I'm Selling My Porsche 993 Turbo on Cars & Bids!

This is my 1996 Porsche 911 Turbo and I'm selling it on cars and bids with no reserve. I've had my 911 Turbo for about a year now and I've loved it but the time has come to move on. So today I'm going to explain how my ownership experience went, what I liked about it, why I'm selling and I'll show you some of the quirks and features I've found Before we get started, are you ready for your next cool car? Sell your enthusiast car on cars and bids. Trading in your car to dealers means you aren't getting market value for your car, leaving you with less cash for your next fun car. Just look at our recent sales of these cool cars compared to current trade-in value. This is a trade-in offer and this was the cars and bids result. This is the trade-in offer and this is the cars and bids result. Get started now on carsandbids.com. Sell on cars and bids and join the best community to sell your enthusiast car. All right, let's talk 993 Turbo. I'm going to start with a little overview about this particular car, what makes it so great, and then I'll get into what I loved about it, why I'm selling it and some quirks. We begin with a general look at the 993 and specifically the Turbo. This is the last of the original 911 models, the end of the run of air-cooled Porsche 911s. A lot of enthusiasts think that this is where the old-school, original analog 911 ended when the 993 ended production in 1998. The Turbo, that's this version, was one of the ultimate models of the 993, one of the highest performance versions, and it was fast. It has a twin-turbocharged 3.6-liter flat-six, makes right around 400 horsepower. Not a huge number, but this is not a huge car. Acceleration figures were 0-60 in under 4 seconds, which was tremendously quick for the period. So, analog, old-school car, but modern, fast performance number. And this 993 Turbo is particularly special. This car was sold new at Circle Porsche in Long Beach, here in Southern California, on April 10, 1996, and the original owner paid $110,658 for this car. It was a two-owner car when I bought it. The first owner had it for a long time, the second owner had it for a long time, and then I came in. And luckily, every single piece of paper that has ever been associated with this car has been retained, and I've put it all in this sort of neat, well-organized binder. I have never seen a car that is this complete in terms of all of its records, its purchase documentation, its entire history. Going back to the original order form is in here. When the car was ordered at a dealership, before it was even built, there's a copy of the cashier's check that was used to buy the car back in 1996 in here. The window sticker, and then every single service record all the way back to the beginning. All the radio code stuff, the low jack system info, everything about this car was retained here, and it's pretty cool. It's just a tremendously well-documented car with an enormous amount of history. And I don't think it has ever left Southern California since it was built. The hand also contained in this giant binder of documents associated with this 993 Turbo is a massive service that I did with the car after I bought it. At a nearby Porsche specialist here, almost $25,000 service that I had done to the car to make sure that it was up to my standards, and I'll cover what that was a little bit more in a second. But first, I want to talk about why I'm selling. When I bought this car about a year ago and revealed it on my channel, it was a big deal. Before this car, for years, I had been saying that I was off cars and not really interested in buying something new. And gradually, I had mentioned on the podcast I was changing my mind, maybe starting to look for something. And then, finally, that something turned into this after a long off-cars hiatus. And when I bought this car, I made a big deal about how this was my kid's first fast car. My kids are little enough that I can take them in the back seat, and this was the first car they ever really had the experience of going fast in a car. And so, you might be surprised that I'm already selling it after only having it for a year, and especially making those cool family memories in it. And that's true. It's a really big deal that this was like the first time my kids ever understood daddy's interest in cars when they rode in the back of this 993 Turbo. And this car will always have that kind of special place in my family history as a result. But I am still selling it. And a big part of the reason is I want my kids to enjoy and experience fast cars, but I'm not so obsessed with this particular car that I want this to be like their only fast car experience as they grow up. In fact, I have an entire list of cool fast cars with back seats that I kind of want to cycle through and buy new ones as my kids get older. In fact, my goal is to get one new car every school year. And since I'm buying these cars and selling them without really depreciating, I can generally do that without losing much money and just kind of enjoy a car every school year, like a different car, a different experience with my kids riding in the back. And I have this whole list I plan to get