Buying our Sporto

Patrick was looking through Traderonline’s classic car section and noticed a few older Porsches seemed to be going for some pretty good prices. We talked about it and Karen decided that she would be OK with this. Kept watching the ad’s and called on a few. We arranged to see two cars one Saturday, one up in Santa Rosa, an older Targa, owned by a young kid living at home, paint was supposed to be ‘faded’, he did not know how many miles it had on it, his dad was a mechanic and had ‘fixed it up’ for him. The other was down in Foster City and I had only exchanged emails with the seller. It was a ‘Pinot Noir’ 1971 and had a ‘Sportomatic’ transmission being sold by the original owner. We arranged to see the car in the parking lot of the Home Depot that Saturday morning.

When pulling off the freeway into Foster City we stopped at a light and saw crossing in front of us a beautiful old pristine burgundy Porsche 911 being driven by a distinguished gentleman. We looked at each other and Patrick looked at Karen’s hair, the exact same color as the Porsche, and both knew right then and there we’d bought a car. As the light changed we followed the car thinking he was headed to our meeting in the parking lot, no, he was headed to the gas station and then the car wash. We were a bit early, maybe this was not our car after all. We gassed up ourselves and went on to our meeting in the parking lot.

A few minutes later Weyman showed up with the car we had seen and we breathed a sigh of relief. It was everything it looked from the outside. Patrick had all the information printed out from the web about where to look for rust, what questions to ask, and how to evaluate a car. It did not matter. The car looked even better close up than it had from a distance. Karen’s mind was made up, it was her car. The car was almost completely original, the roofliner was slightly browned from age, but the car had never been smoked it. The seats were in perfect condition. The door pockets were bent and there was a slight split in the dash. The oil return sleeves needed replacing and the speedometer needed to be fixed. The owner had kept in garaged its whole life and detectable rust was completely absent. A complete original tool kit and jack that looked unused were in the trunk. He had a copy of Road & Track from the year he bought the car featuring it and its transmission as well as reprints of articles from previous years, all in an envelope postmarked 1971. He also had a little spiral bound notebook that contained the mileage and price of every tank of gas that was ever placed in the car. It was a classic example of an unmolested and un-restored 30-year-old Porsche.

We took it for a test drive with Weyman driving, Karen in the passenger seat and all 6’1” of Patrick hunched sideways in the back. The owner was loath to let anyone else drive the car at it was obvious that he loved the car. The car handled well and Weyman showed us through its paces and after all too short a time we were back in the parking lot. Karen handed him a check for several thousand dollars in exchange for a bill of sale and a promise to return the next weekend after the check cleared, we hoped with the car.