Author: Jim Schrager

Jim wrote for the 356 Registry and SCM for over a decade, was a Contributing Editor for Porsche Panorama (the magazine of the Porsche Club of America), and wrote for Excellence and the Porsche Market Letter. He has written two popular books on vintage Porsches: Buying, Driving, and Enjoying the Porsche 356; and Buying, Driving, and Enjoying the Early Porsche 911. He owns about 20 vintage Porsches, which he attempts to keep on the road through all kinds of weather. He is a clinical professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he teaches a popular course on strategy. He actively races his family’s 41-foot sailboat with his two boys on Lake Michigan.

1966 Porsche 911

According to a copy of the Porsche Kardex, this early-production, short-wheelbase 911 was completed on March 24, 1966. It was delivered to Carl Steffens of Mountain View, CA, through Porsche Cars Northeast Inc. of Bedford, MA, one of seven U.S. Porsche distributors during the period. Believed to have been retained […]

Age of Discovery

Luftgekühlt is a one-day car show — of sorts — only for air-cooled Porsches. From afar, it appears as an “in-crowd, secret-handshake” event meant only for the most socially well-connected Porsche owners. The 2021 edition was held nearby in Indianapolis, IN, in September. My son Max got the bug to […]

1956 Porsche 356A 1600 Cabriolet by Reutter

The term “barn find” has been vastly abused in the collector-car market, but here is a 356A cabriolet which was literally pulled out of an old building near Salem, OH. This matching-numbers cabriolet shows fewer than 46,000 miles — believed to be original — and was delivered in the rarely-seen […]

When Chevrolet Built a Porsche

In the fall of 1964, Chevrolet introduced the second-generation Corvair in direct competition with the Ford Mustang. While the Mustang seemed to take all the air out of the room for a small, sporty American car, independent thinkers in the know realized the two competing products couldn’t be more different. […]

Courtesy of Auctions America

1988 Porsche 930 “Slantnose” Coupe

Styling for the “Slantnose” 911 Turbo came from the legendary Porsche 935 race car. This factory option was executed on the raw body shell, allowing Porsche’s anti-corrosion warranty to be retained. Included in the price of $23,244 were sloped front fenders, retractable headlamps and air vents to ensure efficient cooling […]

Porsche’s No-Frills Performance Bargain

  There’s nothing more fun than buying, driving and enjoying a bargain sports car. Today, in our red-hot collector car market, most hope — and perhaps pray — that our purchases will continue to appreciate. Yet the prospect of price appreciation someday is different than a bargain today. The 911SC […]

1988 Porsche 959 Coupe

Conceived in the early 1980s as a 4-wheel-drive Group B competitor, the Porsche 959 was first displayed in concept car form at the 1983 Frankfurt Motor Show. Despite the subsequent abandonment of Group B, the 959 entered limited production in 1987 as a machine that successfully adapted state-of-the art racing […]

What Goes Up, Must Come Down.

On the way up, every buy is a good buy, because mistakes are papered over as the market rises. On the way down, every buy is a bad buy The only constant in the market is change. While our vintage Porsche market has enjoyed an upward curve for the past […]

The Tao of Steve’s Turbo Carrera

Stories abound that McQueen did everything he could to use the car as it was intended, and in that way, I imagine he had great fun with it {vsig}2008-11_2250{/vsig} In 1976, Porsche unveiled what was to be the first production 911 Turbo, known internally as a 930 and externally as […]

Fast Times at Collector High

The market has doubled and in some cases doubled again, and when this happens, a readjustment is on the way You can see it in the classified ads: This is a wild time. I can remember issues of Hemmings that didn’t have a single 356 Speedster for sale, yet today, […]