Car companies sometimes venture outside of their comfort zone to offer their customers some compelling accessories. We see it today when almost every premium carmaker also has some bikes in their showroom. But most people forgot Porsche once sold a snow bike tailor-made to fit in the trunk of a 911. These are collector items today, selling far above their price.
Porsche always wanted people to see the 911 not only as a sports car but also as a practical everyday car. That’s why the German carmaker promoted the iconic rear-engined model as a fairly practical ski slope companion in the seventies. To pull off this trick, Porsche partnered with Arova to offer one of the strangest contraptions that bears the German sportscar maker lettering.
It looks like a ski bike, although they called it a skibob, and was tailor-made to fit in the front trunk of a Porsche 911 of the time. Less than a couple of hundred Arova-Porsche 212 skibobs were ever produced, so they are collectibles today, with prices that run north of $10,000.
The bike not only made the 911 look like a practical car, but was itself quite practical, with a storage compartment to hold your belongings on the ski slopes of the Alps. The compartment could also be used to stow away the skibob’s outside components, packing them all tight to fit in the trunk of the 911.
The Arova-Porsche 212 Skibob was, ironically, the most capable Porsche to drive on snow, and speeds could easily reach 100 mph (162 kph) downhill. Although not exactly cheap for what seems like a bench on skis, it is also one of the most affordable Porsches you could buy today. But that’s only if you can find one for sale.
Being so hard to come by, you know there’s gotta be a premium, but you’d be surprised to see how fast these babies’ prices skyrocket. A quick online search will reveal RM Sotheby’s auctioned one in 2019 and the seller got $4,500, but another example sold for a cool $8,400 a year later. Today, we found another skibob on eBay, listed at $14,900.
This one is red and it’s said to be even rarer than the blue variety. According to the Porsche Museum in Germany, less than 50 units of red Arova-Porsche 212 Skibobs were produced, and probably even less survived until today. This might be the only one left with the original Box matching numbers and the rare stabilizing skis, which were never used.
So here’s your chance to own a forgotten piece of Porsche history, and for a good price too. It will most probably fit into the trunk of any 911 as they only got bigger over time. The seller on eBay is willing to ship it anywhere in the world for $199, so this should not be a problem.
After his childhood dream of becoming a "tractor operator" didn't pan out, Cristian turned to journalism, first in print and later moving to online media. His top interests are electric vehicles and new energy solutions. Full profile
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