Regular readers will know that I occasionally sell classic Porsche cars for friends. My designer friend James has asked me to sell this interesting 911 for him, due to lack of time to use it (car is now sold – thanks all). It’s a 1985 Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera Coupe with above average mileage, but it’s had a huge amount of work done professionally and is now a very nice car. I’ll be putting it on eBay and Pistonheads later, so get in touch if it’s something you’re looking for.
Porsche 911 Restoration
Bought by James in 2007, this right-hand drive 1985 911 Carrera showed 185,000 miles on the clock, had been much enjoyed by its one previous owner and needed some restoration. James took the car to Tuthill Porsche and had the bodywork restored: the front wings were replaced, and common impact-bumper 911 rust spots like the inner front wing tops, front bumper mounts, windscreen apertures, sills and kidney bowls were repaired before the car was repainted in its apparently original colour of Viper Green.
At this time, the aluminium bumpers were also replaced with lightweight Ruf-style bumpers: anyone who has taken the bumpers off their impact-bumper car knows how much weight that saves and how much better the car feels to drive. Impact-bumper blades could easily be refitted if one preferred that style, or fit Speedline wheels for the full Ruf look.
Classic Porsche Maintenance Costs
The original colour is Speedway Green, which is a shade away from its current colour. Greens like this were not offered on 3.2 Carrera Coupes, so consider this car one of one. I have the bills for the last seven years and more than £10,000 has been spent on mechanical upkeep at Tuthills, including a full gearbox rebuild with replacement crownwheel and pinion, and a recent service, new brakes, new Bosch battery and MOT, costing £1500. This does not include the body restoration or the engine rebuild, both carried out at Tuthills.
I spent most of yesterday driving this 911 and it is superb on the road: as good as any 3.2 I have ever driven. The rebuilt engine pulls cleanly and is very strong on power: a treat to use with that rebuilt Porsche 915 transmission. The interior is good: Grey Beige leather with electric front seat height, all working fine. Hand stitched extended leather to door pulls and storage pocket lids: another factory option.
Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera for sale
Seats are in good shape, with only minor bolster wear showing on the driver’s side. The 911 also has a Momo steering wheel, which is very nice to use. The sunroof works well, as does the optional rear wiper on the flat rear engine cover. Rear seats are in nice condition: no rear seat belts are fitted. The car has a Sony CD player and comes with the jack, compressor and the original toolkit (that needs restoration but a nice job for someone).
I had a good look around the car and found a few minus points.
The sunroof seal needs replacing
Crack in the front bumper under one side grille
The leather dashtop has a small split to the left of the binnacle
Optional black headlining sagging around the sunroof
Front wiper arms a bit scruffy
One rear floor carpet is missing: an aftermarket mat is in its place
Heater works but service invoice notes that the flaps could do with replacing
Bodywork is always the big concern on a 911, and no 911 is rust free. Expect to do a bit here and there over the next five years to keep the bodywork in A1 condition. I can see a few little bits but nothing overly concerning. Other than that it looks a good example and drives exceptionally well on very good tyres. I will update this post with more history as and when it becomes available.
Classic Porsche 911 Prices
As for price, let me put my professional Porsche valuations hat on for this bit. Solid 911 Carreras in similar condition generally hit the market with 125-135k miles and now sell for about £38-40k privately. They also usually come with Fuchs wheels: a set would cost circa £1500. This car has clocked up about 25k miles since restoration, so now has 212k miles on the clock, but remember this Porsche has had a huge amount invested in its upkeep over the last eight years and I cannot fault how it drives.
Adjusting for the mileage, the absence of Fuchs – which most buyers will budget to fit – and making a generous adjustment for the condition issues raised above, I’ve set a selling price of £24,995 (now sold) to buy a great classic 911 that is ready to use right now.
The car is with me near Banbury. I can pick you up from the nearest train station (Banbury) or if you are up in Scotland or in Ireland etc, you can fly in to Birmingham and catch a direct train down to inspect. It is ready to drive home once taxed and insured. I can also organise transport to any UK port for overseas shipping. Contact me with any questions.
In the week that German prosecutors suspended investigations into twelve members of the Porsche supervisory board accused of 2008 stock market manipulation by a number of hedge funds, I resolved the battle between my Porsche 944 and a Worcestershire hedge.
Long-time readers will remember that I bought this early 944 on eBay in 2007, and collected it from Chichester, where it had lain unloved in a leaky garage for more than ten years. It was a case of out of the frying pan into the fishery for the 944, as I parked it on a friend’s farm & fishing lake, where it was subsequently absorbed into the landscape. Now he wants his farmyard back to build a house on, the 944 had to be dragged out of the way.
Arriving at the farm with Rob Campbell of Porsche bodywork restorers, Racing Restorations, both he and my farmer mate were sure that the car would be ruined after five years sitting in the brambles. Obviously I was on the 944’s side: I knew it had survived.
We set about pulling the hedge apart, but the farmer insisted we leave it alone so it looked better after the car was removed – hilarious given the state of the place, but he is the boss. I shifted a few thorns out of the way and hooked a chain onto the front anti-roll bar, we attached that to a tractor and the car was pulled free. Nothing like a nice bit of weekend gardening.
The 944 looks fine: plenty of dirt but there’s no more rust than it had when it was parked up. One sill is holed and the battery tray still leaks: we can easily sort all that out. I need to find a bit of storage near either Banbury or Daventry where the 944 can sit until my garage gets a roof on next month, then it can come home for a bit and I’ll do a few jobs, such as fitting a repaired fusebox and loom and trying to get it started.
Here’s some video of the moment when it was pulled from the undergrowth. A female friend compared it to childbirth: yikes!
