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WANTED: OLD PORSCHES ... OR NOT  (???)

Published on Tue, Apr 16, 2019

By: Doug Stokes

The LA Times classified section has had this tiny classified ad running every day for something like, oh maybe a year or more now.

…Over the past few weeks LACar has written (e-mail) and called the listed phone number twice (each) one time posing as a person who knew an “old guy next door” who has two “real old” Porsches in his garage that were all covered up and had been there “for more than 30 years now”.  The other times indicating (truthfully) that I am a website editor who wants to do a story on www.LACar.com about the quest for “Old 911, 912, and 356 Porsches (1948*-1973) in any condition” … and hinting broadly that I suspect my writing about the advert would extend the writer’s reach and catch the eye of owners of those machines from a different angle than from a tiny 25cm x 25cm, 22 -word advert on the back page of the BUSINESS section of the ‘Times.  “New eyes” on the request as it were, I promised “hobbyist”, great outreach within a regional/national culture that not only understands automobiles but holds them in high regard (that’s you reading this, by the way).

… So far my magnanimous offer to help has not been answered (the emails don’t bounce, so there must be something there … right?). I really want try to demystify this tale of intrigue wrapped around the question of why this advertiser wants old Porsches in the first place and what he or she (or they) are gonna do when they get a bite on their want ads … I want to understand and breathe in the reason that outreach has not been taken advantage of.  Each morning I trudge out my Duarte driveway, look longingly across the street at the City of Bradbury border crossing (all the while jauntily dressed in my long terrycloth robe and synth-leather and fake fur slippers – $8.95 at Aldi) to fetch that day’s hermetically-wrapped L.A. Times wondering if THE ad will be there, and wondering why the guy or gal placing it every day hasn’t yet bit at my bait.

Understand please that I can talk Porsche with (some, maybe most) of the best of them, my knowing, for example, that a 912 is NOT actually one better than a 911 being a good example of that knowledge.

… Oh yeah, the ad was there this morning and you need to know that my wife is getting very sick and tired of hearing me say so … she does that directly after that I start wondering aloud about how many Porsche owners really read the want ad page in the LA Times.  It would only take one or two of them, I think aloud, slowly sliding their Ray-Bans up onto their foreheads to better facilitate seeing one of those ads and then tell a friend who tells a friend who … and so on … I hear that Porsche people are like that, good with details and such … insular and coquettish when not with their own kind, but gregarious once inside the circle of Porsche people who all know that it’s POR…Sha   boys and girls and that it is a very special sort of a thing, which (nearly 500 words into this little treatise) is still v. hard to explain, but (very) easy to bathe in fully clothed.

… Losing one’s grip over such a small piece of business as the above is something that no one would have ever expected, but the question of why someone would run an advert like this one every day for as long as I can remember (at least a year) is vexing one that haunts.  356’s, 912’s, and 911’s … why?  After a lot of thought my synopsis is that this guy or gal (what if it’s more than one person – never thought of that, right?) who likes to watch … or rather hear about Porsches.  911’s, 912’s, 356’s … Bring ‘em on, hey: Whadduda Got Scott?  What else could it be friends?

OK now here’s the call big and loud to LACar readers: Why don’t you try to find out what this (San Francisco Bay Area dweller according to the phone code) “hobbyist” really wants.  Drop a dime on the phone number or send an e-mail and ask … If you find out let us know how you do and we’ll mention you name favorably (if that is desired) on these pages as one of our Readers, Rangers & Seekers of Truth Posse (just made that up on the spot**) charter members.  Think about it … your name, honored and tossed-about on the number one LACar site in the world, let alone the whole county!  Thanks!  -Doug Stokes, Editor at Large

*my wild, unsophisticated guess about ’48 Porsches is that, outside of a handful of high-zoot museums and car collections, there are less than twelve of them hanging in the whole world right now.

 **and, it should make a good cadre to have on call to count up unsold /stashed Teslas should thar need ever arise.

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