A 1956 Porsche 356A is bidding at $35,600. It has a reserve.

Good morning. Polestar just had one of its best American quarters, and the reason is that it's being shown the door. Its flagship SUV is built in South Carolina, which turned out not to matter. We also go back to 1956 for a yellow Porsche that has outlived its original engine and its original paint and still has a reserve.

In today's newsletter, we'll get into:

Let’s roll.

A 1956 Porsche 356A coupe on Bring a Trailer closes this afternoon, and at $35,600 it is currently priced like a well-equipped Corolla. It won't stay there. It also has a reserve, so the current bid is a starting point and not much of a signal.

The car was completed on December 16, 1956, finished in Silver Metallic, according to the copy of its Porsche Certificate of Authenticity that comes with it. It spent time in Venezuela, then went through a refurbishment in Florida in 1990 that replaced the floor pans and sills, rebuilt the four-speed transaxle, and repainted it yellow. The current owner bought it in 2015, and it's being sold on their behalf by a BaT Local Partner in Calgary on Alberta registration.

The rest of the spec is early 356A: a 1.6-liter flat-four on dual Zenith carburetors, drums at all four corners, 15-inch ventilated chrome steel wheels (the move down from 16-inch wheels was one of the 356A's headline changes), and VDO gauges with a 5,500-rpm tach and a 200-km/h speedometer. The brown vinyl buckets were redone in the early 1990s, and someone added front lap belts, which on a 1956 car counts as a safety package.

Three things will set the price.

The engine isn't original. It's a replacement 1.6 on an unstamped case, reportedly rebuilt in 1995, and the listing notes oil leaks. An unstamped case has no number to check against anything, so a buyer is paying for a running 356 engine of unknown history rather than a numbered Porsche part with a paper trail. On a 356, that is the biggest single discount a car can carry.

The color isn't original either. Yellow suits it, but this market pays for factory colors, and Silver Metallic is printed on the CoA for every bidder to read.

The structure work is the good news. Rust is the main enemy of a 356 because the body is full of closed sections where water collects, and this car had its floors and sills replaced. The open question is how that 1990 work has held up after 36 years, which is what the underside photos and refurbishment records are for.

The odometer is broken, so true mileage is unknown. U.S. bidders should also budget for duty and import paperwork to bring it south from Alberta. At 70 years old it's well past the 25-year line in federal import rules, so it's a paperwork job rather than a compliance project.

My call: bidding finishes between $62,000 and $72,000. Whether that clears the reserve depends on what the seller paid in 2015, and I'd guess the reserve sits near the top of that range. Result on Monday.

Polestar sold about 2,160 cars in the United States in the third quarter, more than double the 966 it sold a year earlier. The brand is selling off its last model-year 2026 cars before a federal ban on new sales takes effect, and its CEO said this week that the remaining U.S. inventory is close to sold out.

Globally, Polestar delivered 14,371 cars in the quarter, up 1% from 14,222 a year ago, and called it its best third quarter ever. Outside the U.S., sales fell 8% to 12,211. The entire gain came from the one market it is exiting.

The ban comes from the Commerce Department's Connected Vehicle Rule, finalized in January 2025. It bars manufacturers owned or controlled by China or Russia from selling connected vehicles in the U.S., with software prohibitions starting in the 2027 model year and hardware rules following in 2030. Polestar is majority-owned by China's Geely Holding. In June, Commerce declined to grant it an authorization to keep selling, after a review Polestar says ran 13 months.

The rule looks at who owns the company and where the technology comes from. It doesn't care where the car is assembled. The Polestar 3 is built at Volvo's plant in Ridgeville, South Carolina, and since March it has been built only there, after production in Chengdu ended. The Polestar 4 comes from Busan, South Korea. Neither factory helped.

The part dealers keep coming back to is Volvo. It has the same ultimate parent, builds its EX90 on the same South Carolina line, and received its authorization in May. Same owner, same plant, two different outcomes.

