With true Porsche Speedsters topping the charts at $150,000 plus, there are any number of companies making replicas. To the knowledgeable collector, however, the factory-built Beck Speedster is the one to buy. Built on a tubular frame and with hand-laid fiberglass, these cars set the standard other companies aspire to reach. A quick tour of the Beck website will illustrate both their quality construction methods as well as their factory prices: http://www.beckspeedster.com/home.html. The MSRP of a similarly-equipped Beck today is almost a third higher than our price for a vehicle with fewer than 950 miles that sold new in 2007.

Our Beck Speedster is finished in blue which approximates a color that was available for Porsches in the ‘50s. It is trimmed with white leather seats, a white tonneau and a white top—a particularly good choice for cooler summer driving when the top is down. The wheels are chrome, adding an additional note of sportiness to this replica of an automotive icon.

This Beck is luxuriously equipped as well. The interior is all supple leather—both the seats as well as the door panels. And if the white leather isn’t enough to cool you off as you are driving in the summer sun, the factory-installed air conditioning will! [That’s an option that wasn’t available from Porsche!!] The car has the optional Nardi wooden steering wheel and a Nardi wooden shift knob. It also features the optional Marchal vintage-style driving lights.

But this is a sports car in the mold of its Porsche "cousin", so performance and handling are truly the bottom line. This blue Beck has the upgraded 1915cc CB Performance engine rated at 125 hp, equipped with twin Webber carburetors and a custom exhaust—a $7,000 option that virtually doubles the power of the original Speedsters. With less than 1,000 miles, this car and engine are barely broken in but it is a very quick and stable sports car that outperforms everything else in its price range.

Despite being built in 2006 and sold in 2007, this fully street-legal automobile is titled in Virginia as a 1956 Beck and therefore qualifies for antique license plates. However, there is nothing antique about its safety, handling or performance. It has the reliability of a new vehicle while having many of the virtues of the car after which it was modeled. It isn’t a Porsche, it is a Beck—and that is a compliment to both marques and a criticism of neither.