Jalopnik: targa

1985 Baur 318i for a Top-Dropping $3,995

Graverobber — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:00:00 EDT

E30s are a dime a dozen, and you probably wouldn't give an early 318i a second glance. But today, Nice Price or Crack Pipe has one with a sassy top that's ready to give you a peek.

Yesterday's ricer caught the bullet train to Crack Pipe with 55% of you getting fast and furious on the door number two option. Let's stay in that 1985 mind set, but instead of looking to the land of the rising sun, let's go to another of America's WWII rivals- Germany - for today's contender. It's also modded, and at a $3,995 asking, it's cheaper too!

What we have here is a 1985 BMW 318i, which is a gray market car, as evidenced by its chrome bumpers and the fact that it has a Baur targa top. The Baur conversion on these cars is very well done, and BMW offered the conversions with full factory warranties.

The history of Karosserie Baur is as long as that of BMW's auto making endeavors. The company started engineering convertible top mechanisms back in the ‘20s, and has done development work on most every BMW drop-top ever since. In addition to adding head room to the rondel brand's coupes, Baur also built most of the M1 supercars when Lamborghini abandoned the project after seeing something shiny and getting distracted. The Baur/BMW relationship is an open one, and neither partner gets upset when the other brings home a conquest. For Baur, that includes Opel, for whom they built a number of similar targa-top modded Kadetts, and Porsche, for whom they built the 959. As you can imagine, quality is a hallmark of Baur's work.

The E30 underpinning the Baur top is also a pretty rock-solid piece of hardware, although the 101-bhp 318i is not quite as ultimate a driving machine as you might like. This black on black example sports the Getrag 260 5-speed, which should help make best use of those few ponies. The seller claims the top is new, as are the rims (meh) and the springs and shocks (yeah), although from the pictures it looks like the exterior is not so great, with chips on the nose (bleh) and the federalized side-marker lights that look a little tacky (feh!).

The car is described as driving like new, and that everything works, including the A/C, which as it's an '85, could conceivably still be freon. If the seller is to be believed - and when have you ever known a used-car salesman to lie? - then this may just be a pretty sweet deal for that $3,995 price. If you were wondering about comparison shopping, he has another one for sale for $10,995- and you can grab a taste of that right here.

So what do you think? Is the seller dropping the top on high prices here? Or, is this from a gray market that sells nothing but Crack?

You decide.

City of Angels Craigslist or go here if the ad disappears.

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STILLEN R35 GT-R Targa Race Car

Matt Hardigree — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:15:00 EDT

Steve Millen has a long history tweaking Nissans and this version of the STILLEN GT-R for the Targa Newfoundland has been bumped to provide 620 HP AWD horsies — good enough for a 0-to-60 MPH jaunt of 2.9 seconds.

The even sportier GT-R hits the 1/4 mile in just 11.0 seconds at 127.9 MPH and pulls more than a 1.1G of lateral grip. All this is achieved with the tried-and-true combination of less weight and and better breathing. The suspension has also been modified to take the unique challenge of the Targa, which includes crossing pot-holed city roads, asphalt expanses, muddy fields, open prairies, and sandy beaches. Though we're partial to the understated white of Stillen's past, the orange color is probably a safer choice. Full spec list below.

STILLEN GT-R Targa Race Car

Performance Numbers (As Set Up For 2009 Targa Rally)
• Horsepower: ~620 @ 15psi (91 Octane Pump Gas)
• 0-60mph: 2.9 seconds **
• 1/4 Mile: 11.0 seconds at 127.9mph **
• 0-130mph: 11.4 seconds **
• Lateral Grip: 1.1G+ ** ** (as tested by Road & Track)
Performance
• STILLEN Downpipes
• STILLEN Secondary Cat-Delete Y-Pipe
• STILLEN Race Exhaust w/Center Rear Exit
• STILLEN Intake System w/K&N Filters
• Turbosmart e-Boost Street 2-Stage Electronic Boost Controller
• Turbosmart Dual Port Blow Off Valves
• COBB Tuning AccessPORT
• Dodson Motorsports Transmission Cooler
• Red Line High Performance Synthetic Motor Oil – 0W40
• Red Line High Performance Synthetic Gear Oil – 75W140
• Red Line WaterWetter
Suspension
• High Performance Coil-Overs – Adjustable Bump & Rebound, Ride Height – Eibach Race Springs
• STILLEN Adjustable Sway Bars
• STILLEN Adjustable Endlinks
Brakes / Tires
• STILLEN / AP Racing Carbon Ceramic Brake Rotor Upgrade
• STILLEN / AP Racing Brake Pads
• STILLEN Brake Cooling Package
• STILLEN Stainless Steel Brake Lines
• AP Racing PRF High Performance Brake Fluid
• Bridgestone RE070R 255/40ZRF20 Front Tires
• Bridgestone RE070R 285/35ZRF20 Rear Tires
Interior
• STILLEN Designed & Built Custom Chromoly Roll Cage
• STILLEN Designed & Built Custom Seat Frames
• Status Racing Seats
• Status Racing Harnesses
• Monit Rally Computers
• ChaseCam On-Board Video Camera System
• Nordskog GPS Speedometer (KPH)
Exterior
• STILLEN Urethane Front Lip Spoiler
• STILLEN Urethane Side Skirts
• STILLEN Urethane Front Canards
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Custom Race Hood
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Trunk Lid
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Wing
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Engine Cover
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Radiator Shroud
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber NACA Ducts
• Password:JDM AeroCatch Flush Mounting Plates
• APR Carbon Fiber Side Mirrors
• BASF Carizzma Orange Sherbet Pearl Paint

