The opening minutes of Le Mans contain perhaps the most subtly powerful automotive endorsement in film history. It’s the day before the race is slated to begin, and Steve McQueen’s character, Michael Delaney, is driving his 1970 Porsche 911 around the course, stopping to look at the spot where he’d crashed the year before. There’s nothing exciting about his trip along the small French streets, no speeds above perhaps thirty or forty miles per hour, none of the ridiculous, staged tail-out antics which are now found in everything from video games to Nissan Altima advertisements. There’s merely the plain implication: The Porsche 911 is the car chosen by the world’s finest sports-car drivers. If you don’t want that 911S desperately by the time the sequence is done, you don’t love cars very much — and if you wanted it very desperately, now’s your chance.
Fox News reports that the 911 used during the filming of that sequence will be auctioned by RM this August. McQueen fans will be pleased and saddened to learn that the Porsche wasn’t just a prop:
McQueen brought it with him back to California after filming wrapped, but was forced to sell it just a year later when his company, Solar Productions, went bankrupt, largely due to the making of “Le Mans.” The production of the film was riddled by troubles and a relative flop at the box office.
It’s hard to know how much money the car would fetch. A 1970 911S is a hell of a car even without any celebrity provenance, and this would certainly be the most valuable of its type. We’ll take a random guess and say it’s worth $90,000. That kind of money will barely get you a Cayenne S with a few options, so it’s easy to guess which way a true Porsche fan would go. True Steve McQueen fans, on the other hand, may just want to figure out a way to bypass the firewalls at work and check out Jalopnik’s revealing feature on the man himself and the equipment he couldn’t sell.
Great opening, great car for it. Sadly $90k is way too much for me to even consider it. Any chance of a decent non-celebrity 911 of that vintage being available for $10-$15?
Assuming you mean 10-15 thousand dollars, well, not really any more. Maybe you could get lucky and find a decent but needs some work 911T (the low-power version in those days), but certainly not a decent S. If you can do without the power, a nice 912 is still in that range, same car, but with the 356’s boxer 4. The red-headed stepchild of the range, but as a compensation for the lower HP, they handle better and are slightly less likely to kill you, as when you screw up, you will be going slower. Would be my choice, actually.
My Mom had a slightly rusty 911E in the early 80s when I was a ‘tween and my kid brother a toddler. I was definitely one of the cool kids at school for a couple years. :-)
“We’ll just ask — as we always do — that he only write about the things he’s informed enough to write about when he writes for Jalopnik. We think that’s fair.”
-Ray Wert, Jalopnik.com
Sadly, TTAC’s tame racing driver writes about McQueen’s Porsche, making him an unfit contributor to Wert’s car blog. Were Baruth to spend his time waxing poetic about photos of McQueens gentleman bits, he’d be on their staff in no time.
I wonder how much traffic 3D pics of McQueen’s stuff would draw to Cars In Depth.
My guess is it goes for a lot more than 90K. A very nice non-McQueen 70 911S is worth 70-80K nowadays…I would reluctantly part with my 69 S for 90K…
My first car was a 1967 911S. Great car. Until the torsion tubes rusted out in Boston winters. Sold it for $1,500 in 1976.
That’s one of the most beautiful 911s there is (whether or not Mr. McQueen owned it). I’ve still got my heart set on a 911SC though- it is the right mix between attainable and not going to bankrupt me.
Look at the repair bill for an SC head stud repair bill. Get back to me after you recover consciousness.
Okay, so what is the better 911 for longevity and reliability?
A quick check suggests Dinky Toys.
Thats why you learn how to do work yourself, or become good friends with a trusted mechanic. And start with a 911 that isnt so perfect that if it completely goes to crap, you can justify swapping in a V8!
http://www.renegadehybrids.com
An ’80s 911 is certainly capable of generating some wallet melting bills, but they really are tough cars overall. They hardly rust by the standards of the day, and the engines really will go big mileages.
