[Porsche]
[911 Carrera]

1986 911 Carrera

It was 1984 when I first started dreaming of sports cars of all makes. The Ferrari Testarossa? Sure, I'll take that... The Porsche 911 Turbo? Even better. I remember just having to get Road&Track magazine every month so I could check out the new cars, and memorize all the numbers. I had Porsche posters, brochures, and more models than could be counted.

I guess it was then around 1994 that my fascination jumped to a higher level. I was off to college, and thought it was a perfectly reasonable goal of mine to buy a 911 as my first car. Every summer home from CMU I'd hunt the classifieds, tracking prices and availability. By then I had subscribed to Excellence, and incredible magazine devoted entirely to the Porsche marque. I then really started researching Porsche history, and put together one of the very first Porsche web pages (October 1994). I noticed that most of the e-mail I got regarding that page included the question "So, what year 911 do you own?". Boy, did that get depressing. There I was, creator of what people call the best Porsche page on the web, and didn't even own one.

Then things got serious. With graduation on the 17th of May, 1998, I realized that the time had come to either buy a 911, or come up with an alternate plan. Alternative to a 911? No such thing. So, I perused the classifieds one morning, found what looked to be a 1986 911 too good to be true, and made the phone call.

The car was just spectacular. Only 67K miles. A nice shade of grey with maroon leather interior. Garage kept, and babied like every Porsche should be. So, I bought it. Right out of college and the very proud owner of a Porsche 911. I really couldn't think of any other car that would be worth buying.

There's just something so amazing about the Porsche marque. Porsche is a small company dedicated to excellent workmanship, whose main focus has always been doing what they do best: winning races. From this comes the world's best production sports cars, with now 50 years of racing history behind them. All other sports cars in this world just try to be flashy, but Porsches are tried and true race cars; high-performing and long-enduring. It is that philosophy that has been most evident in my experience so far with my 911, and I hope to continue owning Porsche automobiles for many decades to come.

I'm now a member of the PCA (Potomac region), so I can appreciate my 911 to the fullest extent, and share my admiration of the Porsche line with others who are equally addicted to the perfect car.

I've been trying to learn the ins and outs of the car for a while now, and hope to resort to calling up the p-wrench only for major work. It's a straight-forward enough car, but sometimes parts do run a tad on the expensive side. However, with resellers and third-party vendors, it's actually quite affordable and reasonable for the DIY mechanic.

Being a Porschephile is such a fun hobby... Porsche. There is no substitute. And how true that is.