A Porsche 908 Is Coming Up For Sale And The Want Is Overpowering

Sometimes a car comes to market that is so rare and beautiful that you simply have to stop, drink-in its every detail and take a few moments to remember that cars can be amazing

Matt Kimberley

28 Feb 2018

There’s rare and wonderful, and then there’s truly gob-smackingly, breath-stealingly rare and wonderful. This, good CTzens, is the latter, and it’s coming up for auction in August.

All images: Robin Adams for RM Sotheby's

It’s a Porsche 908 Works ‘Short-Tail’ Coupé, one of a very, very small number still in existence. This ultra-special racer, chassis number 908-010, was built alongside its sister car 908-011) for entry into the 1968 Spa 1000km.

It had a 3.0-litre flat-eight with ‘just’ 350bhp, but in the sixties that was all you needed to win races in tandem with a lightweight chassis and proper motorsport engineering.

A Porsche 908 Is Coming Up For Sale And The Want Is Overpowering

Wearing number six for the race, it was driven by Vic Elford and Jochen Neerpasch. It was jostling for the lead, holding first place several times, until tricky conditions led to a crash and ultimately the car’s retirement from the race. It never competed again and was sold to a private collector in Switzerland.

It was rediscovered in the late 1990s, according to the auctioneers RM Sotheby’s. Porsche racing car expert Dale Miller found it and arranged for it to be shipped to the United States, where it went to a new owner who paid for a full restoration prior to the 2004 Rennsport Reunion at Daytona.

The car has appeared in a number of retro and revival-type events since then. It even had a place at the North Carolina Museum of Art in the 2013-2014 Porsche by Design exhibition.

Its chassis is original, if repaired, while the factory 908 engine has just been serviced. Of course, it’s in concours condition as well. Brace your wallet: the bidding could get ugly.

Sources: CarScoops, RM Sotheby’s

Comments

I’ll probably only need another couple million if anyone wants to be so generous.

Can i pay for it with this?

Sorry, even though RM Sotheby’s is a Canadian company, the auction is held in Monterey, California, therefore Canadian money is not accepted.

Agonisingly beautiful.

Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee breathe in eeeeeeeeeeeeed it!

Am I the only one here who’s never heard of this car before? 😬

nope

Want!!!!!

i hope the buyer actually drives this thing around a track. this car looks and sounds absolutely amazing

But I mean the insurance is CRAZY expensive and would you want to be the one who ruined one of the rarest racecars in the world? I wouldn’t want to risk that sort of publicity. Not often anyways.

I sweat those headlights make it seem as the car has drooping eyelids and is tired from winning prototype races for too long and just wants to sleep

*swear

I wouldn’t sweat because of a car joke….

But is it faster than a miata?!

Alright time to be friends with a billionaire lol

Shame because the only thing this car will see is the dusty walls of a warehouse as the owner waits for it to quadruple in price.

This comment is so overused …..

If you owned that car, you wouldn’t drive it yourself
If the people who own such rare cars would drive them, none of them would exist anymore, so be happy that some people preserve the cars for later generations to see them