well i never knew that!
http://www.barrett-jackson.com/Events/Event/Details/1978-PORSCHE-911-2-DOOR-COUPE-TINA-117415
http://www.barrett-jackson.com/Events/Event/Details/1978-PORSCHE-911-2-DOOR-COUPE-TINA-117415
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the "gone in 60 sec's" 996 wasnt actually a 996!
- Thread starter 996lee
- Start date
Well you learn something new everyday..... It makes you wonder if when it was made it was considerably cheaper to do that to a 1978 911 back then rather than scratch the ultra modern water cooled 996:?:
I guess if it was made now they would use a 997 :lol:
I guess if it was made now they would use a 997 :lol:
Yes, I do think it didn't have much to do with costs. My first thought was the other way around too - then I started thinking about it: building an entire 996 body on an older 911 - £25+k easily. And even the most clapped out drivable SC never got much under £15. So you save possibly £15-20k in a movie with a budget including actors salaries for the likes of Nicolas Cage? Not really worth the time, trouble or the risk if you ask me. If I was really looking to save money, I'd have looked for a wrecked 996 with repairable damage.Disco said:
Those guys generally aren't stupid; there will have been a reason. But I can't imagine the weight difference between the SC/996 and a real 996 was much more than 200kg or so. Whatever...
stevemfr said:
When brand new the US price of the '78 SC was under $20k (which at the exchange rate of the day was about £11k, so even a brand new one fresh from the dealer was well below your £15k). The SC certainly got plenty beneath that before the prices turned - especially in the US market - and the five figure SC is actually a comparatively recent thing if you look into it. Building a more recent body on to an older 911 probably would cost you £25k today in the UK, but 18 years ago in California it wouldn't have been anything like that. The whole car was probably done for about $15k back then. And with so many cars to source for use in the film - of course they would have saved money wherever possible (especially when they planned to drive it through a window).
The entertainment industry has so much form for that - from the famous Porsche chase in Condorman which actually featured no Porsches (they were all Covin replicas) to the fibreglass-over-Corvette "Ferrari Daytona" in Miami Vice.
Hi Colin,
I've been into Porsches all my life and the SCs were not that low in the late 90s/early 2000s. I purchased a 1976 911 with it's disdained 2.7L motor in the early 90sfor just under DM20k. That was more or less rock bottom of the 911 market. A good freind purchased more or less the same car (76 911 2.7) in the US in 1995 for right around $20k
There was a large jump from the 2.7s to the SCs in price at the time. The last year of the SC in 1983, the cars hade a base price of over $30k. And that climb in base price dragged the earlier SCs back up in price and compensated for depreciation. And by the late 90s, 911 prices were already on the way up - albeit no where nearly as quickly as in the past decade.
And I know all about kit cars and their roles in movies too. ;-p There were numerous movies where "Ferraris" based on Fieros were wrecked to save money (one in particular, but I don't remember the movie, I do remember reading about the cars), and on and on. But if the cars were shown more closely, they were generally the original thing. That's what I meant with "risk". And to build a replica accurate enough to be shown more closely is expensive labor-wise, not to mention parts. These will likely have been new in great part, as the 996 was still nearly new at the time, and buying doors, quarters, wings, deck- and frunklid, roof, glass, lights(!), wheels, door handles, etc, etc will have been quite expensive. Plus the labor to fit everything (look at the front edge of the door - it looks like a straight vertical line). Even at that, there are plenty of details that don't look right. (quarter glass, rear wheel position). And while the car will be more of a Leepu-Chop-Shop style Bondo sculpture than serious body work, it is good enough to be sold as a road worthy vehicle. I am quite sure buying a real totaled 996 and sculpting it back into shape enough to drive through a window (which obviously did not do that much damage as the car is now for sale in relatively good shape) and through the rest of the movie scenes would have been less expensive.
As I said, I thought it through before I posted because my knee jerk reaction was to think just like you are (though your figures are off). But when you start adding everything up...
