Different Tea Trays ?

[Tori]

This seems to me like a dumb question, but today i was at a Car's & Coffee, and ended up parked next to another '87 911. I noticed we had different rear spoilers. His was much bigger and the edges turned up where mine was flat.

To me, (very 911 uneducated) his looks like the 930 tail.

Speaking with him about them he mentioned that the Carerras never came from the factory with the tail. That it was an accessory or add on. I've never heard that before.

Anyone care to weigh in on this ?

[jwash]

The red car is sporting a turbo tea tray. The lower box section was released in 1978 to cover over the intercooler of the new 3.3 turbo that replaced the original 3.0 turbo. Your car has the wing that would have been typical of the sports spoiler package that would have been accompanied by a black lip front air dam. I'm unsure if the turbo tail was ever and actual option but am certain that the one on your car was.

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[86 ssinit]

No authority here by what I know is his is a tea tray or turbo tail.What you have is a whale tail or a carrera tail. My sons car has the tea tray and I believe it was an option when bought new. My car has the carrera tail and I have the bill of sale and its on it. With the tail you also get the front spoiler.

[HaroldMHedge]

Here is some very good reading on tails.

The original OEM tail thread collective documentation

[javadog]

You could only get the 3.3 turbo style tail on a Carrera when you ordered the M491 option, which gave you the "turbo body and chassis". It was available on an SC for the last couple years of 911SC production if you ordered a car with front and rear spoilers.

JR

[87maniac]

I have a '83 Cab (#150) that came with the factory 'tea tray' Turbo tail.
The factory loaded the early Cabs with options, total price was $40,160.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by 87maniac

The factory loaded the early Cabs with options, total price was $40,160.

Actually, it wasn't the factory that optioned out the cars, it was the guy at each Porsche dealership that was responsible for ordering the new cars for that dealership. Usually, this was the sales manager. 9 times out of 10, when you see a heavily optioned car, or a car with seldom-ordered options or colors, it was probably a sold order and optioned by the prospective buyer when he placed the otder for the car.

FWIW, all tourist delivery cars were special orders.

JR

[Tori]

Thanks guys for the responses and info. I read thru the entire "The original OEM tail thread collective documentation" thread and only found one example of the tail on my car (page 11) was starting to wonder what i had. Looks like mine is the original factory accessory tail.

Would the rubber parts of each of the above tails be interchangeable ? The look like it.

Javadog, what's a "tourist delivery car" ?

[Canada Kev]

The Carreras were indeed available from the factory with a tail; it was option code 473 for front and rear spoilers.

The red car's tail is that of a Turbo. I believe those were not a standard option for the Carrera, but in those days I suspect one could get just about anything you wanted from the factory. I'm guessing that some previous owner installed it or perhaps the dealer.

And even the option code sticker for that car isn't necessarily a definitive source. Mine has options that aren't listed on the sticker. If there's anything I have learned about these cars from the 80s and earlier, nothing is easy and consistent.

[Canada Kev]

Originally Posted by Tori

what's a "tourist delivery car" ?

Tourist delivery: You take a holiday to Germany and pick up your car at the factory. Drive it about for a while over there and then return it so it can be shipped back home to your dealer.

[Canada Kev]

Originally Posted by Tori

Thanks guys for the responses and info. I read thru the entire "The original OEM tail thread collective documentation" thread and only found one example of the tail on my car (page 11) was starting to wonder what i had. Looks like mine is the original factory accessory tail.

Yours could be a factory tail as it is correct for your car. Check your option sticker under the hood. The code for factory spoilers is 473. The sticker looks like this:

[javadog]

Originally Posted by Canada Kev

The red car's tail is that of a Turbo. I believe those were not a standard option for the Carrera, but in those days I suspect one could get just about anything you wanted from the factory. I'm guessing that some previous owner installed it or perhaps the dealer.

And even the option code sticker for that car isn't necessarily a definitive source. Mine has options that aren't listed on the sticker. If there's anything I have learned about these cars from the 80s and earlier, nothing is easy and consistent.

At the risk of repeating myself...You could only get the 3.3 turbo style tail on a Carrera when you ordered the M491 option, which gave you the "turbo body and chassis". It was available on an SC for the last couple years of 911SC production if you ordered a car with front and rear spoilers.

You could not get just about anything you wanted from the factory. They gave you waht they had available that year. Even the cars that went through the "special wishes" program (something not available to US buyers, unless you were God) got built first, then run through the special wishes department.

You could get anything you wanted from a dealer, provided the dealer could buy the parts through the parts network. I don't know of any dealer that would have put a 930 tail on a 3.2 Carrera when the Carrera tail was already available.

To expand on the tourist delivery program, it was usually known to the public as the european delivery program. You ordered a US spec car from a US dealer, paid for it (you got a roughly 10% price break in the early '80's) and you were given a date on which you could pick it up. You flew to Germany, picked it up on the designated date (you got a free lunch, factory tour and museum tour, too) and got to use it for driving around Europe for a while. When you were finished, you brought it back to the factory and they prepped it for shipment through their usual shipping companies. Since in 1982 unleaded fuel was not commonly available, you got to run the car without a cat, which was installed upon your return to Porsche. When the car got to the states, you could pick it up at the port of entry (you had to pay the customs duty) or it could be trucked to the dealer you ordered it from and collected there.

