Dan Trent: One last attempt at a classic Porsche...

Yes, it's another in my occasional series of 'Porsches I should have bought a few years back', this week's featured star being the 968 Club Sport off the back of a meeting with an incredibly rare turbocharged evolution of it now for sale down the road from where I grew up in North Yorkshire. Yes, just a couple of miles from the house in which I pored over magazines full of Porsches is a dealership specialising in the very rarest examples of the breed, the 968 Turbo RS I went to see one of just four built and advertised at a burly £750,000. That a transaxle Porsche can now command a comparable price to the rarest and most desirable of 911s is significant.

Quite a thing it is too. Suitably inspired as soon as I got home I was hitting the classifieds looking for the – currently – still relatively attainable 'regular' 968. Prices for the desirable Club Sport version with its simplified spec, fixed back Recaro seats, track-ready suspension and lightened kerbweight are on the up. Most are advertised at a speculative POA or lining up for the auctioneer's hammer in hope of emulating some of the 911 craziness like the £1.8m someone recently paid for a 993 GT2.

Even the UK-only Sport versions - basically a Club Sport with a few creature comforts added back in - are now hitting £30K or so, indicating the days of the cheap 968 are already gone. For its £22K asking price and its unusual but rather attractive (to my eyes) Amaranth Violet paintwork this Sport is doubly appealing, that colour reminiscent of the current 991 GT3 RS's signature Ultra Violet.

But then for just three grand more I found a proper Club Sport in the same Speed Yellow as that RS Turbo. Now that seems cheap for a proper one. And I'd want to see it before considering it a serious contender. Clearly the owner – who's had it for the last 13 years – has used it as intended too, replacing the standard wheel with a little Sparco and saving his (numerous) track day noise test stickers to decorate the back of the hardshell Recaro seats. This would not seem to be a car that's been tucked away in an air conditioned storage bubble waiting for the market to come good. But I like to think that's the way I'd use one too. Let the speculators chase the low-mileage, never-been-tracked minters. It's been tweaked but the owner has kept all the original bits too. Which shows a thoughtful mindset. It's had the expensive top-end rebuild relatively recently too. And it doesn't have the, frankly, ugly Club Sport decals down the side. I'd consider having the wheels colour coded though, as many were originally. Other than that it looks spot on.

It's got some miles on it. It's clearly been driven hard and enjoyed properly. But I'd hope that'd provide liberation from being too precious about it. These are tough, balanced and eminently usable sports cars. And now hopefully elevated from also-ran status by both Porsche's belated recognition of their importance and the leg-up provided by special ones like that six-figure RS version.

I'm in!

Images courtesy of Pistonheads and philipraby.co.uk