• A juggernaut of turbocharged Porsche power, the GT2 is basically a more hardcore version of the 911 Turbo.
• Just 300 GT2s were delivered to the U.S. in the 996 era, and with very low mileage, this example represents excellent potential.
• This Bring a Trailer auction ends on January 29.
The GT2 is a car with a certain reputation—rare, raw, with a bloodline stretching back to the original “Widowmaker” 930 Turbo. Now, with this auction on Bring a Trailer, is your chance to get a taste of one of the burliest 911s Porsche ever built.
To the uninitiated, this is just another silver 911, and judging by the oblong headlights, not even one of the truly desirable ones. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll spot yellow calipers indicating carbon-ceramic brakes, a unique rear wing, and the subtle GT2 script out back. This is no mere pedestrian Neunelfer; a monster lurks here.
While the GT3 was more of a track star destined for mid-corner battles with the likes of the Corvette Z06, the GT2 was basically an untamed 911 Turbo: lighter, more powerful, and stripped of driver aids such as electronic stability control. If the GT3 was a scalpel, the GT2 was a claymore, and if you weren’t careful you might send a limb or two to Tucumcari. Like the 930 of yore, the GT2 does not suffer fools gladly.
Out back, the GT2 received the same racing-derived 3.6-liter flat-six as the Turbo of its day, but with larger turbochargers, more cooling, and reprogrammed software. Power was up by almost 15 percent to 474 horsepower, and removing the all-wheel drive helped shed about 220 pounds. Beefy carbon-ceramic brakes were standard, certainly helpful when approaching the GT2’s stated top speed of 196 mph.
Driving the car in Germany in 2001, we noted that the GT2 “demands unwinking concentration as the speedometer needle twirls toward the top end of its scale… an eye-widening drive—but seriously addictive nonetheless. Along with the GT2’s insistent ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,’ there’s an implicit disclaimer line, a serious-drivers-only message that’s saying something like, ‘Look, schmuck, I’m not your mom. You’re on your own here.'”
This example up for auction is a 2003 U.S.-market car, and it is nearly flawless, with all the pertinent documentation present. With three days to go, bidding sits at $155,000, though that figure is likely to surge as the end draws nearer.
This one has just 4000 miles on the odometer and is finished in silver with a black interior. 996-era interiors generally don’t hold up well over the years, but this car has all kinds of well-kept leather trim inside, and it presents as efficient and business-like—just what you want in a Porsche.
While this GT2 may be blue-chip investment material, if you take this GT2 home, please drive it. It won’t make much of a difference if it has 4000 miles or 6000 miles on the clock, and the current owner recently changed out most of the engine’s consumables, including a new set of spark plugs. The lucky buyer owes it to themselves to get at least one sweaty-palmed blast of turbocharged Porsche adrenaline behind the wheel of this car.
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