Shiny Unobtainium: A Dusty Porsche 912 Breaks the Car-Dex
Spotted • Car-Dex #039 • Porsche 912
ShinyUnobtainium
A dusty green early Porsche, a roof rack nobody asked for and the first rainbow-bordered shiny in the Car-Dex. Screenshot or it didn't happen. So I screenshotted it.
Spotted in the wild
A Green Porsche Parks Outside My Office
Some cars you hunt for. Some just show up in front of your office building on a bright fall morning, wearing a layer of dust and a roof rack, completely unbothered by the fact that they are the most interesting thing within a five-mile radius.
This was one of those. A long-hood, early-body Porsche coupe in dark green, sitting on steel wheels with chrome bumpers, a chrome-trimmed rocker strip and a tan interior. The paint has gone soft and chalky on the decklid. The rack on top is the old tubular kind you'd strap skis, a canoe or a regrettable amount of camping gear to.
It is not a garage queen. It is not a concours car. It is a fifty-something-year-old Porsche being used correctly.
Spreadsheets can wait. Obviously.
Then I pointed the Car-Dex at it
The Dex Went Shiny
If you haven't tried it yet, the Car-Dex is the Pokédex-for-cars I built into this site. You point your phone at a car (whole car, front three-quarter, daylight works best), tap to scan, and it looks the car up and prints you a trading card: make, model, chassis code, years, horsepower, weight, six stat bars, and a "Dex Says" line that roasts the car and, by extension, whoever drives it. Every card gets logged to your garage with a number and the date you spotted it.
Most cars come back as STOCK, TUNED or RACE SPEC. That's the rarity ladder. Score 85 or higher on the rarity bar, though, and the card goes UNOBTAINIUM: a black-and-gold tier badge, a rainbow holographic border, sparkles in the corners and a pop-up that says, word for word, "SHINY! A rare one. Screenshot or it didn't happen."
This green Porsche scanned as AGF Series 1, card #039, spotted October 8, 2026. Rarity bar pinned nearly all the way to the end. Rainbow border. Sparkles.
Shiny.
Then the Dex, set to SPICY, did what the Dex does and went for the throat:
For the record, I have no idea if the owner fishes. I have no idea if they drink coffee. This is Bozeman, so the odds are not in their favor on either count.
Car nerd correction
Plot Twist: It's a 912
The card says Porsche 911, early short- or long-wheelbase, chassis code 901, 1965 to 1969, 130 to 160 horsepower. Close. Very close. But walk around back and look at the decklid badge, and it doesn't say 911.
It says 912.
The 912 is the 911's four-cylinder sibling, and it's the reason the early-911 world has a very specific kind of argument at every meet. Porsche launched it in 1965 using the 911's body with a 1.6-liter air-cooled flat-four borrowed from the outgoing 356, detuned a bit and rated around 102 SAE horsepower. It was cheaper than a 911, lighter in the tail, and according to Wikipedia's history of the model it actually outsold the 911 in its first few years. A little over 32,000 were built between 1965 and 1969.
In plain English: same shape, half the cylinders, better balance than you'd expect, and for decades the "budget" early Porsche that people quietly turned into fake 911s. Now clean 912s are collectible in their own right, and the honest, unrestored, still-being-driven ones are the rarest kind of all.
So the Dex got the badge wrong and the rarity right. Honestly, that's the more important of the two.
Values check
Clean Cars Photograph Well. Dirty Porsches Have Stories.
Every early Porsche on the internet seems to live in a climate-controlled garage on a battery tender, coming out twice a year to be photographed on a hillside by someone holding a microfiber towel. This one has dust on the hood, a roof rack on the roof and a spot in a regular parking lot next to regular cars doing regular errands.
That is the correct use of a 912. It was built to be driven. Somebody out there is still driving it, still hauling stuff on top of it and still letting it wear its age. They didn't over-restore it. They didn't bubble-wrap it. They just kept going.
That's rarer than any rarity bar can measure.
Your turn
Go Catch One
The Car-Dex is free, runs right in your phone's browser and doesn't need an app. Scan whatever's in the lot: your daily, your neighbor's truck, the weird thing parked outside the brewery. Pick your snark level (I run mine on Spicy, for obvious reasons). Build your garage. There are badges for your first 25 catches, your first 50, a Kei car, five JDM cars, and one for landing your first shiny.
Most of what you scan will come back STOCK. That's fine. That's the hunt. But somewhere out there is a dusty old air-cooled thing with a roof rack and a rarity score in the high 80s, and when you find it, the card is going to light up like a slot machine.
Screenshot or it didn't happen.
Three More From the Office Lot
Want Your Shots?
If this is your 912, I'd love to hear the story—and the roof rack story especially. Every image is available as a full-resolution JPEG, RAW file or a custom edit: recropped, re-edited or prepared for prints, posters or social media. I can send you the Car-Dex card too.
Tell me the car, which photo and what you need. A rough description is enough.
Drive Fast · Take Chances · Never Lift
Never Lift.