And these days, the Internet is the great leveler – if you have any DIY talent at all you can find plenty of help on even the rarest and most exotic vehicles. It is no longer necessary to find some old German dude named Gunter to work on your old crock, and you can far more easily find parts at reasonable prices than 20+ years ago. No way could I run a pair of Alfas if I had to take the damned things to a mechanic for every little thing. And compared to my GTV-6, an ’80s 911 might as well be a Chevy.
Plus, realistically nobody is going to buy a 911SC as a daily driver anymore. It will be a weekend toy, driven at most a few thousand miles a year. Bought carefully, it will last pretty much forever in that use. Even my lowly Triumph Spitfire is utterly reliable at <1000 miles a year. The Alfa Spider did a completely reliable 4K last year though (once I finished fettling it) – not too shabby!
To answer your question, photog02,
The SC is not bad. It’s just the Carrera series following it was so much better. Especially the 87-89 models with the G50 transmission…light years better than the 915. Lately, I’m partial to the 964 (89-94) in 2WD (’90 +). It’s better still than the Carrera, has depreciated a good bit and is affordable (versus the following last-of-the-air-cooled 993s). And is quite dependable and a good enough all-rounder that you could drive it to work pretty much every day.
As an owner of an SC, I bought the series because of all the claims of durability and dependability. However, if you think owning even a nice example of a 911 is free from wallet-sucking maintenance and repair, I have to tell you what Excellence says (quietly, in the back page articles)…ouch! It never ends, either. By the time you sort the suspension, it’s time to rebuild the shifter. And on and on. The car will never be done. Don’t get me wrong, the car is startlingly quick, handles beautifully, and looks great. The words — buy the best one you can afford — are so true I can’t emphasize them enough. Buy. The. Best. One. You. Can. Afford. Then I recommend adding another $2000 on top. Trust me, it’ll save you triple that over the first three years of ownership. And if you don’t get a PPI from a Porsche specialist or dealer, just take your wallet out and start burning 100s now…same thing.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to fix the H4 left headlight again, for the third time. Argh!
krhodes1, Domestic Hearse: Thanks for the input. I am not looking for a daily driver (although the thought is appealing). I just want something that feels more mechanical and pure than most newer cars. That led me to start looking into the world of air-cooled Porsches. I am coming from the BMW world (2002, Z3, E46 330) and am used to wrenching on cars as a necessity and (lately) as a hobby. The idea of a fussy car isn’t scary, especially since I discovered the Pelican Parts forum.
mnm4ever: That looks like something you would have to take to every PCA event as a requirement of ownership. The reactions would make the conversion cost completely worth it.
I bet it goes for $250,000 or more, assuming it can be shown without question that it is the car it is claimed to be.
To sports car racing fans the 911, Steve McQueen, and LeMans (the race and the movie) are all cultural icons.
The same would hold true for the Ford Mustang McQueen drove in Bullitt.
We are restoring a 1971 911E. Is the S model really that much better?
One dude told me that u need to have left foot on brake and right foot on gas. Perhaps need to be on a low gear as to rev up the engine too, or else your a*s will be upfront.
is there any truth to this?
Cornering, the last thing you want is braking. In old 911s, the engine has so little torque at low rpms you can’t even afford to get off the gas – engine braking alone will trigger trailing throttle oversteer and put you in a spin. The modern 911s fix this with a longer wheelbase, much better rear suspension, mongo-sized rear tires and Porsche Stability Management (aka Please Save Me). I experienced this oversteer once in an old Beetle and that was enough, thanks.
OTOH, if you are a much better driver than I, you can use this trait to help steer the car.
The 1973 911S 2.4 is still the last real Porsche in my opinion. I’d kill for a 1972 (oil door in fender) E or S MFI.
Anything owned by McQueen has a habit of obliterating the pre-sale estimates… A Rolex 5512 Submariner he owned and wore frequently was sold a few years ago. A clean, original 5512 with documentation is worth under 10K. His? Sold for 234 000$. It blew everyone away, and shattered the myth of the “Steve McQueen Explorer”, an orange-hand Explorer II that had long been tied to him even though there was zero evidence he ever owned or wore one on any occasion.