Star Power: Carl Sagan’s 1970 Porsche 914 (2016)

It doesn't help 914 is one of the least loved porsche models, especially the 4 cylinder ones. 914/6 are slightly sought after, but base 914/4 like this one are just not desirable.

The right buyer who loves astronomy, grew up watching Cosmos, and already has a decent classic car collection might want to add this, but I doubt they will pay much of a premium.

This 914 has been unlucky in that it has not been loved since the man passed on. It has been loved but not made it to be a devoted project. I think that it deserves to be fully restored and shown. It would do well if it was in Europe, at events such as Goodwood, not on the track, as an exhibit.

Heritage is really important with the Goodwood type of scene. Those Ferraris (and Porsches) that are worth untold millions do get raced, crashed and repaired. They are not garage queens and if they were taken out of circulation and made into garage queens then they would not command the sums they do. Legends like the McLaren F1 are legendary because you can see them get sent round the track at Silverstone, if they didn't do that then the cars would become antiques, of interest only to museums.

Clearly Carl Sagan was not from the world of motorsport, however, if this 914 was fixed up properly and restored to stock then I think it would provide a lot of pleasure for the owner and have resale value far above what a 914 normally commands. I don't think you would be able to shaft Elon Musk $2.5 million for it, however he did pay $20 million for a tweet not so long ago. I think that he would make it worth your while to restore it to stock, as if Carl Sagan had just driven it back from the lab.

Most cars from the last century aren't any good when it comes to that key metric of safety. They are all antiques so it doesn't matter that this 914 has less horses in it than today's cheapest family saloons. It was a competitor to the FIAT X1/9, those British MGB efforts and other gutless efforts of the era.

Although period 911s are of value none of them are special. Everyone has seen a 911 already and they all look the same to non-petrol-heads. The 914 is of an entirely different body shape and even people who think they know cars will take a second look at a 914 due to the rarity of them.

Who the heck is Jeff Gordon? People don't say that about Carl Sagan.

This car was for $1600 with 7 days left. Let's just say it went for $3200. Even an intermediate home mechanical could put maybe $5000 into it and sell it.

Then do a few sly reddit, Twitter or FB posts with people of an interest in astronomy with a picture of the car like, "Wow, I saw this great old Porsche today and it actually used to belong to Carl Sagan. And it's for sale!". Wait for it to go viral--understanding that that virality is going to be an a small niche of the internet--and wait.

And for what it's worth, have you met race fans? Jeff Gordon's minivan would certainly get above going rate on eBay. It's just a matter of much more and what the current owner paid for it.