You Can Buy A New Old Stock Porsche 953 Dakar Race Car Drivetrain
This manual transmission, manual four-wheel drive drivetrain has been in storage for almost 40 years.
Since Porsche's release of the 911 Dakar, there has been a bunch of renewed interest in the company's earlier off-road efforts. Hell, Porsche even brought out one of the 953s it ran in the Paris-Dakar when it debuted its newest and most dirt-friendly 911.
A huge part of what makes the 953 so special and successful is its unique four-wheel drive system, and now, if you've got the cashish, you can buy one for yourself. And by one, I don't mean a 953; I mean just the four-wheel drive drivetrain, minus the engine. Weird, huh?
The drivetrain is for sale on CollectingCars, and as of publication, bidding is up to 16,250 Australian Dollarydoos with four days left on the auction. The drivetrain itself is located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and is one of two manually controlled four-wheel drive drivetrains sold by Porsche in the early 80s. This is a manual transmission setup, while the other is automatic.
According to the seller, this has never been fitted to a car and is considered new old stock. Exactly how they came into possession of it, or how it made it from Germany all the way to the Antipodes isn't explained, but we would guess it's a pretty interesting story.
So, what could you do with this unit if you bought it? Well, in theory, because it's complete and manually controlled, you could (with a ton of chassis surgery, we'd guess) install it into a G-body Porsche 911 and make all your P-car nerd buddies weep with jealousy in their pedestrian safari builds. The more likely outcome is that the winner will just put it on a garage wall or throw a glass top over it and make a very expensive dining room table. Either way, it's a rad piece of Porsche racing history.