The Time I Bought a $200 Porsche

Yes, that title is correct. My very first Porsche cost me all of $200 to purchase. However, the cost did go up from there and I did have to risk my life in the process.

The car was a 1977 Porsche 924 that was purchased off of eBay 20 years ago. The winning bid was all of $200 on a no reserve auction and I was surprised that the seller didn’t go back on the deal. The car ran a drove, but was a project car as you would expect for a $200 car.

For that price it sounded like an incredible deal, but was it a good idea?

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The car was located in Oakland California and was about an hour and a half drive from my house at the time. The car was at a shop located on Colosseum Way and if you are familiar with Oakland you know that isn’t exactly a great area. I personally didn’t know that at the time, but learned very quickly.

After finishing work my wife and I went to go pickup the car. I had bought a battery for the car because the seller had let me know that the current battery in the car was dead.

When I got to the sellers location, an industrial shop, he met me on the other side of a fence. He did all the business from behind the chainlink fence that featured razor wire along the top. He gave me all the paperwork and the keys.

The seller had already pulled the car to the street. He proceeded to tell me that if he was me he would get the car out of there before it got dark. Based on how the sun was setting that gave me about 30 minutes to get moving.

My first challenge was to get the front hood open so I could replace the battery. Sounds simple, except I was informed that the cable to open the hood had broken. It was hanging out the side of the hood, so I tried to pull it, but nothing.

My wife who was pregnant with my eldest son at the time tried to help pull a bit harder and still nothing. At the same time a couple of cars kept circling our location. That was already odd, but they started to yell threats at each other.

My first thought was I didn’t want to find out if they were serious. I had my wife get back in our car and get ready to take off. Possibly from the adrenaline, I gave the cable one good pull and the hood opened.

I have no idea what the world record is for the fastest car battery change is, but I’m pretty sure I beat it by a good margin. As soon as I got the battery changed I went to open the driver’s side door and get going. That’s when I found out that both outside door handles were broken.

You could only open each of them from the inside, but fortunately the rear hatch still opened from the outside. Once I figured that out I opened the hatch climbed through to the driver’s side (I was much more fit back then) and opened the door from the inside leaving the door open to be able to close the hatch. I finally started the car and I took off for the freeway to catchup with my wife.

For a $200 car it didn’t drive too bad. It wasn’t the most powerful car, but a 1977 924 isn’t exactly a high horsepower Porsche. The two reallly noticeable issues were that the shifter felt like I was choosing gears in a bowl of oatmeal and the car smoked from an oil leak that resulted in oil getting on the exhaust.

During the trip back home I realized I was probably going to need oil to top it off due to the leak, so I called my wife on her cell phone to let her know that we needed to find a place to stop. We found a parking lot for an office building and I got out of the car to talk to my wife about where to get oil.

Without thinking I closed the door with the car running. After we discussed our plans I went to get back in the car and since the outside door handles were broken, I couldn’t open the door. With the keys in the ignition I was locked out. This wasn’t the only time on this trip I wished I had unlimited towing by AAA, but we’ll get to the other time soon.

I got in my wife’s car and we drove around to find a place to get oil and a wire coat hanger. We found a Walmart of few miles away where we were able to get both.

Once we got back to the car, it was fortunately still running, so there was at least still some gas in it. We were able to use the coat hanger to pull the inside door handle and open the door. Once back in the car, I turned it off and added about a quart of oil and we were on our way again.

It had gotten dark so I was able to test if the headlights worked and fortunately they popped up and turned on without issue. Driving down the road a bit I realized I was almost out of gas, so we found a gas station. Before getting out to pump the gas, I turned off the headlights and then pumped the gas and this time I remembered to leave the door partway open.

Once I filled the tank I turned on the car and went to turn on the headlights and as I did so, the switch broke in half. Thanks to this I wasn’t able to get the headlights on and we still had aver fourth-five minutes left to drive home. That’s when I had to give in and had no other choice but to call a tow truck.

Once the two truck driver arrived and put the car on his flatbed, we headed the rest of the way home. Tired and not feeling quite as excited for the car as I was when I had won the bid on eBay.

After we were back home and the Porsche was in my driveway, I fully realized that it is going to be a lot of work to get this car where I wanted it. But then it did only cost $200, at least until I go the bill for the tow. That added another $250 to the total to get the car home. That was the other time that night I wished I had unlimited towing.

Still, $450 including the tow for a Porsche that runs and drives made at a minimum for quite the experience. Of course getting the car to be ready to daily drive was going to make that number go up quickly. But for a brief moment I had a very cheap Porsche in my yard and I survived getting it home.

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