Should I buy it? Slant nose conversion

[Kokopelli]

Ok, I'm a complete newbie. Other than lurking and sponging I have almost no Porsche knowledge. I've been a vette guy but just got kind of tired of them and sold off my last one a month ago. So I found this car and it lives less than 20 miles from me. I have always loved the slant nose and this one makes me weak at the knees, but I just don't know how to access its value. It is a conversion that started with a 77 911, the motor (3.3 Turbo), Trans (turbo 4 spd), suspension and brakes came from an 88 turbo, the interior and top are full power and out of a 94. All Body conversion parts are factory steel. The conversion was done in 97 by a Beverly Hills Doctor who spared no expense and reportedly dropped 60+K into the project. The mileage of the original 911 is unknown, the mechanicals had 40K upon install and only 45K now. The car was completely stripped to bare metal and repainted in 2004 at a cost of 10K then the Dr. sold it to the guy who owns it now, he is selling it along with a Ferrari 308 to pay for his daughter's wedding - he states he has only driven the car about a dozen times in the past 3 years as it is one of 5 "toys" - unfortunately there is no documentation of the conversion project, apparently all records were lost during a move. He wants 24K for it - it looks incredible and runs great but how do I know if it is worth it? I would appreciate any advice from those of you more knowledgeable than I. Thanks.

[Kokopelli]

[Kokopelli]

[GothingNC]

That's a nice looking conversion

Price seems fair as long as long as all the mechanicals are up to snuff and the convertible conversion was done properly.

Be sure to have an individual shop perform thorough PPI

Good luck

[techweenie]

If it makes you weak in the knees, that's worth a lot.

But underneath it all, you'd have a '77 Targa. The Turbo drivetrain should be matched with improved suspension and brakes. The fact that there are 'late offset' wheels on the car usually means up to 3.5" spacers in the rear, and 2-2.5" in front. That's sacrificing engineering integrity for cosmetics, if true.

Personally, I wouldn't pay more than $18K for it unless the car gets a rave review by a knowledgeable Porsche mechanic.

[the]

That is a nice looking conversion. Very hard to put a value on something like that. On the one hand, it is a 1977 Targa, true mileage unknown, with no service records. On the other hand, that looks like a very thorough conversion, including the interior, engine and trans, etc. The body lines, lines between the bumpers, headlights, etc. look very good, which is a good sign and not usually the case with many conversions.

But with no records at all, you have a real unknown. It could truly be a first class conversion, with a tight, low mileage, excellent condition turbo drivetrain. Or it could be a wreck underneath, with a 200,000 mile, worn out engine. No way to know without a PPI.

IMO, if everything is as represented and the car gets a clean PPI by a very good mechanic, $24K is a fair asking price. I'd try to get it for $20-$22K, but if the car truly checks out, and you love the way it looks and drives, you are ok anywhere in the low 20s. If you could get it for $18K, that would be a steal IMO if the car checks out.

It's a shame the records have been lost, though.

[the]

P.S. Looking at the pics, it's hard to tell, but it looks like it has Turbo brakes and rotors. Can kind of see them peeking through the front wheel in one of the pic, but it's not clear. If it has turbo brakes, rotors and suspension, that adds some real value, and also would suggest this really was a high budget conversion.

[Kokopelli]

Originally Posted by the

P.S. Looking at the pics, it's hard to tell, but it looks like it has Turbo brakes and rotors. Can kind of see them peeking through the front wheel in one of the pic, but it's not clear. If it has turbo brakes, rotors and suspension, that adds some real value, and also would suggest this really was a high budget conversion.

I was told the suspension and brakes are from the 88 Turbo donor car with only 40K on them. I'm going to try and track down the shop that did the conversion, but I've got to track dow the doctor that had it done and get him to call me back first.

[the]

If that's the case, the Turbo donor car really only had 40K miles on it, you like the looks of this car, and it checks out at a PPI well, then I think you are doing well at $24K.

Don't buy without a thorough mechanical and body inspection, though.

[Kokopelli]

Originally Posted by the

If that's the case, the Turbo donor car really only had 40K miles on it, you like the looks of this car, and it checks out at a PPI well, then I think you are doing well at $24K.

