The Thoroughbred Motorsports Collection Cleared 99 No-Reserve Lots. The Builder Was the Provenance

When the last clock ran out on October 30, 99 lots from the Thoroughbred Motorsports Collection had sold on Hagerty Marketplace and one had been withdrawn. By MCC’s tally of the published results, the sold lots brought about $2.41 million, and every one was offered without reserve. The headline cars were a RUF-built 930 Turbo, a Carrera Cup 3.8 and a Ferrari Testarossa that had been in storage, unstarted, for about 22 years. The more useful story is who assembled them, and what that did to the way collectors priced them.

Our thesis is simple. A collection put together by the man who rebuilt air-cooled Porsche engines for a living carries a different kind of provenance than a museum or a dealership archive. The cars come with a builder’s knowledge and, in several cases, thin paperwork. This sale priced that trade-off in public, one lot at a time.

The Thoroughbred Motorsports Collection and the man behind it

Thoroughbred Motorsports of Corry, Pennsylvania, was founded by Dr. Karl Hens, and the lot listings describe it as globally respected for air-cooled Porsche engine development and service. According to those listings, Hens amassed special air-cooled Porsche sports cars spanning every generation, alongside what they call a nearly immeasurable treasure trove of parts. The Porsche Club of America introduced the collection on September 8 as dozens of rare vehicles, mostly Porsches, plus parts, with a sale planned for October through Broad Arrow and Hagerty Marketplace.

The sale itself ran from October 1 to October 30, with Broad Arrow specialists Ramsey Potts and Marvin Waters II acting as agents for the owner and the cars viewable at Hagerty Garage + Social in Savannah, Georgia. Every lot was sold as is, where is. The listings do not say why Hens chose to sell, and we will not guess. They do offer small human details: the specialists wrote warmly of Hens and his shop dog, Ferdi, and Hens himself answered bidder questions in the comments on the RUF listing.

Potts was blunt about condition in those comments. By his account, almost every car in the collection was coming out of more than 20 years of hibernation, and none was perfect or without needs. That is the frame to hold for everything below. These were not freshly detailed auction cars. They were cars that a builder bought, drove briefly and then put away.

Why this collection matters as a whole

Taken together, the lots read as a cross-section of Porsche history from the 1960s to the 1990s: a 1965 356C coupe, 911s from 1965 through 1973, 914-6 GT tribute projects, 930 Turbos, a 1995 Carrera 2 and a 1996 Carrera Cup racer. Around that core sit oddities, including a 1953 Beetle, a 1964 Volkswagen Transporter Double Cab, a 1974 Volkswagen Thing and the Ferrari. It looks less like a curated thesis than the shelves of someone who bought what interested him when he found it.

The ownership dates in the listings support that reading. Hens bought the 1971 911S from a friend in the winter of 1998, according to the seller. He acquired the Testarossa in 2000 from its original California owner with about 2,500 miles, and the RUF 930 in April 2007 out of Colorado. Those were years when none of these cars carried today’s reputations. Whether that timing was luck or judgment is not something the listings address, but it is the reason the sale feels different from the museum deaccessions we covered in the Harrah Collection and the curated archives in our Boeckmann and Simeone spotlights. Hens’ collection has no institutional narrative. Its narrative is the owner.

The cars that set the tone

1978 Porsche 930 Turbo RUF BTR: $288,825

Lot 69 is the clearest test of the thesis. The listing describes a Rest of the World 1978 930 Turbo built by RUF in Germany before its 1984 import to the United States, with a RUF-modified 3.4-liter turbocharged flat-six, a RUF close-ratio five-speed, a RUF front fascia with an integrated oil cooler and staggered 17-inch RUF Speedline wheels. It showed 38,600 miles. The seller’s account is that RUF had not yet received its fabricator license, so the car carries a Porsche VIN. Hens bought it in April 2007. The full details are on the Lot 69 listing.

Bidders pressed on documentation. In the comments, they asked whether RUF had confirmed the build and whether recent leak-down numbers existed. Broad Arrow’s answer was that it had not contacted RUF directly and that no recent leak-down test had been done, though the seller later added service records and a 1978 RUF catalog. The car also had a passenger-side headlight that did not work and, by the seller’s account, a hesitation at full throttle that had not been diagnosed. The bidding ended at a $269,930 hammer, which became $288,825 with the 7 percent buyer’s premium. That was the top result of the sale, after 77 bids.

1996 Porsche 911 Carrera Cup 3.8: $226,840

Lot 100 is the collection’s competition car. The listing calls it purpose-built for the Porsche Supercup and says only 57 examples were finished to this 1996 specification. It credits the car as Zepter-sponsored car number 5, raced by Horst Farnbacher in 1996 and 1997, then imported from Germany by a previous owner and repainted in a new livery, which is why the photographed car wears different colors. Hens drove it only once on track, per the listing. It showed 3,289 kilometers and sold on a bill of sale only, which leaves registration for the buyer to work out. The bidding ran 45 bids to a $212,000 hammer. For more on how collectors weigh the model, see our look at a late-build 1998 Carrera Cup 3.8.

