Yahoo Autos Eddie Irvine Owned This Excellent Porsche 930
In the mid-1970s, Porsche had already established itself as the world's foremost sports car racing power. But new rules had eliminated the world-beating 917 and suddenly required homologation for road cars adjacent to the cars that could win Le Mans in the Group 4 and 5 rule sets. So, Porsche set about making a homologation special, a turbocharged 911 called the 930 that would lead to the Le Mans-winning 934 and 935 racers. More than 20,000 would be produced over a decade and a half, the rare example of a homologation special that became a true market success. The 930 was also a rarity in that it was a truly fast car for its age that sold in serious numbers. Lamborghini's much more expensive Countach, for instance, was a car a buyer might cross-compare with the 930. Lamborghini sold fewer than 2,000 of those cars in the same decade and a half.
But it was that rivalry that led this car, a 1983 European example of the 930, into the hands of former F1 driver Eddie Irvine. The grand prix winner for Ferrari saw this 911 Turbo in blue as a perfect pairing for his Countach, also painted in a similar blue, and decided to add it to his collection. Gaston Rossato, whose company The Barn Miami is listing the car on Bring a Trailer on behalf of Irvine, says a shade of blue is a pre-requisite for any car in Irvine's collection.
Irvine never shipped the car back to Ireland as he had initially planned, but it is a European-spec car. It was imported to the U.S. in 1986 and has remained here in the three and a half decades since, accumulating a listed 50,000 miles as an occasional driver.
The 1999 Formula 1 World Driver's Championship runner-up is the car's current listed owner, making this a car with serious provenance. Irvine won four races in his ten-year F1 career, all four of which came in that fourth and final season with Ferrari. He was a real estate investor before entering F1, a career he continues to this day.
At the time of writing, the car has been bid up to $46,000. The auction ends on Monday.
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