through. And right now it is particularly urgent because my kids are little, but they are growing. And so all of the cars on my list that are two-door cars with tiny back seats, I kind of got to cycle through them sort of quickly if I want to cycle through them at all before my kids get too big to enjoy them. So this car did a full school year. The kids were in the back of it all the time. But now it's time to move on. I've already bought this car's replacement, my Toyota Supra Turbo, which I announced as my new car a couple of weeks ago on this very YouTube channel. And so as far as I'm concerned, we had a great run. We did it for a full year and introduced my kids to fast cars. And now, on to the next one. And in a year, it'll be on to the one after that as I kind of go through my list of cool, fun backseat family cars that I can use with my family. So you might be wondering, did I enjoy this car? The kids got to ride in it. That was a cool experience. But did I actually like it? I'm selling it after only a year. Did I really get into this car? And the answer is yes. I absolutely loved it for what I consider to be its particular purpose, which is really great, fun, exciting, special daily driver use. Let me explain. I think a lot of like Porsche enthusiasts, contrarians, will tell you that this car is way too expensive, overrated at its current price point. Not that great. How could it be? But I think they're looking at it wrong. A lot of people expect GT3 levels of steering and handling prowess from a car at this price point. To me, this car was an amazing daily driver highway car that you could really use and enjoy, but still have the feeling of having a classic 911 with modern day power and performance. That was the coolest part. So to me, yeah, this is maybe not a racetrack car. And at the price point, these are at over $200,000. It may seem a little excessive for some, but I loved using this for errands just around town. It's zippy, it's little, you can park it anywhere. People don't really notice. It's just kind of like your fun secret with the world. And I really loved taking it on highway trips. Every time I had to go film videos in Los Angeles or Orange County, several hours in the car, this was the car I took. I hate sitting in traffic in manual transmission cars, but the shifter and clutch in this car is so incredibly rewarding that it's the only car that I have ever actively sought out going to LA and doing those trips in because it was just, it's just so rewarding to drive. It's great on a freeway late at night going 90 miles an hour, just going, or it's great around town in traffic. I found this to be maybe the most special, wonderful, like daily driver, errand car, longer trip vehicles that I've ever owned. And as a result, I managed to put 3,200 miles on this car in the span of a year, which is a pretty neat trick when you have little kids, when you have no commute. I basically took the keys to this at every chance I got. And it was really wonderful every time I used it. And I really enjoyed it for that purpose. And frankly, I think that's what the turbo is for. It's not a GT3 slammed with track suspension. It's supposed to be for daily driving with a little oomph. And that's exactly how I used it and how I loved it. And now it's definitely ready for its next owner, in part because I just did a massive $25,000 service. Like I said, tremendously expensive service right after I bought this car in order to get it into the kind of condition that I needed in order to trust it for this daily usability, which it performed flawlessly. Now, $25,000 is a lot, but I was expecting it. When I bought this car, the second owner had had it for a long time. And you can see in the service records, he just wasn't driving it as much as he had at the start. The miles weren't really piling up. And I figured there was going to be some deferred maintenance. And there was. There were leaks, the valve cover gaskets. We had to do. There was this and that. It was a massive service that took almost a month at Black Forest Automotive, which is our local, really high quality, independent Porsche shop here in San Diego. They did a great job. They were back in here at the whole engine apart. They were really doing a lot of stuff. And when it came out finished, it doesn't leak. It drives fantastically. And I have a ton of confidence in this car after that service. And I really feel like that was an important thing to do in order to make the car feel kind of exactly how I needed it to, so I could trust it on long drives, late at night, etc. Like I used it for. And thankfully, even though the previous owner of this car kind of let the maintenance pile up a bit, he had done some really important cosmetic stuff to it right before I bought it. Specifically, he repainted some areas in the front that were rock chippy. And then he had the whole car covered in paint protection film. And I love to have a car that is covered in paint protection film. You just don't worry anywhere you're going. And I especially love it when someone else has paid for it because it is a very expensive thing to do. And you don't really notice a difference when you're looking at the car. But that's exactly what