Polestar says it will keep its U.S. service network, honor warranties, and keep pushing software updates to American cars. Its growth plan now points at Europe, including a Polestar 7 compact SUV to be built at Volvo's plant in Slovakia. Europe isn't offering easy conditions either: Volvo pulled its full-year volume guidance last week after a 40% drop in its China retail sales.

Back in late July we covered a Senate bill that would have drawn the line at 15% Chinese ownership, and pointed out that Geely's chairman sits behind Volvo, Polestar, and a stake in Mercedes. The Commerce rule is the tool that actually got used, and it doesn't work from a fixed percentage. It decides brand by brand.

The next number to watch is November 5, when Polestar reports full third-quarter financials. That's the first look at what the U.S. sell-off did to margins.

The 356A on today's Auction Desk has no radiator, no water pump, and no coolant. Neither did any 911 until the late 1990s.

Much of an engine's fuel energy ends up as heat in the cylinder walls and heads. A water-cooled engine carries that heat to a radiator through a coolant jacket. An air-cooled engine sheds it straight into air blown across the hot metal.

Air is a weak coolant. A liter of water absorbs roughly 3,500 times as much heat as a liter of air for the same rise in temperature. Porsche made up for it with surface area and airflow: deep fins on the cylinders and heads, a belt-driven fan, and sheet-metal shrouding that forces the air across the fins. Oil does the rest, carrying heat out of the hottest parts to an oil cooler, which is why air-cooled owners watch the oil temperature gauge so closely.

The payoff was no radiator or hoses to fail, less weight, and an engine that runs the same in Arizona in July and Alberta in January.

Three things ended it.

Uneven temperatures. Hot spots force looser piston clearances to allow for expansion, which costs oil control and adds emissions. Air-cooled engines also ran rich mixtures to help cool the combustion chamber, which works against a catalytic converter.

Four valves per cylinder. Four valves leave little metal between the valve seats, right where the head runs hottest, and air can't cool that spot well. Porsche reportedly melted a four-valve air-cooled head on the dyno during 964 development. The 959 had already used water-cooled heads on air-cooled cylinders.

Noise. Fins ring, fans roar, and European drive-by noise limits kept tightening.

The 993 was the last air-cooled 911. The 996 replaced it with a water-cooled, four-valve 3.4-liter making 300 PS, matching the 1980s 911 Turbo 3.3.

As an engineer, what impresses me most is how long it lasted. Porsche kept finding margin in fin design, fan capacity, and oil flow for nearly five decades with the physics working against it.

This summer, the 2025 Polestar 3, which starts at $67,500, carried a $23,000 incentive for cash or promotional-financing buyers, plus a lease offer of $579 a month for 27 months. That puts a new Long Range Single Motor at about $44,500 before taxes and fees.

The used market had already done its own math. Private-party valuation guides put a 2025 Long Range Single Motor at about $32,700 to $38,400, with trade-in values of about $28,700 to $33,700, or roughly half its sticker. Buy a discounted new one at $44,500, and its trade-in value as you leave the lot is around $29,000 to $34,000. That's a paper loss of about $11,000 to $16,000 on day one.

Two costs aren't in the discount.

Resale. Used prices on brands that stop selling new cars tend to fall faster than normal because the pool of next buyers shrinks. Polestar isn't Fisker, but the next buyer will be weighing the same uncertainty you are.

Support. Polestar says it will keep its 32 U.S. service locations at Volvo dealerships, honor its four-year vehicle and eight-year battery warranties, and keep sending software updates. That's a commitment from a business shrinking to service only, and insurers can price that risk into premiums.

The lease changes the math. It's about $15,600 in payments over 27 months, before anything due at signing, and the residual value risk sits with the lender. If used prices keep falling, that's the leasing company's problem at turn-in.

That's a wrap. See you Monday — same inbox, lower gear.

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