911 Carrera

Make
Porsche
Segment
Coupe

Most of us would have counted ourselves lucky to get our own car – any car, really – for our 18th birthday (or any other). But a classic Porsche?

That's just what one Timo Lehner got when he turned 18. And he'd been looking forward to it for a long time. His father Bernd had bought the 1979 Porsche 911 SC (painted in an unusual shade of Cashmere Beige) when the kid was just a toddler, and has been saving it for him ever since. And now that he can drive, he gets to drive the Porsche.

Short for Super Carrera (not "supercharged"), the 911 SC came out in '78 as an enhanced version of the original. In place of the initial 2.0-liter flat-six, the SC's was bored out to 3.0 liters, initially producing 180 horsepower (and later upgraded to 188 and then 201 hp). It was still air-cooled at that early stage in the model line's history, but to offset the larger displacement, its block was made of aluminum. Those and other enhancements made it (and make it still) more desirable, and makes young Timo a very lucky teenager indeed.

As he was growing up (and his dad was restoring the car), Timo started out in the tiny back seat, then moved up to the front passenger seat. "Now I sit in the front left – and I really love it," says Timo, now an electrical-engineering student.

This isn't the first classic German car that Bernd Lehner bought for one of his kids, either – but Timo ended up even luckier than his big brother Robin, who got a '59 VW Beetle for his 18th birthday. Fortunately the two have learned to share by now, and trade off from time to time.