Don't buy without a thorough mechanical and body inspection, though.

Thanks, Now I just need to find a good mechanic to do the PPI. Any suggestions?

[Kokopelli]

Originally Posted by techweenie

If it makes you weak in the knees, that's worth a lot.

But underneath it all, you'd have a '77 Targa. The Turbo drivetrain should be matched with improved suspension and brakes. The fact that there are 'late offset' wheels on the car usually means up to 3.5" spacers in the rear, and 2-2.5" in front. That's sacrificing engineering integrity for cosmetics, if true.

Personally, I wouldn't pay more than $18K for it unless the car gets a rave review by a knowledgeable Porsche mechanic.

Can you expand a bit on the "late offset wheels" does this mean that it does not in fact have the Turbo suspension it was represented as having? Here's another shot that shows the rear wheel and rotor - looks to have pretty good spacers in there.

[the]

The later cars used a suspension with a wider track. In other words, the hubs "stick out" further. So the wheels have a flat face, not a deep dish like a Fuchs.

The wheels on that car are the "late" offset, so they need those big spacers to push them out.

If you ran Fuchs on it, you wouldn't need those spacers. But they would, to many people, look a little out of place, since that car has been updated to an early 90s style, and Fuchs were not used after 1989.

It is unrelated to the issue of whether the car has had the Turbo suspension and brakes moved over to it.

[techweenie]

I would only add to 'the's' comments that when he says "later," he is referring to 1990-on for the most part. '88 suspension is still "early."

You can see inside the rear wheel in your photo that the car has very large spacers on it. The rotor is normally much closer to the wheel spokes. This isn't a critical issue, but it's not considered a high quality solution. It may result in the wheel bearings wearing out sooner, and can present some minor challenges in wheel balancing.

[tucker.smith]

I would be very careful about rushing into a car like this. While I'm certainly not a snobby Porsche "tech-weenie" zealot for originality (some may think otherwise at the end of this compendious post), this car has been butchered twice. Firstly, 1983 was the beginning year of production cabs, so any earlier 911 has been "converted" - I would say butchered. Second, many people (I'm a zealot on this one) consider the 911 one of the most beautiful cars ever conceived. Why anyone would slice off the headlights to make a "slant-nose" is beyond me.

Below is a 1977 930 I recently purchased. The car is mechanically sound. I paid $16.3K; I am planning to convert the car to a sort of RSR-ish clone, which is the red car. To a "purist", the red car has also been butchered, but perhaps like the '77 cab conversion does for you, the red car makes my heart race. I did not want to buy an unmolested 930 and butcher it to make the RSR-esque clone, so I gambled and bought a molested car at a price I considered a discount to the market.

I wish I had paid $10-15K more and bought an unmolested 930. I am too ashamed to drive my new-to-me 930 in public. When I got MT plates last month, I was going to get the novelty plate "COKE DEALER", so at least people would laugh out loud when I drove around. In Montana there is a new program whereby you can purchase permanent tags, and on this car they were only 2x the yearly fee ($60 vs. $120 - pretty amazing to me). Being of (mostly) Scottish ancestry, and hence extremely thrifty, I calculated that I can save $6000.00 over the next 100 years by doing this, but I could not have the word COKE DEALER on the lifetime plates. Now I am simply resigned to converting the car back to 911 headlights before I venture out in public.

Before you jump into a car like this, please drive as many other Porsche products as you can. I had a '69T which I NEVER should have sold. It was a tremendous car. I had a '76 911S which was not bad and is now a race car (and sort-of-for-sale) project. I have a '96 C4S which I use everyday, year-round - 3 sets of wheels - there are only 3 seasons here - early summer, late summer, and winter. I look for excuses to drive the thing, even when the snow is 2 feet deep in the road. The car is utterly incredible. I have nearly driven the wheels off , mashing the throttle like a crazed race car driver, constantly redlining and drifting through turns as if it were a rice rocket with the 18 inch fake exaust pipe stuck on the back. Thankfully there are very few people in Montana and the police are unusually civil, plus the roads are smooth as glass. Mostly they just wave and smile. For some years in the 90's there was no speed limit, which was really awesome. In spite of my constant abuse, I cannot seem to make the car break. It is really unbelievable. I have had nearly every other type of vehicle and NOTHING compares.

