1987 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2

If you're a GenX'er, like me, this is what a Porsche 911 looks like. Hell, this is what a Porsche looks like. The original gangsta 911's production ran continuously from its introduction in 1964 all the way through the 1988 model year. Cosmetically it remained virtually unchanged from 1974, when its bumpers were upgraded to conform to new U.S. standards, until it was replaced with the 964 series for the '89 model year.

That means that the 911 looked pretty much exactly like this from the time I was old enough to understand that car brands were a thing until I was almost old enough to drink.

The side view mirrors tell us that it's at least as recent as the late Seventies. The lack of a whale tail was making me think it's an SC. The 911SC was in production from the '78 through '83 model years and sold well enough that it may well have saved the 911, which Porsche had intended to phase out and replace with the 928. A reader pointed out that a couple of small details... the fog lights being integrated in the valance panel under the front bumper and the size of the semicircular torsion bar cover just in front of the rear wheel well ...mark it as an '87-'88 911 Carrera 3.2.

The Carrera 3.2 debuted in '84 as a replacement for the 911SC. For its time, the 3.2L air-cooled SOHC flat six made the 911 Carrera a beast. It was putting out 200 SAE net horsepower in a time when that was the same horsepower total as the Cross-Fire Injection 5.7L V-8 in a Corvette 

Car & Driver's testing of a 1984 911 Carrera returned a zero-to-sixty time of 5.3 seconds, with the quarter dispatched in 13.9 seconds at 100 mph on the way to a top speed of 149. This vintage of 911 had enough juice to really test a driver's skills. It was an easy to generate big speed with, but it was also an easy car to put into a ditch ass-end-first.

The sun was low in the sky on that November afternoon in 2021 and I had an original 2003-vintage Canon EOS Rebel with the 18-55mm kit lens and no lens hood, preparing to do a report on it for the other blog. On the same side of the street, the Cassis Red Metallic 911 Carrera was harshly backlit from any angle where it wasn't obscured by that tree or the trashcan, plus the sun was causing horrible veiling glare. Trotting across the street yielded the above photo, taken by waiting for a gap in traffic. Even then, the 18-55mm lens doesn't have a lot of reach and the 6MP sensor doesn't give you much room to crop.