he had done. And that was another really nice thing. You don't find a lot of 993s that have recent full body paint protection, especially at like a driver level of mileage. So this car is like cosmetically protected, mechanically ready. But with about 62,000 miles, it's also a car you can drive guilt free. It's honestly the perfect car for me, which makes me a little sad to see it go. As for interesting quirks that I've discovered over my ownership experience, let's talk through a few of them. One on the outside, I really came to love the rather quirky design of the rear wing. You can see it's very like soft and curvy in a way that rear wings typically aren't. It's kind of an odd thing that they've done, but it perfectly works with sort of the soft and curvy look of the car. Previous 911 turbo rear wings had been this very horizontal boxy affair that went along with a more angular design. But the 993 in general, the look had been softened a little bit and the wing went along with it perfectly. And I just think that look is absolutely gorgeous. Always loved it, but especially came to really love it during my time with this car. Another interesting exterior quirk, the windshield wipers. This car has two wipers, but they're like right on top of each other, which seemed kind of strange to me when I got it. But as you can imagine, daily driving this car, I drove it in the rain quite a bit and those wipers actually worked wonderfully. The placement of them, it's actually pretty well designed, even though it looks a little bit quirky. Same deal, by the way, with the fuel door, which is on the driver's side front fender. Kind of an odd thing about Porsche 911s, the fuel door's up there. It's an odd placement, but it's especially odd accessing the fuel door. There's a little tab inside the door jam to the left of the dashboard. You pull it and the fuel door opens and it's definitely a quirky, kind of old school Porsche thing. They were doing this in the 60s and they kept doing it through the 993. The pull tab for the fender mounted fuel door. Now Hans, speaking of old school things in this interior, well, basically the entire design of this interior is pretty old school. It's one of the very last Porsches that really utilized the original Porsche interior design with this flat horizontal dashboard. You have the climate control and the stereo next to each other, as opposed to on top in some sort of well-designed center control stack. This interior was all about form follows function. Everything was functional, easy to reach, easy to see, for the driver especially, but also the passenger. But it certainly wasn't the most beautiful interior in terms of aesthetics with like swoopy lines that made it cool. Cool wasn't really what they were going for. It was cool because it was pretty basic. Now with that said, I have to admit the design of this interior has, as a result of them not trying too hard, has held up really well over the years. It actually still looks pretty basic and simple and modern in kind of a cool way. And the materials have also held up wonderfully. You can see the dashboard, the seats, everything in this car is all in pretty nice shape, considering that it's a 30-year-old car approaching 63,000 miles. And I think there's always been something fantastic about Porsche, despite making these really fast, exciting, high-performance sports cars. They've also made them good. And they hold up, they're reliable, they're easy to own, and they don't start breaking down or leather peeling off or dashes cracking. It's all just really nice, high-quality stuff. And that's reflected in the way that this interior has worn. Now, I did do one thing to modernize this interior, and that was a new stereo head unit. But I didn't go with some, like, flashy screen Bluetooth thing. Instead, Porsche sells this. It's a modern Porsche head unit with a touchscreen, but the look kind of fits in with older Porsche models like this one. And it actually says Porsche on it, so it looks factory, it feels factory, except it has this incredibly tiny, laughably small screen for Apple CarPlay. However, I gotta say, that screen worked great, and I used it for directions and navigation. It was little, like, it was ridiculous. But if you were just looking for where the next turn is or trying to change the song, you could make it all happen on this screen, and it was better than having no CarPlay screen at all, particularly when it was so kind of well-integrated in the design into the car. Now, as for other interesting quirks, I always loved the little light on the key. You can see this key, you press a button on it, and there's a light that lights up, kind of pointing down the key. And this seems ridiculous and silly, but it's actually incredibly useful to help find the ignition switch when you're in the dark. And I replaced these little key heads in their lights, I did it myself, and it was a fantastic decision because every time I'm in the dark, I press that button to see exactly where to put the key in. It's brilliant, and I love it, even though it's so silly. Also silly, one thing I noticed is that the rear seat backs come down to create a storage shelf, and when they're down, it's carpeted, but