1971 Porsche 911S: $196,880

The Lot 34 listing is the most conventional of the headline cars, and it is the best documented. The 2.2-liter, five-speed coupe in Light Ivory over black showed 57,200 miles. The seller describes it as numbers-matching with mostly original paint, bought from a friend in the winter of 1998 and kept in climate-controlled storage since. It came with a Porsche Certificate of Authenticity dated December 1995, 47 pages of receipts from 1977 to 1993 and uninstalled new-old-stock embellisher pieces for returning it to stock appearance. The listing also notes a sport muffler, a later-model front bumper and tires more than 20 years old. After 48 bids, it sold on October 29. For why that kind of paper matters, read our note on how an early 911 certificate bears on originality.

1987 Ferrari Testarossa: $170,130

Nothing else in the sale shows Hens’ habits as clearly as Lot 57. The black-on-black Testarossa was sold new at Newport Imports in Newport Beach on August 30, 1987, and Hens acquired it in 2000 from the original owner with about 2,500 miles. It now showed 15,100. The seller placed it in climate-controlled storage about 22 years ago, when the engine was reportedly operational, and no attempt has been made to start it. The listing tells the next caretaker to address immediate service needs and to confirm the engine before running it. Bidding passed a $159,000 hammer, which became $170,130 with the premium. Our reading is that buyers paid for a two-owner, low-mile car with strong cosmetics and accepted an unproven flat-twelve, though the listing gives no basis for knowing how bidders weighed those factors.

1988 Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet M505 slant nose: $111,280

The Lot 85 listing describes a Grand Prix White Turbo Cabriolet with the factory M505 slant-nose option, which the listing says cost roughly $24,000 in 1988. It also discloses a 1998 New York salvage title brand found on CARFAX, an Andial fuel enrichment system and a larger K27 turbocharger, now on a clean Pennsylvania title. It sold for $111,280 on October 30, below the $117,700 paid for a 1986 911 Turbo Coupe (Lot 81) that same day. We do not know that coupe’s condition, so we draw no value conclusion from the gap. We do note that the brand and the modifications were both disclosed up front, and bidders still took a slant-nose past $100,000.

1953 Volkswagen Beetle split-window “Zwitter”: $26,483

The most modest of the featured lots says as much about its owner as the Ferrari. The Lot 11 listing says “Zwitter” is German for hybrid: a changeover Beetle built in December 1952 with features of two design eras, one of the last split-window cars imported before the oval-window body arrived. Hens acquired it partially disassembled and assembled it himself after the bodywork and paint were completed, and, per the listing, drove it once around the parking lot. Its 1.1-liter engine is believed to be a 1959 unit, and the seller lists an exposed battery, an incorrect driver’s window crank and some corrosion. It sold on October 28 for $26,483.

The parts were half the story

Of the 99 lots that sold, about 29 were complete cars or projects by our reading of the lot titles, and they accounted for roughly $2.06 million of the total. The rest, about $350,000 by the same tally, were engines, wheels, seats, carburetors and fuel-injection hardware. That is an MCC calculation from Hagerty’s published results, not an official figure.

The most telling parts lot was Lot 95, which sold for $23,778. The listing describes a mechanical fuel injection system correct for the 1973 Carrera RS, with 36mm throttle bodies, an MFI 019 pump and a filter console date-coded February 1973 and stamped by K. Kurz Hessental KG, along with an early Carrera RS fuel tank. It calls the system among the most desirable and historically significant fuel injection components in the air-cooled Porsche world. Elsewhere in the sale, a set of genuine 1973 RSR high-butterfly throttle bodies brought $7,500 and 1974 3.0 RSR slide valves with a twin-plug distributor brought $8,025. For owners of cars like those in our Carrera RS 2.7 spec sheet, a builder’s parts room is a market of its own.

What the Thoroughbred Motorsports Collection results show and do not show

Two observations hold up. First, the “sold for” figures on Hagerty Marketplace include the buyer’s premium, which the listings state as 7 percent with a $500 minimum. The RUF’s $269,930 final bid became $288,825, and the Carrera Cup’s $212,000 became $226,840. Anyone comparing these results to hammer prices elsewhere should adjust for that. Second, nearly every top lot came with seller-disclosed issues, from a non-running engine to a salvage brand to an undiagnosed boost hesitation, and still drew serious competition.

What the sale does not show is a market trend. It was a single, unusual group of cars sold in one online window, through one agent, with ample seller commentary that may have steered bidders. We would not use any one result here as a comparable without confirming specification and condition, and nothing here supports a prediction of appreciation. What it does show is how a builder’s collection changes the questions buyers ask: not only what the car is, but who has had their hands inside it.

What collectors should take from it

Buyers of cars like these should ask for the paper that substitutes for provenance: build confirmation for a RUF, title and registration status for a competition car sold on a bill of sale, and compression and leak-down numbers for anything that has slept for two decades. The sale also suggests that disclosure has value. The top lots sold with their gaps in plain view, and 99 lots cleared at no reserve over three days. For more collection stories, see our coverage of the Keller Collection no-reserve sale.

Sources: Hagerty Marketplace, Thoroughbred Motorsports Collection page, results and lot listings; Porsche Club of America, “Incredible Porsche collection worth millions just discovered”; individual lot listings linked above. Prices include Hagerty Marketplace’s buyer’s premium unless noted as a hammer price.