I am somewhat reticent to post this message because it may seem insulting to owners of "molested" (deliberately or otherwise) cars. I am interested to see what the predictably wide range of other other Porschephiles think about your '77 prospect.

You are certainly welcome to call or email me if you want the long version of what I think about any 911. I am very long winded and my advice is free, largely because I have what in Neoclassical Economic Theory is called very low opportunity cost. I do not have anything to do except drive Porsches and play the banjo, which I actually do for a living. It is nice to come home from a hard day's work in front of screaming banjo fans and do what is really fun - mess around with Porsches. Like you, I started out not knowing the cars but coveting them from afar. I soon became a complete addict. The reason this occured - I bought the '69T without inspecting it any closer than 100 feet at auction in Jackson Hole, Wyoming - is that people in the music business like to make fun of banjo players. Only accordian players are more (deservedly) ridiculed, and fortunately there are not many of them. One of the most common banjo-player jokes goes as follows:

"Hey- What's something you NEVER hear anyone say?"

"Is that the BANJO player's PORSCHE???!!!" ha ha ha ha

Crowd laughs and points at banjo player. I got so sick of this joke that I decided to buy a Porsche. No one bothered to warn me the cars are so great I would become hopelessly obsessed and spend all income from banjo playing on Porsches.

Best regards and good luck,

Tucker Smith
Bozeman, MT
406 209 1451
tucker.smith@bresnan.net

[tucker.smith]

I would be very careful about rushing into a car like this. While I'm certainly not a snobby Porsche "tech-weenie" zealot for originality (some may think otherwise at the end of this compendious post), this car has been butchered twice. Firstly, 1983 was the beginning year of production cabs, so any earlier 911 has been "converted" - I would say butchered. Second, many people (I'm a zealot on this one) consider the 911 one of the most beautiful cars ever conceived. Why anyone would slice off the headlights to make a "slant-nose" is beyond me.

Below is a 1977 930 I recently purchased. The car is mechanically sound. I paid $16.3K; I am planning to convert the car to a sort of RSR-ish clone, which is the red car. To a "purist", the red car has also been butchered, but perhaps like the '77 cab conversion does for you, the red car makes my heart race. I did not want to buy an unmolested 930 and butcher it to make the RSR-esque clone, so I gambled and bought a molested car at a price I considered a discount to the market.

I wish I had paid $10-15K more and bought an unmolested 930. I am too ashamed to drive my new-to-me 930 in public. When I got MT plates last month, I was going to get the novelty plate "COKE DEALER", so at least people would laugh out loud when I drove around. In Montana there is a new program whereby you can purchase permanent tags, and on this car they were only 2x the yearly fee ($60 vs. $120 - pretty amazing to me). Being of (mostly) Scottish ancestry, and hence extremely thrifty, I calculated that I can save $6000.00 over the next 100 years by doing this, but I could not have the word COKE DEALER on the lifetime plates. Now I am simply resigned to converting the car back to 911 headlights before I venture out in public.

Before you jump into a car like this, please drive as many other Porsche products as you can. I had a '69T which I NEVER should have sold. It was a tremendous car. I had a '76 911S which was not bad and is now a race car (and sort-of-for-sale) project. I have a '96 C4S which I use everyday, year-round - 3 sets of wheels - there are only 3 seasons here - early summer, late summer, and winter. I look for excuses to drive the thing, even when the snow is 2 feet deep in the road. The car is utterly incredible. I have nearly driven the wheels off , mashing the throttle like a crazed race car driver, constantly redlining and drifting through turns as if it were a rice rocket with the 18 inch fake exaust pipe stuck on the back. Thankfully there are very few people in Montana and the police are unusually civil, plus the roads are smooth as glass. Mostly they just wave and smile. For some years in the 90's there was no speed limit, which was really awesome. In spite of my constant abuse, I cannot seem to make the car break. It is really unbelievable. I have had nearly every other type of vehicle and NOTHING compares.

