- An early Porsche 911 Turbo is special enough on its own, but this is a rare factory-modified edition.
- Porsche’s exclusive special orders department customized this 911 with a slant nose, featuring 944-sourced pop-up headlights, giving this street car the look of a 935 racer.
- This example appeared on the cover of the February 1983 issue of Car and Driver, and it’s up for auction on Bring a Trailer until Tuesday, April 9.
Sonderwunsch is Porsche-speak for “special wishes,” the company’s ultra-exclusive customization program that will build its customers almost anything they can dream up (and pay for). For gearheads who were young in the 1980s, there was perhaps no more special Porsche to wish for than a slant-nose, whale-tail 911 Turbo, one of the select few anointed by the factory with the look of the racing 935s. In 1983, we were so smitten with one beastly red coupe that we put it on the cover of our February issue.
That very same car is now up for auction on Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos). It’s a 1982 911 Turbo fitted with the rare slant-nose option from Zuffenhausen’s specialists. Originally air-freighted into the U.S. in the summer of 1982, it was federalized to meet U.S. standards and was the first and only example of its kind in the country when it was photographed for the cover shot.
Priced at $95,000 when new ($295,000 in today’s dollars), this slant-nose car was every bit as exotic as a Ferrari Testarossa or a Lamborghini Countach. And it had the speed to match the Italians, with its 3.3-liter air-cooled flat-six huffing sufficient boost through a single turbocharger to hit an estimated 335 horsepower. An adjustable boost controller, like that found in the 935, suggested the potential for even more shove, and we did note that a speed run clocking in at 160 mph was managed even with some detonation thanks to U.S. emissions tuning. There was more speed left on the table.
And this 930 had enough special styling tweaks to have its picture clipped out and stuck on the inside of many a high-school locker. Wide rear arches with side strakes swallow up 15-inch basket-weave BBS wheels wearing 225/50 Pirellis up front, 285/40 in back. The “tea tray” rear whale tail is an iconic Porsche feature, and the whole thing is finished off in classic Guards Red over a tan interior.
This car reportedly had the same Texas owner for 40 years, right up until 2024. It’s now located in Arizona and shows 40,000 miles on the odometer. Presumably more than a few of those miles were covered at Texas-size speeds. It’s what the car was built for.
Perhaps the most pleasing photo of this rare 930 shows the scraped-up front spoiler, victim of real-world scrapes. The chin of a slant-nose sits very low, but the previous owner of this car was clearly not precious about risking a scuff or two in pursuit of actual driving enjoyment. If you could only dream about owning a 930 slant-nose back in the day, then it’s nice to know that at least this one was driven. Let’s hope the next owner will continue that tradition.
Here’s your chance to grab a dream car from years ago. And if you hacked up your copy of that February issue for your locker or a bedroom wall collage, there’s a pristine condition vintage C/D to go with your vintage turbocharged Porsche.
The auction ends on April 9.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.