[Source: STILLEN Blog]

World's Fastest Convertible: 253 MPH Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport

The Auto Insider — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:30:00 EDT

The Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport is officially the fastest road legal production convertible. That is, if you consider a 223 MPH top-down jaunt across the French countryside road legal and you consider 150 units a "production" model.

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.

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport: A Targa For The Rest Of Us... With A Few Extra Million To Spend

Ben Wojdyla — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:30:00 EDT

The open-topped Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport has officially been set loose on the world in pictures ahead of its planned Pebble Beach Concours D'Elegance reveal in only a few weeks (chumps, don't they know the world will be watching the Woodward Dream Cruise that weekend?). According to Bugatti, the company busily trying to make the multi-variation Veyron the Ford Mustang of supercars, no sacrifice has been spared to get the sun shining in. We're told Bugatti's used a number of innovative reinforcement strategies to keep the car as stiff and safe as the original. We'll take two.

[WorldCarFans]

Bugatti Veyron Targa To Bow At Pebble Beach, Car Snobs To Feign Disinterest

Ben Wojdyla — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:20:00 EDT

The Pebble Beach Concours D'Elegance usually plays host to the reveal of at least one high profile, high-dollar piece of driveway candy every year. This year is no exception with the Bugatti Veyron Targa expected to make an appearance and drop its very expensive top. And when we say expensive, what we really mean to say is ridiculously expensive.

The Veyron Targa will be available to a mere 80 lucky individuals willing to part with 1.14 million Euros ( $1.8 million in non-Monopoly money) for the chance to drive around on the decks of their cruise ships that burn dollar bills for fuel with the sun shining down while they gargle melted Godiva chocolate. So what if the weight is up and the top speed is down, it's built by Molsheim and it's exclusive, so go ahead and add it to the garage as a gift to your other Bugattis. [Edmunds Inside Line]

2009 Porsche 911 Targa Picked Out In A Sea of Porsches

Ben Wojdyla — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:40:00 EDT

One of the boys over at the Teamspeed forums managed to get some awesome shots of a field of brand-new 2009 Porsche 911's, and among them was one we haven't seen yet — the 2009 Porsche 911 Targa. We catch a glimpse of the new glass-roofed 911 in two different flavors — the Targa 4, and the Targa 4S, though we'd wager the differences between the two lie largely under the sheet metal. Sure does look a lot like last year's Targa with a reflecto-bar slapped on the tail. In any case, we'll be getting the complete details on this new, subjectively improved Targa when Porsche tells us all about it on July 28th.

[Teamspeed via GermanCarBlog]

LA Auto Show: Porsche Remains Logical

Mike Bumbeck — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:33:59 EST

Stating that all Porsches are logical evolutions, and by merely talking about their latest in logicmobiles they were getting all goosebumpy, the affable yet precise Germans at the LA Auto Show rolled out the latest from Stuttgart. Porsche also showcased a less evolved example of Porsche racing history by putting a 908/3 on a pedestal. While the 908/3 kicked out around 300-500 hp in the 70's depending on race trim, the new-to-North America GT3 belts out 415 hp. That's 115 street-legal hp per liter of naturally aspirated displacement, kids. While driving a vintage 908/3 on the street would certainly be fun, spinning it ass-first through the plate glass window of the local Starbucks would likely land your ass in the hoosegow. The new 911 Targa 4S is pretty sweet too. More fast logic in the gallery. – Mike Bumbeck

My Ferrari! My Jaguar! My Corvette! My Anteros! Coachbuilt Roadster, Targa Coupe Coming to SEMA

