Ex-walter Röhrl Porsche 911 2.7RS comes to market
Bonhams to offer 911 RS2.7 once owned by rally champ Röhrl
There have been faster Porsche 911s, and rarer ones, but the RS2.7 represents the best distillation of all that’s great about the model series. Not only a legend of the early Seventies race and rally scenes, it also makes a pretty fantastic road car, with most of the 1580 sold in Touring trim for that very reason. So wouldn’t it be great to really ice the cake and put one in your garage that was previously owned by a World Rally champion? This one, for example. It was owned in the late Nineties and early Noughties by Walter Röhrl. There is documentation to prove that, along with photos of him with the car. He used it on some classic rally and hill climb events, as later on did fellow Porsche works driver Herbert Linge. No pressure on the next owner then.
The rest of the car’s history is well-documented too, and tells of a car that had led a pretty full and eventful life. It certainly isn’t going to be one for those purists who like their cars to have matching numbers, low mileage, and to have spent much of their existence wrapped up in heated and dehumidified cotton wool. It isn’t even in its original colour, which was Sea Blue.
Registered in Germany in January 1973 as a Touring model, it was first restored in 1984, at which point it was fitted with a replacement but correct-to-the-model engine. The first owner following Walter Röhrl converted the car to (mostly) Lightweight spec and it was at this point that Linge drove the car. It then passed in 2004 to a Dutch enthusiast who spent some €80,000 preparing the Carrera RS for classic rallying.
‘All its positives and negatives appear to have been taken into account by Bonhams when setting the estimate’
Fast-forward another decade and it was bought by its present owner. He removed all the rally modifications, returned the car to its original Touring trim and had it checked over and fine-tuned by a 911 specialist. It has also been checked over by an official Porsche Centre, which confirmed the car’s identity as a genuine RS Touring.
So this is clearly never going to be a top money RS, but all the above positives and negatives appear to have been taken into account by Bonhams when setting the estimate for the car, due to be sold at its annual Paris auction (recently postponed to 4 March). That estimate is €450,000-€550,000, which translates to £400-£500k at current exchange rates. We would expect it to sell for somewhere in the lower half of that range, in which case you would probably be getting the Röhrl kudos for free.