I am somewhat reticent to post this message because it may seem insulting to owners of "molested" (deliberately or otherwise) cars. I am interested to see what the predictably wide range of other other Porschephiles think about your '77 prospect.

You are certainly welcome to call or email me if you want the long version of what I think about any 911. I am very long winded and my advice is free, largely because I have what in Neoclassical Economic Theory is called very low opportunity cost. I do not have anything to do except drive Porsches and play the banjo, which I actually do for a living. It is nice to come home from a hard day's work in front of screaming banjo fans and do what is really fun - mess around with Porsches. Like you, I started out not knowing the cars but coveting them from afar. I soon became a complete addict. The reason this occured - I bought the '69T without inspecting it any closer than 100 feet at auction in Jackson Hole, Wyoming - is that people in the music business like to make fun of banjo players. Only accordian players are more (deservedly) ridiculed, and fortunately there are not many of them. One of the most common banjo-player jokes goes as follows:

"Hey- What's something you NEVER hear anyone say?"

"Is that the BANJO player's PORSCHE???!!!" ha ha ha ha

Crowd laughs and points at banjo player. I got so sick of this joke that I decided to buy a Porsche. No one bothered to warn me the cars are so great I would become hopelessly obsessed and spend all income from banjo playing on Porsches.

Best regards and good luck,

Tucker Smith
Bozeman, MT
406 209 1451
tucker.smith@bresnan.net

[tucker.smith]

I do not know why my unnecessarily long response was posted twice. My apologies.

Tucker

[techweenie]

I know plenty of 'sticklers for originality.'

Most of them would lose their lunch over this particular 1977 Targa I owned a couple of years ago.



It had 4" spacers on the rear to fill the 993 wide body flares. It had a 3.0 Turbo engine. But the brakes were stock vanilla '77. All the parts on the car were OEM. Probably cost over $60K to build. Like most cobble-together cars of this type, there were a lot of minor gremlins. The last 5% of fixes always seem to take 50% of the work to get right.

It was a fun Summer car, and a good buy at $18K.

[tucker.smith]

I completely agree. To me there is nothing better than buying something so well below the market. My own shoot-from-the-hip feeling about the car in question is that it is worth less than $20K, perhaps as low as $16K (?), based simply on what I've seen such cars go for recently. If there are other real data points on similarly converted cars near $24K, I would love to see them. By "real" I mean actual completed transactions, not copy-and-paste ebay pages that may or may not have even closed. How many times have you seen:

"Real Porsche 959 owned by Bill Gates in 1992, 2,345 ORIGINAL miles - BUY IT NOW PRICE: $19,995!!! Contact me at Nigerian.Scam@Abuja.net"

As many of us have learned the hard way, these cars can get fantastically expensive REALLY quickly. I have seen many a great 930 in the past 9 months for sale in the $24 - 29K range, possibly because they are endless money pits and not very practical unless your daily commute is 120 miles away on an interstate highway in a big square state with less than 500K population. I think an unmolested car will retain it's value much better than a '77 convert-a-turbo.

More of my 2 cents (sense?)

Tucker

[Kokopelli]

Thanks for all the great responses and free education. The more research I do into "conversions" the more leery I become. Perhaps I would do better the start with a well maintained original. That being said what would be your recomendations for a starter Porsche in the 20K area. I live in a mountain canyon that opens up to miles of lightly travelled back roads. The hills get quite steep so power is important. My canyon was just repaved on Monday and the baby butt smooth pavement is sending me through withdrawls not having a great car to drive on it. My wife's Volvo and son's Charger just don't fill the need for me (we won't even talk about my pick-up). I also race bicycles so I'm getting my speed fix that way, but I need more!!!

Tuker - living in Bozeman, playing a banjo and working on and driving your Porsches like a madman sound like an idyllic existence to me - congrats

[tucker.smith]

I wish I could live at the end of a steep mountain canyon w/new road. I drive between Bozeman and Jackson Hole (my hometown) all the time, through Ennis, MT, Ashton, ID and over Teton Pass. It's an unreal trip - I've done it many, many hundreds of times; often for no real reason other than to drive a 911 221 miles (one way) over several mountain passes, in all weather conditions. Some of the best scenery in the world. I got the C4S for this reason. It is like a snowmobile, and I use it that way 9 months out of every year. If you live where it does not snow, get a C2 or C2S. All the tts have AWD. You will see why if you drive one!