it doesn't just have carpet, it actually says turbo. So you can remind whoever, yourself, other people, that this is a turbo because your cargo storage shelf says so when the seats are down. Definitely quirky. So, what about flaws? Obviously, this car is not perfect. I'm trying to settle it. Let me tell you a couple things that aren't perfect about it. Probably the one most people know about is the child car seat tether. So, here's an interesting thing about the 993. Hidden behind the rear seats are mounting points for child car seat anchors, and they're hidden there because in some markets, those anchors were required. And in those markets, Porsche would open up a little hole behind the seats and plug it with a piece of plastic unless you were going to actually use the child seats, and all was good. But in the U.S. market, those anchors were not required, and so Porsche just put leather over them to make it look a little bit nicer, even though the anchors were actually back there hidden on U.S. market cars. Now, since I wanted to put child seats in the car when I bought this 993, we very carefully unearthed the child seat anchors by cutting a little hole through the leather behind both rear seats, and then I could plug in my child seats. Now, since I'm selling the car, I have added the Porsche factory plastic plugs above the rear seats so that they are perfectly in place. Honestly, it looks completely factory, and in some markets, it actually was factory for those little plugs to be there. But that's something I gotta mention. Good news is, if you have kids and you want to put them in the back of your 993 Turbo, not that anyone will, it's ready to go. Other flaws are pretty minor. The air conditioning works perfectly, but sometimes it blows a little erratically. You'll have it on the middle setting, and then it'll start going high and then low, but it all works and it blows cold. It's never been a big problem. I only have one key fob for this car. I have two or actually three keys. I have two and then the little one you get, but only one fob, which is a big deal in this car because it has the immobilizer thing. It'd be good to program a second fob. I just never got around to it. It worked perfectly during my time. And one last flaw. There's a gauge in the gauge cluster that purports to show your oil level. This gauge is frequently broken in older 911s because the sensor is kind of difficult to work right, whatever. Mine does not work. It always shows that I have no oil. But I think the gauge is kind of silly because this car has a dipstick, and you can perfectly measure your own oil using the dipstick in the engine, which is obviously what I have done. Other than that, this car is actually pretty damn good for a 63,000 mile car. It's just been gone through significant servicing. Like I said, that binder kind of proves just how careful all three of us owners have been loving this car and treating it well. And it's wonderful. And anyone who's into 993s is going to love this car. It's the cool color from the famous ad, Kills Bugs Fast, which hangs on my garage wall and will continue to hang there even after this car is gone. Because I will always cherish the memory of having the Kills Bugs Fast car and having my kids screaming in the back going fast in daddy's first fast car. Anyway, with that, let me get it out on the road and talk about my favorite part of this car, the driving experience. All right, driving my 993 Turbo as I have so many times before over the last year. I have really enjoyed this car. And I was just thinking about it. I, by the time I am selling a car, I am usually very done with it. And I am like ready to move on. And I do not harbor any emotions about selling the car. By that point, I've usually gotten my use out of it. This car, I think, is going to be a little different. I have really enjoyed this car. I had it for only a year, which was always kind of the plan. I wanted to sort of cycle through fun cars, you know, while my kids were still little enough that they can fit into tiny back seats. And so it's time to move on to the next one. I love the Supra, which has replaced this car. I think it is absolutely fantastic. No regrets there. But at the same time, I just do have a little bit of sadness about leaving behind this car because I wanted one for so long, for many years. And I'm not sure that I really got my, like, full use out of it. Like, I'm not sure that I really feel completely satisfied that my experience is over. With that said, I am pretty proud of the fact that I drove this car 3,200 miles in a year. That's not tremendously easy for, you know, two-door car with little back seats when you have a family and you don't have a commute, really. But I really drove this car a lot. And one of the things that I realized early in my experience with this car is it was never going to be the, like, crazy, fun, awesome automotive experience that my, like, super sports cars are, my Ford GT and Carrera GT and all that. But what it does do is it daily drives amazingly well. And you can park it anywhere. It kind of blends in. People don't mess with it. And so I brought this to LA a bunch. I brought it to Orange County a bunch. I had to go up there