How This Rare 1989 Porsche 911 Speedster Ended Up at a Toyota Dealer
This, or can I interest you in a Camry?
Among the countless cars in the Porsche pantheon is the original 911 Speedster. It took the 930's looks and ditched the roof for a limited run of what is today one of the most valuable air-cooled 911s of all. It's the kind of car you rarely see on the road, much less for sale, and never at a place like a Toyota dealership. And yet, currently for sale at Avondale Toyota is a real 1989 Porsche 911 Speedster, and we know how it got there.
The Speedster was a special-production variant of the 3.2-liter Carreras that were made just before its replacement by the 964. It got bodywork and handling upgrades from the 930 (the contemporary name for the 911 Turbo) but remained naturally aspirated, and swapped its rear seats for a convertible top with a unique lid. Just 2,104 were built in 1989, of which only 823 made it to the United States—though one imagines this is the first to make its way through a Toyota dealer.
How it got there is pretty straightforward according to dealer staff we spoke to: it's the store owner's car, from their personal collection. It's also for sale, though, hence the listing on the dealer's site for a whopping $259,981. That seems to be in line with low-mileage Speedster prices, as an 8,000-mile example sold for $291,100 last November on Bring a Trailer. This one has only 2,700 miles, though its listing acknowledges an odometer discrepancy of 73.7 miles, which might explain the lower price.
Otherwise, though, its 3.2-liter naturally aspirated flat six-cylinder and five-speed G50 manual transmission are just barely broken in. If you have a quarter of a million dollars lying around, you can make that odometer miscount not matter by racking up so many miles that nobody cares. After all, that's what the 911 Speedster was built to do.
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