I’ve wanted a Porsche 911 for as long as I can remember. With friends owning them and years of attending Porsche events, it was always a goal - but one that started to feel further and further out of reach. Prices kept climbing, and I wasn’t willing to part with any of my other classics to make it happen. I figured it would come when it came.
Then, about a month ago, I stumbled across a listing on Facebook Marketplace - an ’83 911SC Targa, just 40 minutes from me, priced more reasonably than I thought possible. I jumped. I sent the seller five messages and left my number. He read them... and didn’t reply.
Classic Marketplace. Especially with a car like that - I figured it was gone, lost in a sea of other eager buyers.
But the next morning, at 10am, my phone rang. It was him. I was shocked - and an hour later, I was on my way to see the car.
The listing described it as “registered and currently being driven.” No rust, decent paint, strong-running engine, and a first gear synchro that was starting to go. When I saw the car in person, it looked like a 42 year old car. It had clearly been repainted at some point - not particularly well, but given the price, I couldn’t afford to be too picky.
We took it for a test drive. It ran well once warm, but had a rough idle on cold start and poor drivability until it came up to temp. The seller mentioned the WUR had been rebuilt by his father, but it had never quite idled right afterward.
It wasn’t until later that I learned the car had belonged to his late father, who had battled cancer and hadn’t been able to drive it in his final years. The tires were date-coded 2004 (yikes), and from the records, I figured out it had only covered about 500 miles in the last five years.
I knew it would need some TLC - but still, we made a deal, and I drove it home.
More about the car - it is a 1983 911SC with 132,000 miles, finished in Chiffon White over a brown interior. The previous owner casually mentioned, “I think my father put some kind of exhaust on it,” but being totally new to SCs, I had no idea what I was looking at when I crawled underneath.
Luckily, a friend of mine who knows these cars a lot better than I do took one glance and said, “Dude… those are SSI heat exchangers.” He then pointed out the 3.2 Carrera tensioners and smiled - “That’s like finding four grand under your mattress.”
So while I was still trying to figure out what I had gotten myself into, it turned out I already had a solid starting point.
Also worth mentioning - The PO had a stack of records back to '86! Totaling about 20k in work recorded over its lifetime. This information confirmed true mileage @ 132k.
The day I drove it home - learning how to dance with that 915 was fun!
Notice the rockers painted black (or I should say, rubberized undercoat!) Something else I didn't notice until a friend told me otherwise.