I grew up bicycle racing - age 9-28, mostly in hopes of becoming a faster nordic ski racer, which is my first love in life. All my friends in JH made the US and Olympic team(s). I did not because I was too heavy, ugly, and slow. I was a really fast road bke racer as a teen (6.1/190 lbs by age 15 - should have been a power lifter) but I only wanted to succeed at skiing. Of course, I really should have been an alpine racer, but that seemed too easy. We were Nerdic racers, and damned proud of it. Last year I bought a Felt F1C - 14.7 lbs wet - amazing bike. It rockets out from beneath you almost like a 911. I am hoping to get back into shape and race again next spring.


As I mentioned, the 993 C4S is my all-time favorite Porsche, and thusfar has proven INDESTRUCTIBLE. You cannot imagine how hard I drive this car. I nearly bought a twin turbo instead, but I had a gut feeling I would kill myselff in the 993tt. I have very nearly died in the C4S, and I'm convinced I would have been seriously killed in the twin turbo. The 930 is a much less (for me) dangerous machine, but it's a completely different beast. The NA 993 motor will (fingers crossed) go 200K - possibly alot more. If I blow the engine, I can get a GOOD long block from a wrecking yard for $8K. The 993tt motor will go <100K (the way I drive) and I will definitely kill myself in the process. Dying is much quicker in winter with this car as well. TT Long blocks are VERY scarce and usually get snapped up for $16-$22K. Big difference here. Lots of NA 993 engines kicking around.

I have been a 911 fanatic since my '69T purchase in '92. If I were you, I would look for a 993 - I feel VERY strongly it's the best bang for the buck (actually a good 964 may be, but whole other kettle of fish). Do not buy a '95, unless you cannot justify the expense of the 96 - 98 993. However, IMHO the '95 is the next best thing to get, and I feel the market discounts them accordingly. If I were you I would test drive (on your road, of course!) the following cars: First, the 993tt - BE CAREFUL with this car. It's so scary fast it's really dangerous over mountain roads. As a bike racer you will feel this right away. Then try a C4S and the a C2S. Do not get a plain 96-98 C4 or C2 - if you go this route get the '95 plain jane - it will cost less. The market for these cars is extremely efficient. I follow Porsche markets very closely - I'm an Econometrician by training, but I play the banjo for money because you meet alot more girls on stage w/instrument than in office/w calculator. Plus, the girls you meet playing music are alot younger and do not wear polyester clothing.

In contrast to the 993, the market for the 930 is not efficient at all. The cars are old, they smoke, leak oil like crazy, break down alot, are VERY expensive to fix (all 911s are), and are dangerous in a completely different way than the 993tt.

I have seen prices on the '95 993s as low as $17K for (really) high milage. No one really knows how long these cars will run, because they're still relatively new. I would say a decent '95 can be had for as low as $28K.

If you want to stay under $18K, get the lowest milage and most recent 964 C2/C4(92-94 are best). I have seen these cars go as low as $15K for a nice one. One could write an entire book just on the history on the 964/993 engines. The 993 engines are far superior, and this is borne out in the mkt prices of these cars.

The best deals are on ebay, but that's because the risk is very high. I have bought many cars and parts on ebay. You have to know these cars INSIDE-OUT to do this. Porsche Club - highest price points in North America. I am a proud member - it is a tremendous organization. Porsche Club is probably the safest place to buy a 911 (another book could be written here). Prices are inversely correlated to risk - ECON 101.

Do not buy used 911 from a dealer, unless it's a friend/relative, or (possibly) a dealer that does exclusively 911 - not 924/944/928/968/914/911/912. It's REALLY entertaing to go on Autotrader and read the dealer ads. These people make "Jackass -The Movie" look like Ann Landers (!). Sorry dealers - you know who you are.



Good Luck,

Tucker