Porsche 962 on the streets of Japan

And some questions about the origins of pleasure

By: on 10/11/2012

The Porsche 962 is one of the greatest things to have ever existed. Visually, mechanically, aurally, it's perfect. As a racer, few cars have been as successful, and even fewer proved competitive for as long. In 1994, 10 years after it was introduced, Jochen Dauer snuck a couple of 962s onto the grid at LeMans and finished first and third overall.

The car you see in the video above is a Porsche 962C. But it isn't. In the early 1990s, a number of privately owned 962s were converted to street use. This isn't one of those cars either.

The owner claims it's one the five or six cars to have been built from scratch by Australian Porsche race driver Vern Shuppan. After retiring from racing, Shuppan began building his own version of the 962, calling it the Schuppan 962CR. It was based on Porsche's racer, but the chassis and bodywork were unique to the 962CR. Unlike other Schuppan 962s the car featured in the video carries carbon-fiber bodywork in the style of the works Porsche 962Cs.

So, while it's faithful to the original car 962, it's really just an awesome replica.

The question is: Does that matter to you? Why?

Last summer, Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom presented a talk at the Technology Entertainment and Design [TED] conference. His presentation centered on psychological essentialism, which is basically the idea that people perceive an unobservable essence in things. Bloom says that essence leads us value things based on what we know or believe about them. It's why Steve McQueen's Persol's are worth $70,200 and an identical pair of sunglasses is worth a few hundred.

Last summer, a 1984 Porsche 962 sold for $1,925,000 at Gooding and Company's Amelia Island sale. At the same sale, a 1985 Porsche 962 sold for $935,000. What would you guess the 962C in the video is worth?

More importantly, which one is more valuable to you, the real deal or the replica? On one hand, the replica can be driven on the street and it might be lighter, faster and safer than a real 962. On the other, the cars that sold at Amelia Island have provenance.

Say you've got all the money in the world, so purchase price and resale value are not important. But you've got just one more space in the garage. Which car will you have?

The Ted video is below. It's funny and totally free of science jargon. You should watch it, in part because the concepts discussed in the talk are widely applicable to cars. Have you ever looked closely at interior upholstery to determine whether it was real leather or fake? Were you disappointed when you found out it was vinyl? If it was a good enough fake that you couldn't tell it was a fake, then why does it's fakeness matter? Anyway, the video:
