I went back to doing some magazine work earlier this year, with my friend Simon Jackson at GT Porsche magazine. Having run a few of my features through 2017, Simon asked if I fancied writing another regular column and I was happy to say yes, so the January 2018 issue has at least one page written by me.
Elsewhere in the latest issue is the story of my road trip to Ruf Automobile Gmbh last July. I made the trip as a passenger in Jonny Hart’s Delphi Green 911 SC, to demo the Classic Retrofit air conditioning system and give Alois and team a tour of the other Classic Retrofit products. The visit was a great success: so much so that the stop-off at the Porsche Museum the following day was a slight anticlimax. When a genuine Porsche hero takes you to lunch, the experience is hard to beat.
Ruf CTR versus Singer/Williams
After our trip, Jonny became part of the project team on the new Ruf CTR and has been working away on the development of the heating and ventilation system for this incredible car. I’ve seen lots of progress photos and they are pretty exciting – such a brave project from Ruf. No chance to share anything for the minute, but they will all come out eventually.
Jonny is also working on the new Singer, as are a few more of my friends, and that is another quite interesting project. Comparing the two from a static driver’s seat is interesting. The Ruf is built on a completely new body shell, all in carbon and with slightly bigger dimensions from the original, while the Singer retains much of the 964 floorpan with additional composite elements. Having seen both up close and sat in the Ruf, the slight shifts in scale give a different feeling from one driver’s seat to the other and that will be interesting to compare on the road. I probably won’t get to drive either of them, but no doubt the big boys will have much to discuss.
GT Porsche: my Tyre Kicker column
I first started working with GT Porsche editor, Simon Jackson, back in 2009. At the time, Simon was running Retro Cars magazine and my creative partner of the time, James Lipman, had already done a few features with him. The three of us went on to do a few bits together and I really enjoyed being in that magazine.
Like all good editors, Simon is easy to work for: he is not shy about speaking his mind on certain contradictions in the world of classic Porsche and is happy to let his contributors just go and get on with it. I like what he is doing at GT Porsche, especially given the operational pressures all magazines face nowadays. Check out the latest issue if you run across it.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
I recently made the acquaintance of Nick Diggens in Victoria, Australia and his sweet 911 SC in Copper Bronze Metallic. The introduction came courtesy of fellow SC owner, Jonny Hart at Classic Retrofit. We’re all members of the period SC appreciation society, so Nick’s SC was worth sharing.
The first pic I saw was the one above, showing the newly-restored 911 on cookie cutter wheels, wrapped in 195/65 15 and 205/60 15 tyres front and rear respectively, which I thought sounded much bigger than standard. The day before, I had been swapping emails with another mate who has just bought a 911 SC Coupe at auction. He wanted to know what wheels to buy to replace the boat anchor 964 Cup replica wheels it came on, so Nick’s pic came at quite an opportune time.
The big question with wheel sizes nowadays is: what tyres can you get to fit the wheels? I have 7″ x 16″ front and 9″ x 16″ rear Fuchs on my car and finding tyres to fit can sometimes be a drag – I use Conti SportContacts – but the pain of 15″ rubber is even worse again. The ideal choice for 15s (7s and 8s) might be something like a 195/55 front and 215/55 rear, but try finding a matched set of those for sensible money.
You can get Toyo rubber, but the thin Toyo sidewall does the 911 no favours. I like the chunky side profile of the Pilot Sport Cup, but the holographic tread and short lifespan is not for everyone. Pirelli P7 Corsas are available in 15″, but they are not cheap. No one wants to put cheap-brand tyres on their old 911, but these are pretty much all the options for wider 15″ wheels.
This car shows an interesting choice of rubber for the SC. I expected the standard size rear tyre to be a 55 section at most, but going by original sales receipts, the 8″ rears had 215/60s as standard and they look pretty cool to me. Standard fronts were a 185/70 15, so quite a different look. If one was currently using a 205/55 on the rear, a 215/60 R15 tyre would be a just under one inch taller and less than 3mph faster at 70mph. So while it may seem that the rear tyres are substantially taller than a standard size, online tyre size comparators say otherwise.
I will share some more about this car later on. It is currently having Nick’s second Classic Retrofit air con kit fitted and has the full range of CR products already in place, including the fuse panels and CDI+ ignition unit. Nick’s mate, Rohan Little, runs an operation called Skunkwerks and looks after Nick’s cars: sound like they have quite a bit of fun with them. Victoria is currently enjoying ambient temperatures circa 35 degrees C, but the Electrocooler A/C is producing a steady 8 degrees at the vents. That is pretty impressive.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
I sent out a press release and did some blogging for Jonny at Classic Retrofit yesterday, telling the story of a German 911 enthusiast who had gone to the trouble of measuring the improvement in headlight output after fitting one of Jonny’s replacement blade fuse panels.
