Buying an Air-Cooled Porsche on PCarMarket
I think of PCarMarket.com as a place to look for newer Porsches but I recently found an early 911 that attracted my attention. It is a 1968 Porsche 911 with a 1969 911S Motor and a 1971 911S 5-speed manual transmission. The motor features Mahle 2.2L pistons, a custom camshaft, Weber 40 carburetors and PMO intake manifolds.
This showed up on PCar Market as an offering from the dealer, Hunting Ridge Motors in Mt. Kisco, NY. I would normally expect to see a Porsche 911 Hot Rod like this one on Bring-a-Trailer so I was surprised to find it on PCar Market. The model, look and style of this early Porsche 911 fit my needs and had an emotional attachment for me.
When I used to race a 1969 Porsche 911TR it had a very similar look. I always spoke with Phil Bagley of Klub Sport Racing where I kept my racecar about taking it to a streetcar. Due to the historical value of the car being a former Porsche factory race car it was advised against destroying the history of the car.
This 911 Hot Rod was the solution. It has a very similar look to what my racecar’s look but is set up for road driving. Plus with the orange hoods it was reminiscent of the orange Porsche 914 that I had just sold. Linda and I quickly gave it the name of Junior since it is a cross between my light ivory ’69 911 racecar and my orange ’73 914.
Since I had just sold my ’73 Porsche 914 on Bring-a-Trailer, watching this ’68 911 Hot Rod on PCar Market was going to provide a good comparison between the two sites.
My observations:
The costs to sell and buy are comparable: $99 to list a car for sale and a 5% buyer fee to purchase.
Bring-a-Trailer is very selective in what they offer for sale on the site, while I am not sure that is the same with PCar Market.
The Bring-a-Trailer enthusiast community is much more engaged in evaluating the car and providing prospective buyers with valuable information.
My preference as a buyer and seller is still Bring-a-Trailer as the marketplace offering the widest exposure for your car and as a buyer provides you with the greatest information and point-of-view on the validity of the purchase.
However, PCar Market provides a strong auction site to market your Porsche that may need gain Bring-a-Trailer approval or is a newer model Porsche that doesn’t normally appear on Bring-a-Trailer.
So what happened with this beautiful 1968 Porsche 911 Hot Rod and me? At four and half days out from the end of the auction, I jumped in with an initial bid of $35,000. @Falky and then @DrBrian quickly outbid me. These two continued bidding against each other until 24 hours before the closing with a top bid of $50,000. Then, they stopped bidding.
I found it very suspicious that @DrBrian suddenly dropped out at $50,000 one day before the end of the auction. Did he really think that he might purchase this car for $50,000 or was he just driving the price up?@Falky put one final bid in at $51,000 and then he disappeared too.
New serious buyers then jumped in at five hours to go with a short spurt of activity. Most notable was @cpr4500 who first appeared with a bid of $56,000. I held off on my jump back into the fray with a bid of $60,000 that was quickly topped by cpr4500 at $62,000. A jump of $2,000 meant @cpr4500 was serious and wanted the car.
The auction was on!
PCar Market uses a style similar to Bring-a-Trailer; if a bid comes in during the final two minutes of the auction; the auction is extended another two minutes. @cpr4500 and myself went back and forth. My limit was $68,000. @cpr4500 bid $66,000 and I countered in the final minute with $67,000. The auction timer ticked down.
OMG – I might win this car, and I did!
Tags: Porsche 911 Hot Rod, Early Porsche 911, PCar Market
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