2002 911 Carrera

I’m sure you have seen it come by once or twice on your Facebook or Instagram in the last few weeks; Porsche have manufactured a real life Sally. Together with Pixar they’ve designed a road legal version of ‘The Cars’ star to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 2002 911 Carrera.

Sally “Carrera” from the film is a character based on that very 911 only with a shorter wheelbase. She is the romantic companion of the films main character, Lightning McQueen. Sally makes her first appearance in 2006 in the first Cars film and is the proud owner of the Cozy Cone motel which McQueen and Sally will run together later in the franchise.

The 996 911 Carrera, officially released in September 2001, answered many of the criticisms of the original model. This new and improved model had a maximum power of 320bhp at 6800 rpm and the maximum torque was 370Nm at 425 rpm. If you want to find out more about this fantastic piece of Porsche history, go have a look in our model directory.

Charity

Another reason this unique Carrera has been brought to life was to help raise funds for Charities. The car was auctioned off on the 20th of August 2022 and the proceeds, yes – all of it, went to 2 separate charities. We can’t get enough of this!

The first one is Girls Inc. A charity benefiting young women in both the USA and Canada. It helps girls realise positive changes in their life with the aim to become new born leaders. The leaders our world needs to change.

The other one is USA for UNHCR. This organisation helps refugees that have fled Ukraine as a result of the ongoing war.

Real-life Sally Carrera

For real-life Sally, Porsche designers turned to the 911 Carrera GTS. The Sally Special was a team effort between Sonderwunsch team at Porsche, the creative design team from Pixar Animation studios and the designers from Style Porsche in Weissach.

The Carrera GTS as we know starts at a humble £ 111,380.00 here in the UK. We will find out later that the Sally special raised much more than the list price…

I am repeating myself but I just wanted to mention again, you can find more information on the 911 Carrera GTS in our model directory.

Differences

There are of course a few things that set the Sally Special apart from the mainstream model. The colour is the main eye grabber as it is completely bespoke and dubbed ‘Sallybluemetalic’. It is a unique custom colour, created especially for this project. The car has a 7 speed manual gearbox and instead of the normal driving mode switch we can engage ‘Kachow!’ mode in this special edition. It is a fun way of incorporating the expression used by the films main character Lightning McQueen.

The team also transferred Sally’s tattoo on the real-life model, under the rear wing. In the film, this tattoo is a reminder of Sally’s High-Octane life ‘living’ in California.

The wheels are something special too as these Turbo-look rims have been especially redesigned to fit the 992 Carrera. The ‘five-arm design’ fits the current 20-/21- inch wheels of the 992 Carrera but the team included valve caps with the Cars logo to finish it off nicely.

You can find the logo in more places in the vehicle, embossed in the leather inside the doors as well as on the B-Pillar.

The unique colour can also be found in the interior of the car. The team designed a special houndstooth fabric upholstery with three different colours. They combined it with chalk-coloured leather and Speed Blue stitching.

The car was also accompanied by a set of wheels in the ‘Carrera Exclusive’ design. If the new owner fits these wheels with some nice racing tyres, for example the Michelin Cup2 R’s, he/she can take the car on track and unleash Sally’s real potential!

Auction

RM Sotheby’s in Monterey, California held the Auction but unfortunately only opened it up to U.S. Citizens.

The Sally Special made history as it achieved the highest figure ever offered for a brand new Porsche.  The hammer went down at the bid of $3,600,000.00, you are reading this correct; 3,6 million dollars. This means each charity received a whopping 1,8 million dollars! What a feel good story, one very generous collector and a fantastically unique 911; to quote Sally: “It’s even better than I pictured it. Thank you.”

Congratulations to the new owner!

Authors name:

• Dries L

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