If you take one look at the garage where today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe 356 clone lives you may not just want to buy it, you may want its seller to adopt you. We’ll have to see if this Faux-orsche’s dowery is worth paying
Ooh, yesterday’s rare 1980 Toyota Celica USGP edition came in with a photo finish. Sadly, the flash didn’t work and we had the lens cap on the camera. Having some film loaded would have probably helped too.
Luckily, we had the good ol’ vote tracker doing its thing, and that showed a 52-percent Crack Pipe loss for the Celica. Looks like the USGP was SOL in this case.
If it hadn’t be for a request of Porsche by New York auto importer Max Hoffman for a cheaper and faster 356, we likely would not have had the iconic Speedster to venerate and covet. If it weren’t for that Speedster’s ultimate success at becoming one of Porsche’s most august whips, we wouldn’t have Volkswagen-based replicas like this ‘90s-constructed buttercup beauty around to ogle either.
The Speedster’s design was not just iconic, its upside-down bathtub aesthetic was easy as heck to copy. The cars simplicity also lent itself to home brew kit construction, especially at a time when there were plenty of VW Type 1 chassis sitting around under decrepit Beetle bodies.
This one is said to run a 1600-cc, dual-port edition of Volkswagen’s long-serving air-cooled flat four. That has all new fuel lines and a pump, as well as a new carb to make all that stuff worth the effort.
The seller describes the car as “great running and driving,” and claims that it does come with a top that’s “easy to reinstall.” Now, I’ve helped to install the top on a Speedster once, and I have the PTSD and broken finger nail memories to show for it. Still, it’s nice to know this clone is not just a fair weather friend.
The fiberglass body looks to be in fine shape, and what we can see of the interior seems to indicate it to be serviceable as well. On the down side, there are seem to be only three Porsche badged wheel covers on the chromed wheels, and based on the front boot (froot) spic, the paint has either faded or has been shot in a different hue outside than in.
Mileage and other pertinent details like source of the kit and who did the build go undisclosed, but the reason for the sale does get revealed—the current owner wants to trade up to a Beck Spyder. One look at his garage however, and you might want to trade up to moving in with him.
He has three bays with which to play, and if that’s not enough, they offer enough ceiling height for two of the bays to have service/storage lifts installed. Right now he has a whale tail 911, Fox Body 5.0 convertible Mustang, some sort of Jeep-looking thing, and a mystery machine under a cover, all sharing space with our diminutive darling, the Speedster.
Okay, enough jonesing over all the pretty-pretties, let’s get down to brass tacks and figure if this garage mogul has set a decent price for this Speedster clone. He’s asking $17,900, or less than a tenth of what you might expect to pay for the real deal. Also, with its fiberglass body, this one is likely lighter, and hence faster than that real car.
What do you think, will this seller get that asking for this Speedster? Or, will that Beck Spyder just have to wait?
You decide!
South Jersey, NJ Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to onFauxshizzle for the hookup!
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