But as I also said, those guys are not stupid. There will have been compelling reasons for their choices. Maybe you are right and they tried to save money. But there was def not a significant savings on this particular car.
I've been into Porsches all my life and the SCs were not that low in the late 90s/early 2000s. I purchased a 1976 911 with it's disdained 2.7L motor in the early 90sfor just under DM20k. That was more or less rock bottom of the 911 market. A good freind purchased more or less the same car (76 911 2.7) in the US in 1995 for right around $20k
There was a large jump from the 2.7s to the SCs in price at the time. The last year of the SC in 1983, the cars hade a base price of over $30k. And that climb in base price dragged the earlier SCs back up in price and compensated for depreciation. And by the late 90s, 911 prices were already on the way up - albeit no where nearly as quickly as in the past decade.
And I know all about kit cars and their roles in movies too. ;-p There were numerous movies where "Ferraris" based on Fieros were wrecked to save money (one in particular, but I don't remember the movie, I do remember reading about the cars), and on and on. But if the cars were shown more closely, they were generally the original thing. That's what I meant with "risk". And to build a replica accurate enough to be shown more closely is expensive labor-wise, not to mention parts. These will likely have been new in great part, as the 996 was still nearly new at the time, and buying doors, quarters, wings, deck- and frunklid, roof, glass, lights(!), wheels, door handles, etc, etc will have been quite expensive. Plus the labor to fit everything (look at the front edge of the door - it looks like a straight vertical line). Even at that, there are plenty of details that don't look right. (quarter glass, rear wheel position). And while the car will be more of a Leepu-Chop-Shop style Bondo sculpture than serious body work, it is good enough to be sold as a road worthy vehicle. I am quite sure buying a real totaled 996 and sculpting it back into shape enough to drive through a window (which obviously did not do that much damage as the car is now for sale in relatively good shape) and through the rest of the movie scenes would have been less expensive.
As I said, I thought it through before I posted because my knee jerk reaction was to think just like you are (though your figures are off). But when you start adding everything up...
But as I also said, those guys are not stupid. There will have been compelling reasons for their choices. Maybe you are right and they tried to save money. But there was def not a significant savings on this particular car.
stevemfr said:
Interesting. There is a hole in what I have to hand for the 2000 time frame, but in light of your comments I went and checked classified adds from old magazines and in the UK the price for a 78-79 SC in 1990 (the oldest source I have) was below £12k and falling, by 2006 they started at £7500 and by 2010 they were being advertised for just under £9k. Those are of course UK classified ads at the bottom of the market (more expensive options were available for all of those) and thus will be almost certainly be somewhat higher than US values (where prices have bizarrely always been and still are less than in Europe).
The point is though that we are talking about what you could get a donor car for, not what an enthusiast such as yourself would consider paying for a worthwhile one. That they used a '78 SC almost certainly means that it would have been the cheapest 911 of any kind that they could find that was a runner (and it would of course not have mattered if it were tired and a cosmetic basket case given that they were going to coat it with "a new 1999 996 composite fiberglass body" with presumably polycarbonate windows as they were "able to be kicked out in case of emergency" which was to feature primarily in a night time scene). The fit of the bonnet and indicators to the PU clearly apparent on the few low res picture in the ad also indicates that the conversion wasn't exactly done to decent custom shop build standards either.
So we will have to agree to disagree, as lacking input from whoever actually built it, I am solidly of the opinion that it was done for the lowest cost possible. It pointedly claims that "no detail was spared" by the "amazing SPS Porsche Builders" (anyone ever heard of them), not no expense :dont know:
Wow. Those are low prices on the SCs.
The funny thing is, the UK market is often quite different than the rest of the normal Porsche world (we who drive on the right side as opposed to the wrong side
). I will have to dig up some old magazines, but the SC prices on LHD cars did not go that low - at least not for a longer period that I recall (what was the exchange rate back then?). And I realize that they did not need an "enthusiast" level car - actually my own cars were generally always in need of a little (or lot) of TLC. I supported myself in my university years by working as a technician at an independent Porsche specialist garage just outside of Munich.
