Spoiler alert, which in this case I promise is an unintended pun: this isn’t a 2.7 Carrera RS. It might have a ducktail spoiler with a Carrera RS badge, but those that know will have spotted immediately it has no glass fibre chin and impact absorbing bumpers. It’s a 1974 G-Series 2.7 Carrera, which was launched in 1974, and the ducktail spoiler was optional at the time. As was the colour, of course, and this car’s distinctive shade gave me pause for thought.
There are some truly iconic colours for this era of 911, which, if you wanted to push towards the Carrera RS replica route, would include Gulf blue, Light yellow, or Grand Prix white. And if it’s Grand Prix white, should it have red, blue or green decals and wheels? Oh, to have the joy of needing an answer that question for real, eh? But this is a colour combo I’ve never seen before. Bitter Chocolate with gold decals and gold centres for the Fuchs wheels. There might be a good reason it’s not common, of course – the obvious one being it’s perhaps not to all tastes, but I am not quite ready to write it off as such. Not just yet.
I’ve mentioned many times that I am immediately drawn to weird colours. This stems from (and sorry if you’ve read this a thousand times already) my years of selling cars. I've seen way too many Peacock blue with magnolia Turbo Rs; an inordinate number of XJRs in Anthracite black with Ivory; and, naturally, the unadventurous choice for the vast majority of Ferrari V8s I sold was…you guessed it: Rosso with magnolia and red piping. All of those cars were exclusive yet, by dint of their owner following the crowd, somehow weren’t in my eyes. So when someone wandered in and immediately gravitated to a different section of the colour swab spectrum and asked “What about this combination?” suddenly my levels of enthusiasm would skyrocket.
I recognise I am unusual in this respect. It’s not normal to normalise any Ferrari or Bentley, such is their rarity – especially back in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, before the advent of models designed to swell the factory outputs to the extent they are at today. My taste was skewed by the unusual scenario of seeing those wonderful cars up close and personal day in, day out and, like anything, you can have too much of a good thing. It’s a human trait, to reset the bar. To settle into a new normal and begin looking for the next exciting thing.
That brings me back to this particular 2.7 Carrera. 911s of this era are such wonderful things that any decent example would deserve the spotlight, and this one is in such apparently beautiful condition that it absolutely needed bringing to your attention. But I’m also putting it out there as a bit of a litmus test. I know that I am abnormal (in the respect of car colours – I’ll leave the rest of my issues for another day), so I am genuinely intrigued to find out what the reaction to this car’s spec is. I say again: I am not completely convinced by it myself; not enough to say truthfully that, if I were in the market for a 2.7 Carrera, I’d be waving my cheque book wildly in the air.
Even I reckon I'd be swayed more easily by something in Grand Prix white with red highlights, but this example is so lovely and so different from the norm that I cannot stop thinking about it. So let’s have a show of hands (well, comments): those in favour of brown and those against? Whatever the result, and however excitable the comments get, one thing's for sure. I wish dearly I had the resources to be considering this car, let alone having my name printed on the V5.
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