I just love the story: it is charming and simple and so down to earth. Perfectly suited to Classic Retrofit. Jonny’s clever replacement fuse panels for classic Porsche 911s have proven to be an exceptionally popular upgrade amongst owners who wish to add reliable modern blade fuse technology to their vintage air-cooled Porsches. With several hundred of these plug-and-play Porsche fuse boards now in active service beneath factory fuse panel covers, one defining feature of the Classic Retrofit fuse panels is a pair of built-in headlamp relays.
The relays divert current for the infamously dim headlamps away from the column-mounted light switch, supplying the headlamps directly from the battery. Most of us who started in 911s many years ago fitted headlamp relays to improve light output – I have put them on all of my 911s – but Jonny’s boards go a step further, integrating the relays into the fuse panel and making the whole lot fit under the standard fuse panel cover.
Wolfgang’s Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera
Based in Potsdam, in the suburbs of Berlin, Wolfgang Nothnagel is the owner of a special edition US 1989 Carrera 3.2 in superb condition. Wolfgang keeps his car classic and looking as close to stock as possible, so his subtle mods to date include a stainless steel exhaust system, Osram ‘Nightbreaker’ street legal headlamp bulbs in standard light units and all new suspension rubbers underneath. With ‘everything stock’ as the mantra, Jonny’s upgraded blade fuse panels were the perfect low-key upgrade for the standard factory fuse panel.
“With the storm going over Germany, I used the time to finally fit the fuse panel,” said Wolfgang, who runs a lighting design and event staging company in Berlin. “Replacing the fuse board was done without issues in just forty-five minutes. On the incoming side, there was a need to redistribute one or two of the bundled wires, because the opening receptacles of the new fuse board are smaller. Other than that, the changeover was easy.
“To measure the light output, I used a Gossen Mavolux light meter from our workshop. I don’t claim that the measured output is the highest possible peak point, but the spot used for the measurement was more or less in the centre of the beam. Also, the sensor and car were not moved in between the process. So the delta in readings is valid to display the change in light output due to the relay circuit.
“To my surprise, I got a very different readout in between the original wiring style and switching to the new relays. There was an improvement of some 18%: just the right thing to have through the darker autumn and winter evenings. I am very pleased with the results!”
I have some panels to fit to my car and will get around to it eventually, but my favourite part of this story is a: that Wolfgang is such a cool character and b: that 911 people all over the world who run apparently stock examples still love to play with their cars. So much of the original technology in an old 911 has now been superseded, so it makes perfect sense to fit improved technology that doesn’t interfere with the look of the car, but will deliver more effective performance and improve the ownership experience. This is exactly where Jonny comes at all of his products from.
“As Wolfgang pointed out in one of his emails, the original fuse panels in his car worked for twenty-five years without major issue,” says the esteemed Mr Hart, “but upgrading to our fuse panels using the more available blade fuse type with LED blown fuse indicators and additional headlamp relays makes perfect sense. The project is easily DIY-able, our fuse panels for pre-73 and impact bumper 911s are very affordable and everything fits under the original covers.
“Kudos to Wolfgang for measuring the improvements and sharing his findings. It reminds us what we love about our work: so many great people!”
One bright spark in my inbox this morning was this nicely preserved Porsche 550A Spyder, which is heading for the Bonhams Scottsdale auction in January.
There can’t be too many 550A Spyders left with the provenance of this one. Apparently the penultimate 550A Spyder produced, chassis number 0145 began its racing life in the 1958 season, including taking part in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, where it finished 11th. Eleventh was also last place but owning an ex-Grand Prix Porsche is a good story.
Going by some online detectiving, this particular 550A has been with the current owner since 2013, and appeared back on the market in 2015 with Fiskens at Retromobile Paris. Offered for sale at $6.5 million back then, it subsequently popped up again at Goodings Pebble Beach sale the following year, with an estimate of five to six million dollars – quite a bit lower. No estimate has been placed on 0145 for Scottsdale just yet, so Bonham’s sense of where the market might be for the car will be interesting. My own feeling is that they will match Goodings’ guidelines at 5 to 6 million dollars.
Porsche 550A Spyder race history
One previous sales text for the car says it was a works race car, competing at four events through 1958 before passing into private hands, but another text tells a different story, with the car being bought by privateer Count Carol Godin de Beaufort from new and raced all over Europe, including Aspern-Vienna airport, Nürburgring 1000kms, Dutch Grand Prix, Le Mans 24 hours, the 12 Hours of Rheims, Zandvoort NAV, Trento-Bondone hillclimb, 10 Hours of Messina, Zandvoort, the Rheinland Palatine Prize, Nürburging Grand Prix, Karlskoga Grand Prix, Goodwood, Innsbruck and more.
After Count Carol sold the car, it spent time in Canada and then sold into America, where it raced extensively. It came home to Germany in the early 1990s and then moved to Italy in 2002, with an owner who campaigned it on ten Mille Miglia reruns. Good times! Now it is back up for sale.
