UPDATE: This 1972 Porsche 916—a automobile with a interesting backstory and intriguing former possession history—ended up selling for an eye-watering $957,000 (which includes service fees). All of the manufacturing unit-designed 916s are unusual and important, but this yellow just one joins the fantastically-named 1971 Porsche 916 Prototype nicknamed “Brutus” in the neighborhood of a million pounds. This is a fantastic end result for an exceeding unheard of and exclusive motor vehicle, and it is possible to display the way for any other 916s without questionable lineage or affliction.
You’re wanting at a motor vehicle that signifies two complete extremes of Porsche in the early 1970s. On one hand, the Porsche 914 was a polarizing “junior” Porsche, derided for its Volkswagen roots and unconventional styling. On the other hand, the 916 is a vision of a various long term, in which the little mid-engined sporting activities car gained a huge dose of adrenaline in the type of major flat-six engines pulled straight from hotter 911s—much extra extreme than the 914/6 vehicles upgraded with a gentle 110-hp 2.-liter flat-six.
Even packing a large six displacing involving 2.4 and 2.7 liters, the 914-centered 916 was a modest car. And the kind of overall performance introduced by the engines in so compact a deal would have threatened the 911 considerably. That was not the cause the 916 challenge was cancelled, but it was absolutely a thing to consider. This is a dynamic that performed out significantly much more just lately, when the Cayman GT4 was muzzled a little bit to prevent stepping on any of its significant sibling’s toes.
Combine this huge-killing efficiency probable wrapped in a (extremely modified) 914 shell, and you have just one part of the 916’s outsized mystique. The other is that a handful of were being designed, in the realm of 10 or 11 depending on how they’re counted. You might be looking at a single of them proper right here: a single of the rarest and most appealing non-911 Porsches in existence.
According to RM Sotheby’s, exactly where you can locate chassis 914.233.0011 for sale, was designed for the sister of Porsche govt Ferdinand Piëch—the architect of the Volkswagen Group’s significant expansion, and the pressure behind these types of wild automobiles as the Bugatti Veyron and Volkswagen Phaeton. She specified the vehicle in this yellow tone, with an interior that mixed chestnut leather with a “paisley”-patterned seat. The aesthetics are, uh, a period curiosity, but they are unique.
This car or truck was absolutely rebuilt right after paying the decades with several distinctive proprietors, and we are talking entirely—the shell was stripped bare, the mechanicals redone, and the inside refreshed conserve for the appealing seat material. It’s a monumentally significant Porsche that is as rare as it is interesting, and it ought to convey a significant sum.