World's weirdest Porsche collection up for auction

THE NAME John Dixon won’t mean much to Aussies. Even if you visited Mr Dixon’s home town of Dayton, Ohio, it’d be fairly easy to miss the nondescript warehouse on the outskirts. Step inside ‘Taj Ma Garaj’, however, and you’d be greeted with one of the loveliest, and strangest, private collections of Porsche cars and collectibles in the world.

16

Dixon’s knowledge was encyclopaedic, and he’d happily share details of his Carrera GT with 12 miles on the odometer or the BMW motorcycle that he’d chanced upon that had been built with a Porsche 356 Carrera quad-cam engine at some point in the 1960s. Quaaludes clearly have a lot to answer for.

He sadly passed in 2013 and, some six years later, the entire collection is being auctioned by RM Sotheby’s. What’s more, there are no reserve prices on any of the 30-plus cars.

16

Some of the cars are de rigueur Porschephile classics. Of course you’d need a 1973 Carrera RS 2.7 if you were assembling a ’best of’ collection. But it’s the slightly left-field and oddball stuff that really has us intrigued. How about a 1957 356A Carrera GT with a body made by Reutter, expected to fetch over US$2 million (A$1.5 million)?

Then there’s the 1953 Porsche 356 stretch limo that was used for Dixon’s daughter’s wedding. Or the 1956 356 turned into a dragster. If air cooling doesn’t do it for you, keep an eye out for one of 15 examples ever built of the 924 GTS Clubsport homologation special or later 993 Turbo and 997 GT3 RS.

16

As well as Porsches, a number of amazing air-cooled Volkswagens are going under the hammer. There’s an ‘as-new’ 2004 Beetle Última Edición, still with its consignment slip in the window. The astonishing Beetle ‘Casa Linda Lace’ art car by Rafael Esparza-Prieto and Jose Barajas is a wireframe object of wonder, while the 1956 Beetle Outlaw ‘Death’ low-rider by Franz Muhr is the belly-scraping opposite end of the spectrum from the usual cutesy Bug image.

16

Right-hand-drive cars are included in the collection, so if you want to get your bid on, clear the schedule on September 28.