There’s a point in every project where we realize it may simply be too much work to justify. I had such an encounter recently with two projects I sold within a few weeks of each other, as one had hit a critical impasse and another hadn’t even begun. It was liberating to send those along to new homes. The seller of this 1961 Porsche 356B coupe may be having a moment of his own as he’s up to his eyeballs in metalwork and is now signaling it’s time for someone else to take this potential headache on. The 356 is said to have a decent body, but the floors and cabin are a mess. It doesn’t look like it does in this picture anymore, which is likely from when it first came home. Find it here on Facebook Marketplace with a price of $24,000 or best reasonable offer.

Looking at it here, it doesn’t look so bad. It looks like any other tired 356 that’s been languishing in someone’s backyard, waiting for the day to come when even the rustiest examples are fetching a fair price. We’re certainly living in those times right now, even if the market for air-cooled Porsches has cooled just enough that the worst cars aren’t selling like hotcakes as they once were. The 356 looks reasonably complete, too, with bumpers, lenses, doors, and hood all accounted for. In fact, the seller claims the only items missing are the windshield and the engine, both of which are not inconsequential items. In this photo, which was taken pre-disassembly, it looks like it’s sitting as if it still has an engine, which makes me wonder if the seller yanked it for another project.

Here’s more or less what you’re working with now, and as you can see, the floors are just gone. There may have been fragments at one time, but the seller has clearly blasted those away. The trouble with projects like this is that you can feel like you’re really getting somewhere in the disassembly phase, even the rust removal stage. You know, it’s all flying off in chunks, and you’re excited by that blank sheet of paper in front of you that you can now draw all over. Except that when it comes to vintage sports cars, you can’t just use some cheap pencils and crayons to get the next phase done. It takes a ton of money and time to fix what this 356 needs. Sure, you could do it cheaply and weld together a few dozen license plates, but that sort of defeats the purpose of buying a car that many people will tell you is a sound investment. And you’re still putting the time in, so why not do it right?

Seeing this photo, the 356 looks like a more reasonable project, as the body does present better than the floors may otherwise indicate. Still, I imagine it takes someone who truly loves 356s to walk out to the garage every morning, see this immobile hulk taking up valuable shop space, and still feel good about diving into it every night. 356s are certainly the kind of car you can justify such expenditures on, but it helps if you’re able to devote weeks at a time to the effort. The seller notes he is pretty close to firm on price, but that he’ll hear reasonable offers. Would you take on a 356 in this sort of shape, even without an engine to drop in?