You learn something new... - Cars you didn't know existed, until now!

[p78]

This is a Heron MJ, from New Zealand. Only 25 were made and well, if it had been any more popular I imagine Lotus would have sued.


View attachment 1305634

Or its the Delorean as it should have been.

 

[Liquid]

Jerrari

Two individually unique Jeep Wagoneers with the 4.4L V12, 5-speed manual running gear from a Ferrari 365 GT. One was made in 1969 even with the front end of the Ferrari, the other was made in 1977 and retained the complete exterior look of a Jeep but took the 1969 car's engine and transmission.

They were made for casino mogul Bill Harrah. After the 1969 car had its running gear transplanted into the later 1977 car, the 1969 car was given a 5.8L Chevrolet V8.

 

[Tornado]

In case you thought your horrible AMC V8 was too reliable.

 

[05XR8]

Red Pig. Pink pig. Godzilla. Never heard of this one:

Green Lizard: Rotary Torana - Shannons Club

A rotary engined Torana? Yes! Holden considered the engine in the early seventies and created a restyled LX Torana hatchback, nicknamed “The Green Lizard&...

www.shannons.com.au

 

[Roo]

Seeing a photo of it at Retromobile was my introduction to the Jules 6x4, entered in the 1984 Paris-Dakar, which it DNF'd. A small block Chevrolet powered the front 4 wheels through a Porsche 935 gearbox. The builder, Thierry Montcorgé, made this 3 years after entering the Dakar in a Rolls Royce.

 

[Pupik]

Seeing a photo of it at Retromobile was my introduction to the Jules 6x4, entered in the 1984 Paris-Dakar, which it DNF'd. A small block Chevrolet powered the front 4 wheels through a Porsche 935 gearbox. The builder, Thierry Montcorgé, made this 3 years after entering the Dakar in a Rolls Royce.

Ah, the Le Camino.

 

[SPhilli911]

Today I discovered the 1968 911 T/R. I've probably seen it online before but it looks almost identical to the 1967 911 R minus the distinctive 911 R taillights, so I probably didn't think much of it.

Here is a snippet on the car:

Developed by Ferdinand Piëch, it was the first time Porsche had built a 911 purely to go racing with. However, the original 911 R wasn’t built in great enough numbers to be homologated for GT competition. That honor would have to wait until the following year when Porsche chose to homologate the 911 properly for the Group 3 class. The resulting car was known as the Porsche 911 T/R, with the factory producing examples for the 1968 season... The homologation process started with the 911 T. It was already 118 pounds lighter than its ‘S’ sibling, and Porsche went to work making it even lighter. The car was stripped out of any kind of sound deadening, reducing the total weight by a further 52 lbs... It is believed that 35 or fewer 911 T/R have been built in 1968.

 

[TexRex]

Checking out Mazda B-series off-road builds I happened upon the Japanese market Mazda Proceed Marvie, a four-door SUV variant of Japan's B-series twin.

It uses a lot of the same sheetmetal as the 4x4 B-series but the rear roof section is a bit awkward, as are the rear doors because the fronts appear to be unchanged from the two-door B-series. I think it would work better as a two-door with a slightly shorter wheelbase (not as short as a Trooper RS, but more like a two-door WD21 Pathfinder), and even the rear roof section might not look so wonky.

Here's a B-series pickup for comparison:

 

[Heldenzeit]

1 of 14 993 generation Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet. Commonplace for 996/997 and newer, but you had to call the Special Wishes Department back in 993 days. Oddly, it was 2wd and used the 964 type turbo engine. Note it's also built off the narrow body platform and doesn't have the regular Turbo's side inlets.

Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet (993) (1995)

The Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet (993 generation) is an incredibly rare car – only 14 were built in 1995, in the early days of 993 production. Rather than the contemporary twin-turbo powerplant in the 993 Turbo Coupe, the 993 Turbo Cab was fitted with the single turbo of the 964 Turbo 3.6...

www.stuttcars.com

 

[chengman]

1 of 14 993 generation Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet. Commonplace for 996/997 and newer, but you had to call the Special Wishes Department back in 993 days. Oddly, it was 2wd and used the 964 type turbo engine. Note it's also built off the narrow body platform and doesn't have the regular Turbo's side inlets. View attachment 1342316

Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet (993) (1995)

The Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet (993 generation) is an incredibly rare car – only 14 were built in 1995, in the early days of 993 production. Rather than the contemporary twin-turbo powerplant in the 993 Turbo Coupe, the 993 Turbo Cab was fitted with the single turbo of the 964 Turbo 3.6...

www.stuttcars.com

And some people wonder why Porsche wasn't profitable back in the 90s. All these one-offs might explain why.

 

[Heldenzeit]

And some people wonder why Porsche wasn't profitable back in the 90s. All these one-offs might explain why.

Well, kinda. It was essentially a parts bin special, and all the cars produced were sold to the same dealer. I think they can charge a lot more for not having to do very much engineering here.

What also comes to mind is all the special one offs ordered by the Brunei Royal family keeping Aston and Pininfarina in business.

 

[JC_Dude]

Yeah, I doubt it was the one-offs that nearly caused them to go out of business. The customers usually give a blank check for those and they still have the Sonderwunsch division, which handles special requests and things like that, so it must be working for them.

 

[Tornado]

Porsche almost went out of business because they had a lineup of cars that all functionally dated back to the late-70s at the newest that were expensive to assemble compared to actually-modern competition; so as soon as their sales started dipping in the late 80s their profits started being wiped out by high fixed costs. They got caught in a feedback loop where the cars were increasingly obviously not as modern as their contemporaries so Porsche kept having to bootstrap more stuff to them which made them more expensive which made them sell worse which required Porsche to charge even more for them and etc. That's why they course corrected so far (too far) with the 986/996 that everything in front of the doors was basically identical (plus all the awful materials used in the .1 versions of both cars) and simpler, all in service of getting those costs down as much as possible. It's the same reason that the C5 Corvette (which was developed under similar circumstances to the 996 with GM nearly going bankrupt and delaying it multiple times) debuted around the same time with its horrible Silverado interior and parts bin headlights and transmissions; because cutting production costs from its expensive-to-produce and labor-intensive predecessor was similarly the primary design goal.



As a point of fact, I'm sure Porsche was quite happy indeed that Jerry Seinfeld or Bill Gates or whoever were willing to pay Porsche exorbitantly to shove some 965 drivetrains they had sitting around into a 993 Carrera 2 convertible.