from a similar angle taken last week in Wolfsburg.
You were in Germany last week? So I was! A highlight was going 180 km/h in a Skoda station wagon because my buddy was late for a haircut in Hannover. I wanted to go to Wolfsburg, but didn’t have the time. We went to the Deutsches Panzermuseum Munster instead, in another harrowing autobahn drive.
The red single stage paint looked too good for being original.
I have a gorgeous all original 911 from the 1970s I will write up soon.
How funny! I may have passed you (just kidding). My highlight was 225km/h driving a BMW X2 2.0td on the A5 between Basel and Freiburg. One of the kids took a shaky video while squabbling… I think the car had a little more to give but it got trafficky.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/egSDjXTPDZI
Eleven days total, Barcelona – Copenhagen – Berlin – Wolfsburg – Staufen near Freiburg where I was a kid. Got back on Tuesday, good trip.
My favorite Porsche. A lot of long lived cars get fussy styling changes because the designers catered to the marketers but in this case every single flare and protrusion is bred directly from the racetrack. I like all pre-993 911s pretty much equally for that reason, it’s an honest design from mild to wild.
I’ll say one thing though, I like the aesthetics of the original whale tail better, with it being fully molded in and having the dual vents. These later ones with the flat louvers has the grace of an apartment air conditioning unit hanging off the back, BUT once again for good reason, to house the larger air to air intercooler, changed from the original 930s lack of one.
This one
“but in this case every single flare and protrusion is bred directly from the racetrack”
That’s what made the original iteration of the 928 so remarkable, while the 930 needed all of the outrageous appendages in order to tame the inherent limitations of the original base design, the 928 performed virtually as well without a single spoiler or appendage anywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I adore the 930 in any of its years, the 928 just demonstrates progress. Of course the 928 itself started to sprout appendages as its own performance envelope grew over the years with, just like the 930 vs 911, front and ever larger rear spoilers as well as wider rear wheel arches etc…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/junkyard/curbside-recycling-1978-porsche-928-nothing-even-comes-close/
Another example is the Lamborghini Diablo, with the exception of the rear wing(which has long been acknowledged being there just for its extra outrageous looks), the Diablo put all the sprouting protrusions the Countach gained through the years and put them under the skin. But likewise I like seeing the protrusions.
I think both the 928 and 930 demonstrate technological progress; you could pick every flare and arch and technical detail and link it directly to their origins in the group 3/4/5 race cars of the 60s and 70s, from the naturally aspirated RSR wheelarches and whaletail, to the turbo, to the intercooler of the 935s, even the water cooled cylinders of modern 911s have origins in the famous “moby dick” slope nose/slope tail. I’ve long been a fan and ardent defender of the 928, but it is technological progress created fresh in a laboratory, not adhering to brand tradition but raw science, where the 930 Turbo was technological progress based on field tests of what was essentially a mass production test mule. Philosophically that’s probably why I’m not such a fan of modern cars in general, it’s making the state of the art from raw data rather than chasing and occasionally besting the state of the art with “flawed” technology like the rear engined boxers. Now the 928 had its interesting technology despite its more conventional layout and way ahead of its time good(IMO) looks to win me over anyway, it’s one of my favorite cars of the 80s, but the 928 just never earned any Motorsport pedigree. It may have been able to match the 911 in every metric but it was still just a street car with the badge being the heritage, not the shape of the car you’d see in photographs clad in Martini livery speeding down the Mulsanne straight with flames shooting out the exhaust entering corners.
Plus the 911 wasn’t a dead end yet, its continued refinement in rally during the 80s led to the AWD 959 which to a large degree most modern 911s owe their technology to. By contrast the 928 could be looked at as the genesis of the more conventional street oriented Porsche, culminating in the brand’s sedans and SUVs today.
And the modern 911 (992 I guess) has pretty much turned into what the 928 was, i.e. an exceptional grand tourer. It’s no secret that a Cayman with a 911 engine is the better track car, yet history won’t allow Porsche to field that, so we have 911-based LeMans racers still, but with the engine/trans reversed to make it mid-engined as opposed to the street cars.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that nobody in their right mind would ever buy a Lamborghini and skip the wing… 🙂 That’s really what you’re buying with a Lamborghini attached to the bottom of it.
Interesting what you say about the Cayman, Jim!
What eventually became the GT4 was something I, as exterior designer of the 981 range really wanted to do. I kept hanging pictures of it on the wall (see here), but was always told to cover them up before senior engineers walked the studios. There was always the feeling that the 911 should always be unchallenged in performance on track.
One day, the head of the race department, responsible for engineering all the “GT” cars walked in unannounced, saw the renderings and championed it through to production. Thank you Herr Christensen! Of course, we then only had 6 months to do all the special exterior parts so that it could be introduced before the 981s were facelifted into 718s.
We did it though and the GT4 (and related Boxster Spyder) has established itself as part of the range….
I agree on the 928, Matt! A styling landmark by Wolfgang Moebius and great to drive, with the Weissach Axle negating the lift throttle oversteer that made pre 993 911 so unruly. I had an early S until a couple of years ago and it felt deceptively modern to drive for a design developed in the first half of the ’70s.
What makes the 911 such a weapon in the right hands is the ability its rear engine gives it to put power down on corner exits and get large proportion of braking from the rear wheels. The current iterations use better chassis geometry, modern tires and electronics to eliminate the drawbacks of their layout and capitalize on the strengths to devastating effect, so one could say that the rear engine architecture was ultimately more developable than the 928’s. The C7 corvette with a similar layout had to give way to the rear mid engine C8 because power outputs were overwhelming front engine layouts.
I agree that this is probably an original car. Most earlier 911’s are babied, well maintained, and parked safely in garages when not in use. Since they hold their value, and actually even have increased in value, few ever degrade into beater status. When I was younger, I didn’t care for them, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown to appreciate them, all the way back to the 356. These were one the dream machines of the 1980’s, looking at this red beauty it’s obvious why.
These are either garage queens or are wrapped around a tree. There is no middle ground.
I didn’t look original to me. The paint was flawless.
Great find. Since ’85, these make me think of Pelle Lindbergh. RIP.
Guards Red and fabulous.
It’s Little Red Riding Hood and she drives as precise as a Swiss watch. My all-time favorite Porsche design.