Porsche 911 (993) Carrera 2 Cabriolet Tiptronic

Click Here for Full Screen Image - Click Here to Download Image

“They don’t make them like this anymore. The 993 is noted as the perhaps the best Porsche ever built and will continue to go up in value” – Auto Express.

“The best-handling and best-looking of the air-cooled 911s. Keen following among Porsche fans so there can be little or no depreciation” – Honest John. “The Porsche 993 is considered the greatest of the air-cooled 911s; maybe the greatest of all time” – Elite Auto Report. “All you really need to know is that the 993 is a mesmerising, enchanting, brilliantly usable and simply thrilling car to live with” – Evo.

We could fill this whole catalogue with tributes to the 1993 -1998 generation of Porsche 911, the legendary 993, whose technical attributes are fully described elsewhere in this publication (Lot 137). Suffice to say that you will struggle to find one anywhere with sensible mileage and no issues for less than £30,000. In fact you will struggle to find one, full stop. Anyone who owns one already will a) love it to bits; b) never want to sell it; c) regard it as their pension.

This 993 Cabriolet was supplied new by Stratstone of Wilmslow to Executive Vehicle Hire of London in August 1996, who were to keep it for the next five years. Very early in its life, when it had covered only 7,500 miles according to a hand-written note in the service book, it suffered a catastrophic engine failure which effectively wrote the car off and got it recorded as a Category D insurance loss in December 1997 (an unusually lead-footed hire customer perhaps accounting for the failure of the engine, which is generally regarded as bullet-proof).

The car then appears to have sat around for three years until it was acquired by the second owners, PH Sports Cars of Shardlow, Derbyshire, in February 2001. They fitted a replacement non-Varioram 993 M64 engine and returned the car to the road early in 2002, keeping it for another two years before selling it to the current owner in May 2004, at which point it had 8,906 miles on the clock.

The vendor has used the car only lightly during his 11-year ownership, mainly as a weekend toy, and it is still showing only 38,600 miles. It has five service stamps in the book, the first at 7,501 miles in February 2002 and the last at 37,740 miles in October 2013.

A cabriolet model (which lets you enjoy that wailing flat-six to the full) it has the clever Tiptronic gearbox which can be used either manually or automatically, depending on your mood, and which adapts to your driving style. Recently fitted with a new hood, hood mechanism and hood bag, it has also had the rear bumper supports replaced, one of the few weak points of the 993 and which always need renewing once the car is a few years old.

Supplied with the owner’s handbook, service book and wallet plus various invoices, it is MOTd until May 2015 and is said to drive beautifully, certainly performing as you would expect when we were taken for a spin around rural Rutland on the occasion of our visit. Only being sold due to the advancing years of the long-term owner, it looks good value at the sensible guide price suggested and must be about the cheapest 993 on the market.