A Porsche dealership in Gelderland, Netherlands, is asking a cool €364,900 for a Volkswagen Transporter T3 (В32), an exceptionally rare and fast bus designed by Porsche with a genuine Carrera flat-six mill under the hood.
Porsche settled on using the roomy Transporter as a tech support vehicle during a Paris-Dakar Rally in the late 1980s. The company needed a fast enough support car to keep up with its model 959, so it decided to tune the T3 from the ground up.
Luckily, the T3 was specifically designed for flat engines, making it relatively easy to slot a 911 Carrera six-cylinder unit into the engine bay. The mill had 3.2 liters of displacement and hit the rear wheels with 231 PS (228 hp / 170 kW) through a Porsche manual transmission. Later additions included performance brakes and upgraded suspension.
Elsewhere, the car landed with 16-inch wheels, additional air vents and a larger exhaust pipe. Extra gauges were put on the lower dashboard, and the seats were re-trimmed with light-hued leather. Some of the parts have decayed over the time and require restoration.
Reportedly, the actual top speed of the retro bus is quite impressive at 217 km/h (135 miles per hour). Porsche itself registered the top speed as 187 km/h (116 mph) with nine people on board and a working air conditioner.
The unique T3 was originally commissioned in 1988 and currently has 130,770 km (81,257 miles) under its belt. It boasts a genuine Porsche VIN number instead of a Volkswagen chassis number as one might expect.