Burn Victim, Times Two: 1978 Porsche 911

There’s bad luck and then there’s something we call a curse. There’s potentially some black magic lurking with this 1978 Porsche 911, which has caught fire twice in its lifetime, with the second blaze proving fatal. Despite being restored on two occasions, and seemingly at a high level both times, this 911 caught fire while on a vehicle transporter and is now listed here on Bring A Trailer in a listing that is as much sad as it is humorous (the latter quality being much to the seller’s credit.) If you ever wanted a cheap air-cooled 911 project, here’s your chance!

This is one of two forms this 911 was previously in. Looking like a light safari build that is all the rage these days, we see a lifted suspension, fat tires, auxiliary driving lamps, and some tasty Group 4 PAG1670 wheels. The pretty Minerva Blue paint job is one of the better colors you can spec an air-cooled 911 in, and in a previous iteration when it was set up for traditional street driving, it wore the same color. Clearly, someone spent some very real money on this Porsche, making its subsequent destruction all the more tragic.

Ouch. Scanning news reports, I can’t find a timeline match for when the transporter this 911 was riding in went up in flames. There’s a reporter from September 2022 in Tennessee that looks like a match, but the listing claims it was involved in a fire in 2021. What’s unfortunate is that this looks like the right set-up for moving a car of this caliber, as it looks like it was a traditional enclosed hauler. Regardless, we’ve seen all manners of news reports lately about how the shipping industry is dominated by brokers who often have no idea that the caliber of individuals or transporters hauling your pride and joy.

There was serious money spent on this 911 over the last few years, with bespoke touches throughout the interior in the pre-fire photos. The engine, too, was breathed on, with the listing noting that it “…was fitted with individual throttle bodies, coil-on-plug ignition, and Electromotive TECgt-200 engine management in 2015.” Perhaps that’s part of the motivation behind the sale – that some parts can be pillaged – but this looks like a way to bring more eyeballs to BaT than anything else. And with 11,400 views and three days left, it’s doing exactly that.