We all know what it feels like to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if cars had feelings, there’s a 964-era Porsche 911 in the Seattle area that would definitely know all about that one. That’s because it happened to be parked in a garage in close proximity to a Polaris Slingshot that thieves had targeted for the Gone in 60 Seconds treatment. Tucked in under a car cover, the Guards Red 964 obviously wasn’t a daily driver and probably wouldn’t immediately be missed. And so the Porsche—freshly painted, with H&R suspension and a Das Sport half cage—joined the Polaris in an unauthorized exit from the garage, and the owner was none the wiser until receiving a call from the police a few weeks later asking, “Do you know where your car is?” He didn’t, but he was about to find out that the Porsche community had already tracked down his car, albeit not unscathed.
Why were the police looking for a car that wasn’t reported stolen? Well, as it happens, the thieves didn’t stop their crime spree at grand theft auto, and the red 911 had been spotted near the scene of a homicide. Police in Auburn, Washington, had grainy security camera footage of a red 911 but they couldn’t tell much else about it. So they did the logical thing and tracked down somebody who could, calling boutique Seattle Porsche shop Dobson Stuttgart to ask for help. There, sales and marketing manager Matt Adair took a look at the photos and immediately knew what car to look for—though he didn’t know whose it was.
Beat up and covered in fingerprint dust, but recovered.
“I ID’d it as a 1990-ish 964 with aftermarket wheels,” Adair says. “There aren’t a lot of 964s around, so I asked if they wanted me to dig into that. They did, so I hit up my Porsche groups and a few others and got an outpouring of people who saw the car in Northgate, or Tacoma. Apparently it had been making the rounds for a few weeks.”
But initially, the sightings from Adair’s Porsche network were strictly past tense, leads gone cold. Within 24 hours, though, a contact in Portland, Oregon, said he found it. “He sent a photo and it was the car,” says Adair. “I called the Auburn PD and the detective I’d talked to wasn’t there.” Thus Adair undertook the strange and awkward task of calling 911 and convincing the dispatcher that police were required at a particular address in Oregon, on account of a stolen red 911 on grey Rotiforms parked outside. “Then they had an officer in Portland call me, since I knew where the car was, and they were there within a half hour and arrested the guy.”
Ouch.
The car was towed back to Dobson Stuttgart covered in black fingerprint dust and wearing the scars of its unfortunate road trip. “The owner called me and said, ‘Now what?’ and I told him that based on my experience with stolen cars, it’ll probably be totaled,” Adair says. The trunk was taped down, since the latch had been pried open with a crowbar. The ignition now started with a flat-blade screwdriver. Underneath, the thieves looked to have hit a speed bump at freeway pace—or gone off-roading—based on dents to the engine case. The Fabspeed exhaust was partially ripped off, the lower bodywork scraped up.
More ouch.
A sad result, but at least the car was recovered and its illicit custodian arrested before more mayhem ensued—the search warrant for the car reads “theft of motor vehicle” and “murder in the second degree”. And if the choice of vehicle had been anything more anodyne than a perfect red 964, that suspect might still be at large. Moral: if you’re getting up to crimes, don’t cross the Porsche-heads.
Senior Editor
Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He’s now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.