Mike Spinelli — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:46:49 EDT

Building slinky sports cars over Corvette running gear is only a new concept if your idea of state-of-the-art couture is wearing pastel shirts under white linen suits. Any gearhead worth his obsession remembers the early seasons of "Miami Vice" were marked by the presence of a faux Ferrari Daytona body atop a C3 platform. Now, coachworks Anteros Marketing is introducing three new models based on the Corvette C6 (or Z06): the XTM Roadster, XTS Targa and XTR Hardtop. The three cars, versions of a body design recalling Brits and Italians in equal measure, feature carbon fiber engine covers, inner fenders, electric bonnet, and a custom leather interior. Anteros's charter is to recreate and interpret classic sportscar coachbuilding, and it would appear they're doing so — by way of late-1970s kit cars (not that there's anything wrong with that). [Gallery] – Mike Spinelli

[via Winding Road]

Related:
Tailfin Magic: The Antas V8 [internal]

Skydriving: Porsche Launches Targa 4 Minisite

Mike Spinelli — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:00:00 EDT

How to you promote a Porsche 911 whose roof slides rearward at the push of a button? Certainly not by showing kids on an overpass with tomatoes. Of course, Porsche knows this, and so created its Skydriving site, which uses high-res landscape photography to drive home the point. We're surprised the Ad Council didn't force them to put in a disclaimer: "Driver Should Not Look Upward While Driving."

Skydriving [Porsche]

Open Up and Say Ahhh: Porsche Reveals New 911 Targa

Mike Spinelli — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 08:25:02 EDT

Porsche took the virtual wraps off the newest in its line of 997-model 911s — the Targa 4 and 4S. Though less a targa in the traditional sense than a 911 with a hole in its head, the models have a substantial glass roof (wear hats, gents) and a folding rear window. They'll also get a wider rear track, though the same 3.6-liter flat-six (3.8-liter in the S) as their more darkly acclimed cohorts. For you? 79,000 euros base, or 87,900 for the 911 Targa 4S. More after the jump.

Related:
Spy Photos: Porsche 911 Targa [internal]

Spy Photos: Porsche 911 Targa

Mike Spinelli — Tue, 30 May 2006 09:45:51 EDT

The boys at World Car Fans say the photos are unretouched, so we'll go with that. According to the backstory, a man and his son came across this undisguised Porsche 997 Targa as it was being shot commercially in northern California (new brochure in the works?), and whipped out their digicams. A rear shot offers the cleanest view yet of the panoramic transparent roof, which slides back out of sight when the al fresco button is pushed. We're expecting an unveiling at the Paris show in September ahead of a springtime '07 launch.

Uncovered Porsche 911 Targa Spy Photos [World Car Fans]

Related:
Spy Photos: Porsche 911 Targa [internal]

Spy Photos: Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet, Targa

Mike Spinelli — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:56:42 EDT

They've kept us waiting for a couple extra years since the first 997-generation cars started appearing, and Porsche says we'll have to go ahead and wait some more for next (and last?) models. Still, spies caught shots of the upcoming 911 Turbo Cabriolet and Targa during harsh-weather testing somewhere north of Iceville, Coldovia. The cab may never see this kind of weather again, unless Los Angeles swaps ends with Skagway-Hoonah-Angoon County, Alaska. Road trip!

Porsche 911 Targa and Turbo Cabrio Spy Photos [World Car Fans]

Spy Photos: More on the Porsche 911 Turbo, Targa

Mike Spinelli — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 10:37:05 EDT

We thought Porsche might have surprised us by introducing the new 911 Turbo at the Frankfurt show, but alas, it did not. That leaves next year's Geneva show for the launch, considering the company has said the car, and its Targa-topped sibling, will be released next spring. Spy photog, Hans Lehmann caught the cars during testing, and has Photoshopped out their disguises, leaving a pretty clear impression of the remaining 997-style 911s to hit the market. All we need now is the press conference and a test drive. Yeah.

Spy Shots: 07 Porsche 911 Turbo/Targa [The Car Connection]

Spy Photos: Porsche 911 Targa

Mike Spinelli — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 09:15:00 EDT

Sure, you've seen it, but have you seen it with a subtly integrated retractable targa top? Well now you have. German Car Fans has some spy photos of the upcoming targa-top 911 (997), featuring a quite jovial test pilot at the helm. Porsche will be rolling out the targa version later this year, having already debuted 997 versions of the cabrio, 4 and 4S (plus cabrio) and club racer.

New Porsche 911 Targa SPY PHOTOS [German Car Fans]