By Dean Larson

The Beck name carries a significant weight in the Porsche replica community. After roughly 30 years in the business, Beck has built thousands of cars from 356 Speedster replicas, to Spyders and the exciting Beck GTS. This well looked after 2001 Beck 550 Spyder is currently up for auction on BringaTrailer.com and looks to be a potential bargain buy opportunity.

Like all Beck Spyders, the foundation of this car is a steel tube chassis with hand-laid fiberglass bodywork. Nowadays Beck sells many Subaru-powered Speedsters and Spyders (for good reason), but this example is propelled by a more authentic mid-mounted 2,150cc VW engine. As a nice bonus, previous owners have upgraded the engine with Weber downdraft carburetors, electronic ignition, an oil cooler and an external oil filter. The oil system upgrades are a particularly nice improvement, since the VW comes stock with an oil screen and extra oil cooling is greatly appreciated in an air-cooled engine.

The Spyder seems to be solid mechanically and presents well, but I’m willing to bet a few easily fixable items will force a lower hammer price. To start, the tires on the 550 are a bit of a let down, especially the mismatched fronts. They’re probably one or two sizes smaller than the rears and look too small for the car. The rear tires don’t look bad, but the whole car could benefit greatly from a set of wide-five style wheels and tires like these Vredestein Sprint Classics from Coker Tire.

A few other items are apparent as you get closer to the car. A couple paint chips are present where the rear clamshell meets the body, but addressing this shouldn't be too costly, especially if you can handle the prep on your own. From the seller’s photos, it’s also apparent that oil temperature and pressure gauges were installed when the system was modified, but they’re currently tucked up under the dash. Relocating these gauges to a small gauge pod somewhere in the center of the car would greatly improve presentation and visibility.

With 17 years and 8,000 miles on the clock, this Spyder shouldn’t be a garage queen though. The car has some imperfections and the interior is showing some age, but this should serve as further inspiration to use it as an everyday driver. Drive it to work, park it on the street, don’t sweat the occasional rock chip. For the right price, this Beck Spyder could be the vessel to let out your inner James Dean.

Check out the online auction here at BringaTrailer.com.