Prices in the US were not always lower than elsewhere: in the 80s, prices were considerably higher until the $ dropped. My focus has always been on German and US prices, but throughout the 90s there was not a huge difference one way or the other. There were short fluctuations: I re-imported 2 mid-80s Carreras from the US back to Germany in the early 90s, but these inequalities in price were caused by fluctuations in currencies rather than an actual collapse of market prices in one country or the other.
Prices in the US remained slightly lower from the mid 90s on, but once again this has more to do with the weak $ than the local "value" of the car in a globalized market.
I will check, tho. Maybe I am suffering from a selective memory...
On a side note: I can often find used Porsche parts on ebay.co.uk for much less than ebay.de. And specialized (tuning/racing) parts are almost always cheaper in the US.
The windows - yes they are likely polycarbonate except for the windshield, but it says in the ad the rest of the body is all original 996 parts "made in Germany"roll. I doubt that stock-replacement FRP parts were already available in 1999 and pulling molds for a one-off would have been more than buying original parts.
I will dig up some of my old mags when I have a minute. The easiest would be if historic Kelley Blue Book (US used car price guide) prices were available online - but on a quick search I could not find anything.
EDIT: I just looked at the ad again. It does say composite body. I missed that earlier and only focused on the "all factory original NOS Porsche parts made in Germany" (what a load of ... NOS parts for a car that had been in production for 2 years?). And factory FRP parts? Not likely...
The funny thing is, the UK market is often quite different than the rest of the normal Porsche world (we who drive on the right side as opposed to the wrong side
). I will have to dig up some old magazines, but the SC prices on LHD cars did not go that low - at least not for a longer period that I recall (what was the exchange rate back then?). And I realize that they did not need an "enthusiast" level car - actually my own cars were generally always in need of a little (or lot) of TLC. I supported myself in my university years by working as a technician at an independent Porsche specialist garage just outside of Munich.Prices in the US were not always lower than elsewhere: in the 80s, prices were considerably higher until the $ dropped. My focus has always been on German and US prices, but throughout the 90s there was not a huge difference one way or the other. There were short fluctuations: I re-imported 2 mid-80s Carreras from the US back to Germany in the early 90s, but these inequalities in price were caused by fluctuations in currencies rather than an actual collapse of market prices in one country or the other.
Prices in the US remained slightly lower from the mid 90s on, but once again this has more to do with the weak $ than the local "value" of the car in a globalized market.
I will check, tho. Maybe I am suffering from a selective memory...
On a side note: I can often find used Porsche parts on ebay.co.uk for much less than ebay.de. And specialized (tuning/racing) parts are almost always cheaper in the US.
The windows - yes they are likely polycarbonate except for the windshield, but it says in the ad the rest of the body is all original 996 parts "made in Germany"
roll. I doubt that stock-replacement FRP parts were already available in 1999 and pulling molds for a one-off would have been more than buying original parts.I will dig up some of my old mags when I have a minute. The easiest would be if historic Kelley Blue Book (US used car price guide) prices were available online - but on a quick search I could not find anything.
EDIT: I just looked at the ad again. It does say composite body. I missed that earlier and only focused on the "all factory original NOS Porsche parts made in Germany" (what a load of ... NOS parts for a car that had been in production for 2 years?). And factory FRP parts? Not likely...
poppopbangbang
Nurburgring
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We get involved in quite a bit of engineering for this sort of thing! It's very common, especially as with take after take quick change panels etc. are the order of the day.
From the Bond Astons and Jags with Boss 302 V8 power and 4WD to this Porsche nothing is what it seems on film
From the Bond Astons and Jags with Boss 302 V8 power and 4WD to this Porsche nothing is what it seems on film
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