There are collectors out there who have quietly run out of "normal" things to want. They've got the matching-numbers 964, the Sonderwunsch special, the one with the racing legacy, and the paperwork to back it up. So, what's left? Quite simply, art cars. Actual, gallery-adjacent, museum-catalogued art, except this one has a six-speed manual and Vanilla Yellow paint inspired by a mythical 911 Turbo S.
Enter Daniel Arsham's "993A", a rolling work of art that will snap necks at just about any cars and coffee meet you pull up to. Arsham, the New York artist best known for imagining today's objects as tomorrow's archaeological finds, decided to do something rather different this time, and built a version of the 993 that's whole, running, and, crucially, driveable. The result took eight months in Arsham's own garage, with mechanic-turned-artist Greg Agastanopolous doing the wrenching.
The air-cooled 3.6 was bumped up to 3.8 litres, stuffed with Carrillo rods and CNC heads, backed by a rebuilt G50 gearbox and bespoke KW suspension. Inside, German leather artisan Justin Placek triple-stitched a dark green interior with body-colour seat backs and Arsham Studio's own gauges, a small, obsessive nod to the Sonderwunsch program this car is clearly flirting with. Outside, that Vanilla Yellow, apparently sprayed on precisely one factory Turbo S in period, does the rest of the talking.
Here's where it gets genuinely interesting for the collector crowd: cars like this are starting to behave like editions. Arsham's eroded sculptures already command serious money at auction, and "993A", debuted at The Bridge in 2024 and now offered through Canepa within the Classic Driver Market, effectively asks whether a one-off, artist-built 911 should be valued as a Porsche, as an Arsham, or as something that's quietly outgrown both categories. Given how the market has treated other artist and designer collaborations on air-cooled cars, don't be surprised if the answer is "yes, all three, and pay accordingly." The 993 was always going to be the last of something, the final air-cooled 911, the end of an era. Arsham has simply given that ending a rather louder full stop, and it firmly has us reaching for the chequebooks!
