If you’re in the process of trying to flog a car with rust – or, indeed, like our Beetle rust seller the other day, the rust itself – this story should fill you with hope. Despite looking somewhat worse for wear, this 1957 356 Porsche sold for a staggering $57,200 (£34,848) on ebay recently. And the seller didn’t even include the trailer!

We’re all up for a bit of restoration work, but surely this is way beyond a quick slap and tickle with a welding torch. Okay, so it’s a genuine Speedster, and it still bears the original Reutter colour plate, but paying this kind of moolah for something in this state is madness, surely? Well, obviously not to the winning bidder or the people that placed the other 45 bids before the metaphorical hammer finally dropped.

The New York-based zero-feedback seller stated in his listing that it was found ‘as is’ after sitting outside for a number of years. “It was pulled from an old Roosevelt estate on the North Shore of Long Island. It is believed to have been a race car owned by the Roosevelts and run at Bridgehampton Raceway in the late 1950s to early 60s,” said the description. “It appears that it was crashed at some point and still has part of the racing numbers on the side along with a roll bar.”

We tried to source pictures of it before the fated crash, but to no avail.

Judging by comments on various forums, car fans around the world have been left baffled as to why someone would pay so much dosh for what’s – let’s face it – is little more than a pile of rust. Most lamented the fact that someone was willing to pay so much for a VIN plate, although to be precise, the vendor only refers to a Reutter colour code tag, not the chassis plate, so it’s open to debate whether this would be enough to prove the car’s provenance. Given this, we envisage a big legal battle if and when the car finally gets anywhere near the road again.

In truth, it’s unclear what the new owner’s precise intentions are; can anything this far gone be bought back to life, we wonder? Maybe they’re a James Dean fan and want to create a spooky, Porsche themed shrine. Or maybe, we’ve got it all wrong. Maybe we’ve all missed a trick or two. After all, the last genuine Reutter Speedster we saw go up for sale, a fully restored 1955 model, sold at an auction in Arizona for $170,500 (£104,236). So if you don’t mind tackling a bit of bodywork, in retrospect this one could have been a bit of a bargain. But we doubt it.

Ian