At $89,000, Is This 1989 Porsche 3.2 Carrera A Good Deal?

The present owner of today’s Nice Price or No Dice Porsche bought it last year off of Bring a Trailer. It’s now being offered at a 20 percent premium over that sale price. Let’s see if current market conditions bear out that bump.

If you’re the outdoorsy type then you’re probably keen on some sort of vehicle that can take you off the beaten path. I’m also guessing that you also * touches fingers to forehead * own at least one article of flannel clothing.

Yesterday’s 2005 Subaru Forester XT looked to be a pretty solid light-duty off-roader, what with its updated engine and a number of mods made to give it a full foot of ground clearance. A rare manual transmission was just the icing on that Subaru’s cake. That all seemed to be a just dessert as the majority of you found the Subie seller’s set $8,5000 asking to be a tasty treat. The result was a narrow 52 percent Nice Price win for the car. Now, about that flannel…

You don’t really equate Porsches and flannel. However, with plaid, Pasha, and houndstooth having long ago been established as iconic upholstery options from the Stuttgart stalwart, it’s safe to say the company knows fashion. The 1989 Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera Targa we’re looking at today comes in Velvet Red Metallic over a black full-leather interior, which I think it’s safe to say, goes with everything.

Speaking of going, this 72,000-mile 3.2 has really been around the block, having been originally sold in Maine, and then making its way across a number of states to California and then to New York where it was sold to the present owner late last year. That sale apparently resulted in it ending up back in the Golden State. How do we know all this based on the somewhat parsimonious presentation in the car’s current Craigslist ad? Well, we don’t. All that info comes from the Bring a Trailer listing from the August 2021 sale, handily linked in the current ad.

Based on the info gleaned from both listings, it’s obvious this is a stunning exemplar of the last edition of the original 911. The 964 models that succeeded the 3.2 Carrera in late 1989 featured substantially different styling and, more importantly, an entirely revamped chassis derived from the 959 model as well as a larger and more powerful flat-six engine doing its thing in the back end.

That makes this ’89 3.2 a bit of an era-ender. As denoted by the model name, the engine is 3.2 liters, which at the time was rated at 217 horsepower and 195 lb-ft of torque. That’s an air/oil-cooled SOHC flat-six, and despite the somewhat plebeian specifications, these engines both sound great and are able to move the Porsche’s 2,975 pounds with reasonable authority.

The ad notes that this is a G50 car, which all the ‘89s were since that was the only transmission choice at the time. That references the Getrag G50 five-speed which replaced the Porsche-designed and built 915 gearbox in the 1987 model year. There is a lot of debate over which is the preferred transmission, as both have their pluses and minuses, but if you’re looking exclusively at ’87 and later cars, you really don’t have a choice. Other mechanical aspects to note here are the replacement of both shift lever ball cup and tie-rod ends prior to the BaT sale. The car has also been dropped to European ride height at some prior point.

The paint looks to be all original and the car seems to have all its original bits and pieces, right down to the paper fuse diagram card in the front boot. Those often go missing on these models. Notable options include the front and rear 3.2 Carrera spoilers and the 16-inch Fuchs that feature black centers and polished rims. Those are wrapped in recently acquired Hankook tires.

As noted, the interior features the full-leather package and it all looks to be in remarkable shape. A Pioneer head unit sits in the center of the dash and the car does feature A/C but there’s no indication whether it has been updated to R134 or sill rocks R12. Either way, A/C in these cars is only really effective up to about 85° ambient temperatures. The title is clean and the seller says they will only deal with cash. No crypto or credit cards for this purchase, please.

Now that we’ve gotten through all that, let’s get to that asking price. That’s $89,000 which the seller footnotes as being “adjusted for inflation.” That adjustment is a good bit more than the $74,000 the car went for back in August of last year. And that was on Bring a Trailer which as we all know doesn’t really deal in bargains. This is also a Targa, which, while they still sit in the middle of 3.2 pricing between the Coupe and the Cabriolet, has been trending upward closer to closed car values in recent years. But has the market jumped so high that this car is now worth a 20 percent premium over where it was just 8 months ago? Is that the world we’re living in today? Really?

What do you say, is this 3.2 Carrera Targa worth that $89,000 asking? Or, is that a flipper…