Porsche 962 Nose Is Our Unusual Bring a Trailer Pick of the Day

• Discovered on Craigslist and sympathetically restored, this 962 nose section is the ideal piece of garage art for any Porsche or endurance racing fan.

• The entire proceeds of the auction on the Bring a Trailer website go to the Brock Yates Memorial Fund, where they will be used to support care and research for Alzheimer's disease.

• A complete 1988 962C, believed to have originally worn this nose at the 1989 12 Hours of Sebring, just sold at the Pebble Beach auctions for $1.3 million. Here's a piece of racing history that's within reach of the average enthusiast.

Not everyone can afford a historic Porsche 962 racing car, and even if you could, what would you do with it? Vintage racing is nostalgic fantasy only for those with the deepest of pockets. Those of us with Löwenbräu-liveried dreams on Budweiser budgets aren't likely to be raising any paddles at a Monterey Car Week auction. But for a fraction of the cost you can afford a part of the thrill, and for a good cause, too. Up for auction at Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—is the nose section of a Porsche 962C that, it's all but certain, campaigned at the 12 Hours of Sebring in its day.

The section has been carefully restored, but still bears the patina and battle damage of endurance racing. With six days left in the auction, bidding sits at $6500.

That figure is peanuts compared to the $1.3 million that chassis number 962-139 just fetched at the Gooding & Company auction in Monterey this week. Even better, the seller here will be donating the entire proceeds from the sale—including BaT's fee—to the Brock Yates Memorial Fund, a charity that benefits Alzheimer's research and support.

Brock Yates was a giant of American automotive enthusiasm, editor at large for Car and Driver for four decades, and the founder of the original Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash and One Lap of America. That a fragment of American endurance racing memorabilia is being sold to support the charity that bears his name seems only too fitting.