Slant-Nose 1982 Porsche 911 Turbo Is Today's Bring a Trailer Pick

• An early Porsche 911 Turbo is special enough on its own, but this is a rare factory-modified edition.

• Porsche's exclusive special orders department customized this 911 with a slant nose, featuring 944-sourced pop-up headlights, giving this street car the look of a 935 racer.

• This example appeared on the cover of the February 1983 issue of Car and Driver, and it's up for auction on Bring a Trailer until Tuesday, April 9.
  

Sonderwunsch is Porsche-speak for "special wishes," the company's ultra-exclusive customization program that will build its customers almost anything they can dream up (and pay for). For gearheads who were young in the 1980s, there was perhaps no more special Porsche to wish for than a slant-nose, whale-tail 911 Turbo, one of the select few anointed by the factory with the look of the racing 935s. In 1983, we were so smitten with one beastly red coupe that we put it on the cover of our February issue.

That very same car is now up for auction on Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos). It's a 1982 911 Turbo fitted with the rare slant-nose option from Zuffenhausen's specialists. Originally air-freighted into the U.S. in the summer of 1982, it was federalized to meet U.S. standards and was the first and only example of its kind in the country when it was photographed for the cover shot.

Priced at $95,000 when new ($295,000 in today's dollars), this slant-nose car was every bit as exotic as a Ferrari Testarossa or a Lamborghini Countach. And it had the speed to match the Italians, with its 3.3-liter air-cooled flat-six huffing sufficient boost through a single turbocharger to hit an estimated 335 horsepower. An adjustable boost controller, like that found in the 935, suggested the potential for even more shove, and we did note that a speed run clocking in at 160 mph was managed even with some detonation thanks to U.S. emissions tuning. There was more speed left on the table.

And this 930 had enough special styling tweaks to have its picture clipped out and stuck on the inside of many a high-school locker. Wide rear arches with side strakes swallow up 15-inch basket-weave BBS wheels wearing 225/50 Pirellis up front, 285/40 in back. The "tea tray" rear whale tail is an iconic Porsche feature, and the whole thing is finished off in classic Guards Red over a tan interior.