JR

[Canada Kev]

Originally Posted by javadog

At the risk of repeating myself...You could only get the 3.3 turbo style tail on a Carrera when you ordered the M491 option, which gave you the "turbo body and chassis". It was available on an SC for the last couple years of 911SC production if you ordered a car with front and rear spoilers.

You could not get just about anything you wanted from the factory. They gave you waht they had available that year. Even the cars that went through the "special wishes" program (something not available to US buyers, unless you were God) got built first, then run through the special wishes department.

You could get anything you wanted from a dealer, provided the dealer could buy the parts through the parts network. I don't know of any dealer that would have put a 930 tail on a 3.2 Carrera when the Carrera tail was already available.

To expand on the tourist delivery program, it was usually known to the public as the european delivery program. You ordered a US spec car from a US dealer, paid for it (you got a roughly 10% price break in the early '80's) and you were given a date on which you could pick it up. You flew to Germany, picked it up on the designated date (you got a free lunch, factory tour and museum tour, too) and got to use it for driving around Europe for a while. When you were finished, you brought it back to the factory and they prepped it for shipment through their usual shipping companies. Since in 1982 unleaded fuel was not commonly available, you got to run the car without a cat, which was installed upon your return to Porsche. When the car got to the states, you could pick it up at the port of entry (you had to pay the customs duty) or it could be trucked to the dealer you ordered it from and collected there.

JR

Yeah, that's kinda what I said...

Special Wishes, or Porsche Exclusive since the mid-80s, whether you're God or not = get just about anything you wanted through the factory, from leather wrapped HVAC vents to paint to sample colours to a 935 Street back in the day. For someone with the resources and inclination, I'm sure a 930 tail is pretty small potatoes.

And who knows what happened at the dealer level? I know I don't. Perhaps there might be a dealer out there unknown personally by you that would install one for one reason or another. Maybe the customer specifically requested a tea tray spoiler. Possibly one was in stock at that time and the customer was happy with it. Or, as I had already mentioned, guessed it was installed by a previous owner, maybe even purchased, if you allow your mind to stretch far enough, from someone listing it in the classifieds here on Pelican.

No one participating in this thread actually knows how that tea tray got on the red car.




To the OP re: Carreras coming from the factory with or without a tail. They could be ordered with a front and rear spoiler, code 473. That standard factory option was for the Carrera tail which for all appearances is the same as that of the one on the black car.


java, I usually read your posts with pleasure as they're typically informative or interesting. But try not to be a dick about things, ok?

[Mick_D]

what's really fun and confusing is that both the tea tray and the carerra tail had part numbers that started with '930' .

[javadog]

Kevin,

I'm not trying to be a dick. I was just clarifying a couple statements you made and adding a little information. I was close to a couple of dealers in that era and spent quite a bit of time learning the ins and outs of what they did. I even researched the tails, for a different reason at the time, but I still remember a lot of the info.

Most likely the tail on the red car was added by an owner, probably as a used piece bought from someone else. It's unlikely it would have come from a dealer at the time of delivery, it would have been cheaper to retrofit a Carrera tail than a turbo tail. It's really unlikely that it came from the special wishes program, as that was initially unavailable to US owners and later, was usually limited to a whole host of crap that wasn't addressed by the normal option list.

What I was really pointing out to the OP was that if you ordered option M473, you got the Carrera tail but if you ordered option M491, you got the turbo tail, or most of it.

JR

[javadog]

Originally Posted by Mick_D

what's really fun and confusing is that both the tea tray and the carerra tail had part numbers that started with '930' .

I think you'll find the Carrera tail parts generally had part numbers with a 911 prefix.

JR

[Mick_D]

That was what I thought but I saw someone on Instagram who'd found a barn full of definitely '80s Carerra tails with 930 part numbers on them so he was calling them 930 tails.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by Mick_D

That was what I thought but I saw someone on Instagram who'd found a barn full of definitely '80s Carerra tails with 930 part numbers on them so he was calling them 930 tails.

Methinks he is confused. Wouldn't be the first time for the internet...

JR

[Mick_D]

Oh, I agree he's confused.

[uwanna]

Originally Posted by javadog

I think you'll find the Carrera tail parts generally had part numbers with a 911 prefix.

JR

Er no! I just looked at the Carrera tail (M473) sitting in my dining room. It has the slotted plates and fine mesh screens (i.e. prevents use of an intercooler) that the Carrera uses instead of the "open mesh" screens of the turbo. The p/n is 930.512.023.00 molded into the fiberglass.
I have a true Turbo tail on my car like the one on the red car above and it is a couple of inches taller and the lower mounting points are several inches further down the decklid to cover the huge hole in the lid. I don't know the p/n of it.

In other words, the true Turbo base is much larger and taller than the Carrera one.