Jalopnik: 912

1966 Porsche 912

Murilee Martin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:00:00 EST

Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. We haven't seen any 1960s Porsche 911s, but here's another Alameda 912.

OK, you Porsche ~~zealots~~ experts, I'm counting on you to verify that my quasi-guess about the model year of this car is correct; the headlights are definitely pre-67 units, but the engine lid emblems and dash suggest the 1967-68 range (though the lack of side marker lights appears to rule out 1968). The license plate also looks to be from 1967 or 1968. Whatever the year, it's great to see this car living outdoors and looking good; I spotted it at the same house at which I photographed the 1971 Datsun 1200, so we're dealing with a car freak who has exceptionally good taste in vintage iron.

Prior to this car, we've seen this '67 912, this '67 912, and this '68 912. The oldest Alameda 911 in the series is this '74 Targa. Sure, the 912 outsold the 911 during the 1960s, but you'd still expect to see one or two early 911s on the island. Or are they just too valuable to go outside?

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The Ten Crappiest Cars Of The 2008 Monterey Auctions

Ben Wojdyla — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EDT

The Pebble Beach Concours is always a spectacle of the well-heeled celebrating the well-known in the fancy-pants car show circuit. To go along with the car show wine is the cheese, also known as the Monterey Auctions, put on every year by the house of RM Auctions. There are always hit lists of the most desirable and historical cars crossing the blocks for huge sums of money; to wit, Edmunds Inside Line just did their "10 Best Cars at the 2008 Monterey Auctions" piece today. But we tire of such endeavors. That's why we dug around and found out what's at the bottom of the list. Below the fold: The ten crappiest cars at the 2008 Monterey Auctions.

1) 1909 Peerless Model 19 Touring Car

Expected haul - $350,000-$450,000 Cough, cough, sputter! WHAT! You want how much for a clapped-out Clampit-mobile? Sure, Peerless cars have their place in history, but anything that two-boxes harder than a Volvo 240 just ain't worth that kind of scratch in our opinion. Let's say you buy it, dump a bunch of cash in it, and now its gorgeous. Congrats, you now have a tall golf cart.

2) 1941 Willys Coupe Street Rod

Expected haul - $100,000-$140,000 We hate to say it, but we're so over the whole Willys hot rod thing. They've been done to death and no amount of flame paint job, big rear wing and monster engine is going to get us to part with that kind of cash.

3) 1951 Nash Rambler Custom Landau "Roll-Top" Convertible

Expected haul - $40,000-$80,000 Take the original quality, reliability, and road manners of a Nash Rambler, chop the top off and create a Custom Landau "Roll-Top" Convertible, three synonymous terms for 'hole in the roof', and you've got a rattly mess we'd rather pass on. Sure, Ramblers are sort of the forgotten great American classics, but we're prefer one with a nice rust patina, Indian blanket upholstery and a stinky dog in the passenger seat.

4) 1967 Porsche 912 Soft Window Targa

Expected haul - $50,000-$70,000 All the quality of a Porsche, none of the looks. That was probably one of the lines shot down in the marketing meetings for this car. The 912 was always sort of a bridge car, neither 356 nor 911, and parts for the beast are as easy to find as a cold beer in Stuttgart. We'll take a look at the cars on either side of the 912 thank you.

5) 1957 Volkswagen Beetle

Expected haul - $8,000-$12,000 It's a Beetle, rubbing shoulders with LaSalle and Talbot Lago. It's about as out of place in this auction as a teal donk at the Gumball 3000. Oh, don't get us wrong here, it's a very nice Beetle, but considering its peers, the sale of this puppy would have been better planned elsewhere.

6) 1974 Chevrolet Camaro IROC Race Car

Expected haul - $100,000-$135,000 Forget the name on the side of this IROC Camaro, and think about owning a 1974 IROC Camaro. Can you feel the little hairs on the back of your neck growing at an incredible rate? So can we. Yeah, Bobby Unser drove it. That's nice, but you'd have to be a hardcore racing wacko to want to pony up this kind of dough for a 1974 Camaro.

7) 1974 De Tomaso Pantera L

Expected haul - $125,000-$150,000 We've always liked the faux-exoticness of the Pantera. It's a car with essentially as much refinement as a ten pound sledge hammer, and yet it's often compared in performance with Ferraris of the day. It's the shade-tree mechanic's supercar, with a 351 Cleveland Ford in the middle. It's an easy car to modify, but still, if that's what you're after, they can be had for a whole lot less than the asking price here.

8) 1958 GMC Series 101 Pickup

Expected haul - $75,000-$125,000 $75,000-plus for a pickup truck? Um, no. Go to your local Auto Trader, flip to the "Collectibles and Classics" section, buy a GMC Series 101, paint it teal, save $60,000 or more and be just as happy with the truck.

