A few years ago I found the car I've lusted after for over 35 years 1968 911S Soft Window Targa in Tangerine. It is what I wanted- an early version with the aluminum engine, Elephant hide and early style decklid/rear grill. The car had sat in dry storage for 30 years after the owner died from a rare disease. It has 116,000 kilometers on it (72,000 miles). Interior is original Elephant Hide in good condition. I put a wood wheel in it, but have the original leather wheel too. I just had the original engine rebuilt and tweaked by Jeff Gameroth at Rothsport. It dyno tested at 207hp and it's still breaking in (25 miles on it) so it should end up at 210+ or so. Original IDS carbs were rebuilt by Paul Abbot. Rothsport replaced the first gear syncros and it is smooth and quiet in all gears. They also corner balanced the car and did an alignment. It runs and drives fantastic. Sounds great too with the new sport muffler.
When I bought the car the eng/trans were there, but not in it so I took that opportunity to scrape off all of the old undercoating and reseal it. I found NO rust so it was just a matter of priming, painting and putting on a light coat of undercoating. The calipers were rebuilt and I replaced the master cylinder, a couple of rotors and all of the rubber brake lines. New Konis all around. Still has it's original, first year, Bosch H1 headlights and Hella 128 fog lights too.
Original, correct 15X5 1/2" Fuchs, including the spare dated 9/67. I put on new Michelins.
I had the top rebuilt with the correct, early style headliner by Autobahn. The rear top is original(brass zipper) and in excellent condition except for a minor split seam in one of the corners which I sealed. Gauges and switches work great, including the clock.
Original Webasto gas heater. The fan works great, but I did not hook it up to fuel so I didn't test the heater function. Amazingly it has the original gas heater exhaust pipe and muffler. Usually just the mounts are there - truly a solid car!
The car was painted over 30 years ago in the correct Blutorange(Tangerine). It looks very nice, but upon close inspection it would need a repaint to show.
I did obtain a Kardex, which shows it has the original engine. It also showed the original owner, Franz Eder, in Germany whom I contacted. This was the first of many Porsches for him and he still gets a new model every 30,000 Km.
I've decided to sell it and trying to figure out what it's worth in todays market? I figured it was worth about $200,000 two years ago for insurance purposes, but The only similar cars I've seen are either later models with the mag engine etc or hard rear window versions. Most were also non-original in some or many ways. I'm unclear which way the market has gone on special, original cars?