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Plenty of race cars have a good story. This one has a guest list. The 1988 Porsche 944 Turbo Cup that is live on Bring a Trailer through Friday was built for Canada's Rothmans Porsche Turbo Cup. Over three seasons it carried a Canadian open-wheel champion to a wet-weather victory, hosted Jacques Villeneuve, Scott Goodyear and a Motor Trend writer as a 1989 celebrity VIP car, and then helped launch the career of a future Daytona 24 Hours winner. Bidding sits at $54,321 as of this writing, and the auction closes Friday, October 30 at 3:10 p.m. ET.
A Canadian-Spec Cup Car With a Paper Trail
The 944 Turbo Cup was Porsche's factory-built single-make racer, lightened with a fiberglass hood and stripped of the sunroof, rear wiper, power mirrors and headlight washers. According to the listing, this car is one of an estimated 39 built for the Rothmans series (other sources count 38), and it was delivered to Porsche Downtown Fine Cars of Toronto in April 1988. Under the hood is the 2.5-liter turbocharged four, paired with a five-speed transaxle, a limited-slip differential, adjustable Bilstein suspension and brakes borrowed from the 928 S4.
It still looks the part, too: Rothmans livery, 16-inch magnesium phone-dial wheels and a Matter roll cage. The odometer shows about 41,000 kilometers (roughly 25,000 miles), and the seller says about 4,000 of those have been added since 2020. The car carries a clean Texas title and a clean Carfax report. If you ever wanted to own a 944 that actually came from the factory with a number on the door, this is the version.
1988: Stéphane Proulx Wins in the Wet
The listing says Quebec driver Stéphane Proulx earned two pole positions and a victory at Shannonville in the car's debut season. A separate dealer write-up of the same chassis describes that win as coming on a very wet day, ahead of eventual series champion Richard Spenard. Proulx was a rising name at the time. His Wikipedia biography credits him with the 1987 Canadian Formula Ford 2000 title, followed by Formula 3000 starts in 1989 and 1990 and the 1991 Canadian Formula Atlantic championship. He died in 1993 at age 27 after being struck by a wheel at Phoenix, a loss one BaT commenter notes when talking about this car.
1989: The Diet 7UP VIP Car
For 1989 the Porsche was repainted as the series' Diet 7UP VIP guest car. It could not score points, but it could put famous names behind the wheel. The listing lists Jacques Villeneuve (brother of Gilles and uncle of the 1997 Formula 1 champion), IndyCar driver Scott Goodyear, DTM racer Roland Asch, Davy Jones, Miss Austria Mercedes Stermitz, Olympic decathlon champion Caitlyn Jenner (competing at the time as Bruce Jenner) and Motor Trend writer Don Fuller, whose feature on the series ran in the October 1989 issue. Villeneuve finished fifth in his race and Jones finished fourth in another, according to the listing and the dealer write-up.
David Empringham drove the car in 1990, and the dealer write-up says it completed 446 of a possible 447 race laps across its three seasons in Canada.
1991: Donohue Takes It to the States
In late 1990, 24-year-old David Donohue, son of racing legend Mark Donohue, bought the car and brought it to the U.S. He raced it in EMRA through 1991, capturing the EMRA GT Championship and Rookie of the Year honors, per the listing. Donohue went on to win the GT2 class at Le Mans in 1998 and, in 2009, the Rolex 24 at Daytona overall with Brumos Racing, in what his biography calls the closest finish in the event's history, a 0.167-second margin over Juan Pablo Montoya. (If you like your Porsche racing history, the Brumos Collection museum is worth a visit.)
Later owners included Peter Fitzpatrick and Vermont enthusiast Ronald Tietjen, who ran the car at PCA events from 2004 into the late 2010s. The current seller bought it in 2020 and says about $60,000 has gone into service since, including a chassis refresh at PMR in New Jersey and an engine rebuild at Moorespeed in Texas. CASC and EMRA logbooks, service records and literature come with it, and the seller notes it fits HSR Group 3 for historic racing.
The Fine Print
This is not a no-reserve sale; the seller describes the reserve as relatively low. The listing mentions corrosion on some components in the engine bay, the title lists the odometer as exempt, and as always the racing history comes from the seller and the dealer write-up, backed up by the logbooks in the sale. The seller says the car comes with a two-piece street exhaust so it can be driven on the road as well as the track.
It is also not the only Turbo Cup to have passed through the market recently. We covered another 1988 Turbo Cup that crossed the block at the Air|Water auction, and we've shown off a low-mileage 1986 944 Turbo and a track-prepared 1989 944 Turbo as well. This one just happens to come with the best passenger list.
The 1988 Porsche 944 Turbo Cup is live on Bring a Trailer until Friday afternoon. Check the full photo gallery, the two videos and the invoices before you bid.
