Yahoo Autos The Price of Rarely Driving a Porsche That's Now a Collector Car
BEEP! My neighbor jumped half a foot in the air and turned to stare angrily at me from the sidewalk, her hands held high in the universal "What the hell?" gesture. I made an apologetic half-wave in a hurry, but I was a little freaked-out as well; my 1995 Porsche 911 had just beeped for no reason as I was slowing down at the stop sign next to my house. I drove away perplexed. The next stop sign was maybe three hundred feet away; our neighborhood is littered with them. As I slowed down, there was another hundred-decibel noise from behind the front bumper. This time it was longer: BEEEEEEEEEEP!
Clearly, I had a problem.
It's important to me that you understand the following: I was air-cooled before air-cooled was cool. When I bought my 993-generation Carrera 2, it was just a used car, five years old and already on its second owner, 63k on the clock and scuffs on the wheels. I didn't pay a lot of money for it. My rationale was nothing more or less than this; when I was at university I'd promised myself that I would have a Porsche 911 by the time I turned thirty. That didn't happen; I was thirty-one years old when I signed the title. Close enough, I guess.
In the decade-plus since then, I've owned a variety of other Porsches, Audis, Benzes, Bimmers, Volkswagens, you name it, all the German suspects. Bought 'em, sold 'em, forgot 'em. Only the 911 has stayed through thick and thin, long since paid off. Part of my scenery. There were years that I drove it every day. It was my constant companion in my most tragic love affair, running back and forth to Nashville a dozen times in half a year, the VDO speedometer pinned at the 110 mark and the Billy Boat exhaust filling the cabin with a basso-profundo roar that you could feel in your stomach. It was also the car that I drove for my second date with the current Mrs. Baruth. I didn't want to drive it to the first date because I didn't want her to think I was the kind of guy who drove a raggedy used Porsche.
Thanks to the lovable bigotry of the PCA crowd and the lamentable cupidity of Porsche itself, my raggedy used Porsche is no longer quite so pathetic. It's now worth maybe twice what I paid for it. Might be worth more than the original sticker. I should have bought a Turbo instead of a Carrera. I coulda had one for fifty grand in 2002. It would fetch three times that much now. I should have bought a second 993 instead of a 2004 Boxster S. Would have cost me half as much and it would be worth four times as much now.
The skyrocketing value of my 993 has changed the way I treat the car
Like Townes said, it don't pay to think too much on things you leave behind. But the skyrocketing value of my 993 has changed the way I treat the car. My old plan was to drive it into the ground and buy another one. Now my plan is to preserve the vehicle for my son. He can sell it in eleven years and go to Yale, or go BASE-jumping in Bali. Maybe both.
I hope that helps explain why I permitted ten whole months to elapse between last November, when I put Sta-Bil in the tank, and last week, when I made decision to jump-start it and drive it around a bit. It just never seems like a good idea to drive it. But if you don't drive these cars, they rot. So I had to do something.
It didn't start. Not on it's own, and not with a jump box. The starter was cranking slow. So I pushed it out of the garage and jumped it from the Tahoe. It took maybe ten tries to get it to catch and run. But it seemed okay enough. Until it started BEEEEPING.
After a quick spin around the neighborhood where I inadvertently honked my horn at every stoplight, I came back to the house and let it run for a minute while I checked the Internet. The answer to the problem was simple: the rubber gasket beneath the horn pad had finally deteriorated to the point where it wouldn't keep said horn pad from moving under braking. It's a ninety-dollar part that comes in three different versions, only one of which will fit my car. "Don't deal with this by pulling the #3 fuse," one Porsche-forum member chided. "That's just Band-Aiding the problem. Get the gasket and fix it right."
I pulled the #3 fuse in the box and drove out of the neighborhood again.
With the oil warm and the road cooling off ahead of me in the evening light, I let the old Porsche run to redline again and again, noting the various little issues. The clutch pedal is still not coming all the way up; I've had that "fixed" twice by shops in two different but equally expensive ways. The second-gear synchro is weak, a legacy of a hundred-plus SCCA Solo autocross runs. The air conditioning used to leak, but I sealed it in 2011. It's still not very good, though. The windshield is hazed with a million tiny scratches. I accept these flaws the way I hope that my wife accepts mine; consequences of age and wear, icicles and birthday clothes and sorrow.
This old car is special in a way that no new Porsche could hope to be. It's alive with a mechanical symphony of precision noises, the whooooop of the exhaust and the curlicue rush of the wind past the upright A-pillars. It's no bigger or wider than it needs to be. I understand why people want to pay outrageous sums for it.
I was emboldened by an idea; I'd run to Little Caesars and buy a pizza for dinner, since I was alone for the evening. It was getting dark so I turned on the headlights; they were faint. I let the car idle menacingly while I paid for my meal. Backing out of my parking space, some woman in an Acura MDX came ripping around the corner and I stopped short to preserve my irreplaceable fenders.
The 911 died. Every light went dark. A turn of the key produced nothing.
I ate my pizza while I waited for the wrecker to flatbed me home. The kid who loaded it up was very careful but the next morning I noticed that he'd scratched the right rear quarter-panel to the primer in two spots. Further attempts to jump-start the car produced nothing. I figured it was the starter. Replacing the starter in a Porsche 993 can be done one of two ways. The first way involves the creation of two unique tools from household objects, the removal of the passenger side drive axle, and approximately six hours of expert labor.
The easier way involves cutting a hole in the unibody. I despaired at the consequences of either. The little problems I could live with. The horn, I could fix eventually. The starter: that's a fifteen-hundred dollar problem that requires fixing now. Lest I never get it fixed. Lest this become the tipping point that turns a valuable, strong-running air-cooled Porsche into somebody's barn find thirty years from now.
There was one other possibility; that my battery, bought new last year, had failed so spectacularly that it was serving as an electron sink of sorts. A new battery was fifty-eight bucks from the local Interstate dealer. I crossed my fingers, paid the man. Installed it with hopeful hands. Turned the key.
It started with a whoop. As did I.
Still. If the rubber in the steering wheel is done for, that means the rest of the rubber is likely done for. Bushings, shocks, belts, hoses. (Maybe not hoses, it is air-cooled, after all.) Five grand. Maybe more. And while I'm at it I could fix the aesthetic stuff. Re-spray the front bumper. New driver's seat leather. There's no limit to the money that I could spend right now. No limit to the money I'll eventually have to spend.
I could sell it now. Put the money into some sort of index fund for my kid. Buy him fifty Krugerrands in a sealed tube, a talisman against the famine times. Surely it will never be worth more than it is now. Yet I don't think I could sell it at any price. I feel like Ahab, striking my chest and claiming that my old Porsche will fetch a great premium here! And my ribcage rings most vast, but hollow. It's just a car. Just a thing.
Still, I think we will continue on together a bit longer. I'll fix the horn, plan to fix the rest. We will sleep until the summer to come and then maybe I'll take a trip in the old car. We have never been west of the Mississippi together. Time to fix that, too. Look for us next year, in Montana, California, Texas. Here we come, old machine and older man. We are disreputable. A bit dangerous to know. You'll hear us a mile out; the siren song of the air-cooled flat six. And maybe, if I get the wrong gasket, the twin tone of the old Bosch horn. BEEP!
Born in Brooklyn but banished to Ohio, Jack Baruth has won races on four different kinds of bicycles and in seven different kinds of cars. Everything he writes should probably come with a trigger warning. His column, Avoidable Contact, runs twice a week.
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