to shoot videos. Like, I used this car a lot, a lot, a lot. So I really did get a lot of experience out of it in a year. And I think that really speaks to what this car is great at, which is, honestly, daily use and just, like, ease of driving a very special car, which is not always the case. You know, the Countach, you get a plan. It's like a specific, special occurrence. This car, like, you can drive and use. And obviously, it's not that special. But it's still, like, a pretty cool vehicle to be able to daily drive. And this car was always capable of daily driving. It could always handle bumper-to-bumper highway traffic. It could always handle high-speed driving. It could always handle long, you know, four hours on the freeway, four hours driving at once. It was just a good car, good at all that stuff. So what do I like most about it? I like how easy it is. I mean, that's a lot of the truth about Porsches. If enthusiasts were honest with themselves, one of the reasons that they would say they love Porsches so much is because it provides a wonderful experience without much sacrifice or difficulty. And that's definitely true of this car. Good interior space, good visibility, good reliability. You know, not that low, doesn't scrape on stuff. Like, it is a solid and excellent car. And that's a really big benefit, especially if you want to use it every day like I do. I also really do love the fact that this car basically perfectly combines two eras of car in one vehicle. And it combines them so wonderfully. It combines the modern-day performance. I mean, 0 to 60 in three and a half seconds. And, like, the way that this accelerates and power builds, the way that it steers and handles, it doesn't have a lot of old car float. It is tight. It is dialed in. It is modern. The steering precision and the chassis are excellent. But it also feels old school and analog. It has this old, like, bottom-hinged clutch pedal, which I love the feel of. I love kind of the tight but sort of longer-throw shifter because that's just kind of an old school feel. The little size of this car is very old school compared to modern 911s that have gotten so big and bulky and just overwrought. So this car is like an amazing combination of sort of the old and new. And that's one of the things that really attracted me to it initially. And very, very, very much still does. And I really do love the car is a good athlete. It's relatively precise in terms of steering. The suspension is a little softer than I think a lot of people expect. This is not a GT3. This was intended for, you know, Autobahn, high-speed use, daily driving, etc. And it was never supposed to be a GT3. And I think people who are expecting that or hoping for that will probably be disappointed. It steers really well, but it rolls a little bit. In terms of handling, it's saved by the fact that it has this wide track and four-wheel drive. The car will squat down and go where you put it. It just isn't necessarily quite as precise or as flat as, you know, a lot of modern cars. But because of the wide track and because you can kind of force your way into it with the rear engine, the weight back there, it doesn't have problems or anything. Like, you can do what you want to do, just maybe with a little bit less, yeah, like precision than, you know, a modern-day 911 Turbo, which is just basically dead flat in hard corner. You have to be a little bit more of a driver to drive this car fast. It also has kind of modern styling, unlike the 964 before it, which looks like an older 911. This definitely, the evolution where some of the lines got softened definitely gives it a more modern look. My wife says that of the 42 cars I've owned, she thinks this is the most beautiful car that I've ever had, which really shocked me to hear. But it does look cool. It's just got so many wonderful things going for it. And I've always felt the prices on these cars were, like, pretty unusually high. But when you really dig into the 911 world, you start to understand just how special this exact car is. Sort of the end of one era and the beginning of another, but in a nice way that they overlap, which is kind of cool, where you have, like, real performance, but still an analog driving feel. And as a result, this is just, this is one of my all-time favorite 911s. It's one of my all-time favorite Porsches. It is definitely one of my favorite cars I've ever owned. And I am thrilled that this was the first, like, fast car that my kids really got to experience, like, going fast and having fun in a sporty car. It was right. It was just perfect for that. And we will always have those memories of this special car, even though we've moved on. This was a great car for it. And so that's my 1996 Porsche 911 Turbo. I have really loved my time with this car. It was a great year, but I'd always planned on keeping it for a relatively short time. It's replacement car, the Toyota Supra, has arrived. And so it's time for me to sell my 993 Turbo. And you can buy it on Cars and Bids. As for the Doug score, I already gave this car one when I first announced that I bought it a year ago. I don't need to do another one. Instead, I'm going to get in and enjoy my final drive in my 993 Turbo.