9) 1966 Amphicar 770

Expected haul - $40,000-$60,000 Both car and boat, and a master of neither discipline, the Amphicar is one of those much-loved but useless cars of yore. We're betting it heard the phrase "An answer to the question nobody asked" well before it was ever leveled against the likes of the Chevy Avalanche

10) 1959 Fiat Jolly 600

Expected haul - $50,000-$60,000 What has wicker seats, no roof, 21.5 horsepower and costs $50,000? Why, a Fiat Jolly of course. This micro machine is perhaps the only car more useless than a Peel Trident — hey, that's at least got a roof and the ability to fry eggs on your head at high noon.

So there you have it, our picks for the crappiest cars up for sale at this year's 2008 Monterey Auctions. We know some of you will think we're heretics for picking a few of these, but by and large these rides just don't cut the mustard when masterpieces like the 1938 Bugatti 57SC Atalante are on the same block. So what do you think? What's the crappiest car of this years auctions? Feel free to fight it out in the space below.

Post publish commentary: Since some of you seem to have checked your sense of humor at the door and consider everything a serious offense to the senses now, I'll go out of my way to make it clear the term "Crappy" is being used in the jocular sense. Perhaps I didn't lay it on thick enough, but the main beef is with the culture of auctioneering driving the prices up on relatively normal cars. I don't think these are crappy, but the multi-million-dollar classic car gold rush is forcing the prices up and the prestige down on otherwise neat, but normal cars.

1967 Porsche 912

Murilee Martin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:00:00 EDT

Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Today we're going to look at our third Porsche 912; before this '67, we've seen a silver '67 and an orange '68.

Because the 911 and 912 from this era look pretty much the same, and this car has no emblems on the engine lid (anyone have any idea why?), it took me quite a while to figure out what I was photographing. More 912s than 911s were built in the late 1960s, so I was leaning that way... and then I spotted the "912" emblem on the dash. Mystery solved!

For $4,760 (just 220 bucks less than a '67 BMW 2000CS), you got the 912 and a 102-horse four-cylinder. Hand over $5,990 to the boys from Stuttgart, and a 911 with 148 horses could be yours, while $6,990 ($410 more than the cost of a shiny new Jag E-Type) would put a 911S with 180 horsepower in your driveway.

Not being a Porsche expert, I had to consult with circle-track racer Jack Baruth to figure out the year of this car, since Porsche's Teutonic efficiency precluded making frivolous (and easily identifiable) year-to-year changes. Thanks, Jack!

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Porsche 912

Murilee Martin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:00:00 EDT

It's been way too long since the last DOTS Porsche 912, and I must admit I'd been sitting on these photos until I could find some clue to tell me the year of the car... which has proved to be beyond my abilities. Those damn Germans and their reluctance to make yearly design changes for the sake of change! The yellow-on-black license plate is from '68 or '69, which tells us virtually nothing- the car may be a '65 with later plates or a '69 with the only plates it's ever had. The car is in a very wealthy neighborhood (i.e., the kind of place where ~~super-paranoid vigilantes~~ concerned neighbors call the cops when they see some scurvy-looking dude like me sniffing around a car), so I won't be searching for VIN tags or photographing heater-control knobs. So, ~~obsessed~~ devoted Porsche ~~zealots~~ aficionados, please let us know what we've got here. I know you can do it!

This 912 is in great shape, it lives on the street, and it drives regularly.

If I had one of these, I'd drop the 911's six in it and keep the 912 emblems (saving the original 356 engine in the garage, for when it came time to sell it at a vast profit to a date-code-focused Porsche ~~hoarder~~ collector).

This is exactly the kind of car I like best for this series; it's in good original shape, not a maniacal restoration, and it still sees plenty of driving use. Well, actually, I love the beaters too... oh, never mind- I love them all!

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1967 Porsche 912

Murilee Martin — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:00:52 EDT

Is the 912 a real Porsche? That is, do driving-glove-equipped dentists drive it? Sure, it looks like a 911, but that little four-banger in back won't exactly make you feel like a Prussian officer brandishing his riding crop at his cringing inferiors. And, really, isn't that what it's all about?

Well, maybe not. If you look at the 912 the way you'd look at a 356 (i.e., a fairly quick, well-built sports car) instead of using the 911 as your yardstick, the 912 looks pretty good. Actually, from this angle you can still see an awful lot of 356 in this car.

Porsche figured they'd need an "entry-level" car when they dropped the 356 after '65; the '67 912 was $4790, compared to $5990 for the base 911. Of course, even the 912 was almost two grand more than a '67 GTO, so it was still intended for the well-heeled.

This one's somewhat rough, but check out the original yellow-on-black plates!

Looks like something heavy has been dropped on the left front fender. This and the banged-up bumper are the only major body damage on this car, so it's not too far from being nice enough to please the car-show crowd (though the Porsche guys are extra-picky).

By God, it is a real Porsche! The proof is right there on the hood! Of course, the 914 also has the Porsche emblem...

Porsche would do well to put some 60s-sports-car-ness back in their cars today- if nothing else, to win back the all-important Tura Satana demographic.

It's just good to see this car still driving every day and parking on the street.