Scottsdale is always an interesting auction. It takes place at the start of the year, when many classic collectors may be feeling less certain about how tastes have changed through the end of the previous year. Some come into the new year feeling upbeat about prospects but hanging back on bidding just to see what their rivals think. Other buyers will be looking to score a bargain and this can encourage some competitive bidding up to a preset maximum, usually well below the reserve. It is then up to the auctioneer to keep bids coming in, with the backroom team trying to make a deal happen if the car fails to sell on the block.
550 Spyders are often a good signpost on high end collector sentiment. A nicely patinated but unraced 550 was offered at Goodwood Revival in Sep 2016 and sold for £4.6 million – just over $6 million at current exchange rates but well short of the £6.2 million top estimate. How this is estimated and what it actually tops out at (or sells for) will set a tone for the start of 2018. All very interesting.
Photos by Bonhams/P. Litwinski
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
Very sad to hear that Peter Schutz has died. The 911 and its fans have Peter to thank for saving their bacon – he was the man who took over the loss-making Porsche as CEO in 1981 and famously walked into a product meeting where the 911 production graph on the wall stopped the same year. He picked up a marker and continued the line off the chart, over the desk, across the wall and out the door.
“Do we understand?” asked Peter. Those present must have got it, as the 911 subsequently went from strength to strength. The legend that is Ray Shaffer at Porsche Cars North America put some words about Schutz on his Instagram and I share them below. Ray knew Peter personally and he hits the spot nicely.
With his passing this weekend, we’ve lost a dear friend, father, husband, leader and mentor in Peter W. Schutz. He leaves this world a better place than the one he found, with his everlasting legacy and thoughtful teachings.
In the Porsche community, he was the man who invited Ferry Porsche back to his office in Stuttgart. He “saved” the 911 model and helped secure its future by championing the Cabriolet, Speedster and 959 developments and by listening to those around him – people like Porsche, Bott, Falk, Singer, Jantke, to name only a few. Peter also let the people of Porsche know their purpose by famously declaring: “as long as I am in charge of this company, we will never go to any race without the objective of winning.”
Peter was a great friend of the late Bob Snodgrass and the family of Brumos Porsche. When Bob passed in 2007, Peter was the first person to contact me. I will never forget the thoughtful letter of care and concern he wrote about how to keep the Brumos spirit alive. It became my “go to” reference piece that would serve me well during my tenure as general manager. But I was not alone. Peter was a mentor to many personally and through the pages of his excellent book, The Driving Force.
With thoughts and prayers for Sheila, Lori and the entire Schutz family. Godspeed, Peter.
Peter stayed with Porsche until 1987 and was 87 when he passed. From what I have read, he lived a great life and his work certainly had an untold impact on my career, in many ways bested only by Ferry himself. I cannot begin to describe how many lessons from Peter’s career have embedded themselves in my outlook. He was truly a unique individual.
RIP Peter: forever an unforgettable part of Porsche history.
EB Motorsport has unveiled its latest Porsche project: a beautifully detailed recreation of the legendary Porsche 911R, built to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the R’s record-breaking 20,000-kilometre endurance speed run at Monza in Italy in 1967.
In October 1967, Porsche sent its 906 race car to Monza, to break endurance speed records. When the 906 proved unable to withstand the rigours of Monza over extended distances, a prototype 911R was called for. Driven on its own wheels directly from Stuttgart and fitted with a test engine which had already logged 100 hours of flat-out running, the lightweight R claimed five world records, including covering 20,000 kilometres at an average speed of 209 km/h. It was a memorable moment in 911 history.
“Porsche motorsport history underpins all that we do,” says James Bates at EB. “Having successfully campaigned our 3.0 RS and RSR race cars for many years before adding the SWB 2.0 race car, which then finished as first 911 home in the Spa 6 Hours, we were keen to explore the edges of lightweight Porsche racing, so the R was a natural progression.
“Our new 911R showcases everything that EB Motorsport can accomplish and is fascinated by. Built on a 1967-manufactured SWB 911 chassis, which was fully restored in-house and now tops the scales at 804 kilograms in Monza trim, our 911R is loaded with meticulous hand-finished details, from bespoke brake parts and 906-style inlet manifolds, to our lightweight doors and in-house exhaust system with megaphone soundtrack.
“We’re excited to unveil the R on such a special anniversary. Our plan is to film some souvenir footage with it before offering it for sale later this year. Many of its unique components will be also added to our historic Porsche parts product range, so people can build their own interpretations of this legendary 911.”
Having seen the EB Porsche 911R up close and personal, there is no doubting its quality. Many of the closest R recreations I have seen up to now have been a bit wavy and a little bit delicate – much like the genuine R prototype my car once shared a pit lane with at Silverstone. This one is a more substantial piece of engineering that looks every inch an all-steel 911, but shows a stunningly low number on the scales.
The 911R’s passed its MOT but has yet to be registered. As soon as the Letter of Origin arrives from Porsche, the boys will get some paperwork, tax it and then we can take it up over Snake Pass. I’m looking forward to having a spin.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
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