Not had much time for blogging lately as I’ve been doing more building at home, continuing the office and garage extension (codename Porschehaus) that fell by the wayside when the original Ferdinand owners went bust, owing quite a lot of money to me and many others. It’s taken a while to get finances back up to speed, but lots of good things are now happening and the project is moving again.
I find building very satisfying. My Victorian house was built in the late 19th century, so part of the joy is in chasing materials: architectural salvage from hundreds of years ago. Unearthing a stash of two thousand bricks from the same kiln that fired my own house was a result, as was winning a truckload of blue ridge tiles for just 99p and paying the same for barn skylight windows (for parts).
I cursed a bit (ok, a lot) when I missed a round cast-iron Victorian window on eBay but have found a good skip guy, concrete supplier and source of steel beams not far from my house. Researching the best sources is all part of the fun when putting this stuff together, but it does eat time in the process. All this will sound very familiar to classic Porsche people.
Part of the fun of Porsche ownership has long been finding the parts to go with them, but as prices for cars have all gone through the roof, parts prices have soared, too. Gone are the days when a pair of Fuchs could be bought for £350, or a nice old pair of Recaros snapped up for less than £100. I sold quite a chunk of my parts stash for that sort of money to pay the mortgage when I first went freelance five years ago, but I still have a few bits remaining. Now that the Porschehaus project is back up to speed, I’m excited to plan for my parts to come home, as well as the cars, of course.
While dreaming of where this stuff will go, I had an email about a new Porsche-inspired lifestyle brand someone wanted me to look at. It made me wonder where the line was between gathering Porsche cars and parts with the odd bit of memorabilia, and adhering to the doctrine of a Porsche “lifestyle brand”?
I’ve made a few runs of Porsche-themed t-shirts and the odd grille badge over the years, but all that stops well short of defining a lifestyle. Friends often say my lifestyle is more pikey* than Porsche, which is probably fair enough, given the brick dust, Jack Russell Terrier, Irish accent and their lack of imagination (you know who you are).
I understand the attraction to branding, but the idea that people would define their whole lifestyle by the car they drive seems quite restrictive. I doubt that a majority of my classic Porsche friends would call their car a lifestyle choice: it is not about ticking each box in a catalogue.
Old-school Porsche boys got by without worrying too much about what t-shirts to wear when driving their cars. No doubt we are all bound by this cult, but don’t get bogged down in where “people like us” go or what we should be wearing. There are more books to read, more bricks to lay and many more cars to enjoy before our time here expires. Keep the faith, but don’t do it blindly.
* US readers, I don’t know what your equivalent of a pikey would be: perhaps a wheeler-dealer crossed with a hobo. Submit your definitions!
Good friend Justin just sent me this interesting slide from Australia, showing the first RHD Porsche 911 Targa being produced. Here’s the story behind it:
“I found a whole lot of my late father’s slides that I had digitally scanned a few years ago. This one is the first RHD targa going down the production line in September 1972.
“As my father told it, we were on the factory tour and the tour guide was talking about Targas. Knowing there were some English and Australians on the tour, it was mentioned that there were no RHD 911 Targas until the following year (i.e. 1973).
“You were still able to take your camera back then and Dad saw a Targa shell being rolled towards us that looked somehow different: initially, he wasn’t sure how. He took a shot of it quickly and then walked past it. On the build sheet of the car, he saw erste rechts (1st right), so we can assume it was the first production RHD Targa for the 73MY. It was mid-September 1972 my parents tell me.
“The tour guide realised and, rather than seizing Dad’s camera, asked him not to do anything with the picture until after the official embargo (which was early 1973). I assume the car was being shown somewhere – Earl’s Court , Birmingham, South Africa, Hong Kong? Dad complied with Porsche’s request, which was perfectly reasonable. I wonder where the car is now – or if indeed it still survives?
“As a side note, there are 2 73S Targas (both RHD, and both English) awaiting restorations in Sydney (where my green L was done) – one Sepia, and the other Signal Yellow. They’ll be done in about two years.”
Love getting presents from overseas and this was a really good one! Thanks, Justin 😉
A pair of Tuthill-built Porsche 911s is competing in the 2015 Trans-America Challenge: the SWB 1965 Porsche 911 of Gavin and Diana Henderson (above) and the LWB 1973 2.5-litre car of Peter and Zoe Lovett (below).
Rally news updates paint a promising picture. The Road to Mandalay Rally-winning Lovetts are in the top three, while the experienced Hendersons have already claimed their first regularity challenge win. Both cars are running reliably.
Also in the rally is a Tuthill joint project: the Porsche 912 of Mark and Colin Winkelman. The body and interior was built by Tuthills, with the drivetrain and final assembly put together by Hayden Burvill at WEVO in San Francisco.
I haven’t shared the cars here as yet, as my ear gets bent if I put all the good workshop stories on Ferdinand, but all three are perfect examples of the ox-strong resto-rally 911s with creature comforts that Tuthill Porsche puts together so well. I’ll sort some pictures out and share them here later.
2015 Trans-America Rally
Organised by the Endurance Rally Association, the Trans-America Challenge takes place from June 7-28, 2015. It is the second running of the Trans America enduro, following the inaugural rally in 2012. Today was a rest day after three days of driving that has taken the entrants as far as Quebec.
The route for the three-week event runs across North America. Starting from Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast, forty five entrants from all over the world travel through Eastern Canada before crossing the US border and driving through Vermont, New Hampshire and upstate New York.
Once in NY, they approach the Great Lakes, briefly returning to Canada just south of Toronto before hitting Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The vast Dakotas are next (North and South), then the teams take in Wyoming, Idaho and sunny Nevada before landing in California, en route to the finish in San Francisco.
Porsche Trans-America Road Trip
I’ve done a Porsche road trip through New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. Our Rolling Stone Targa feature on Karl Donoghue’s cool R Gruppe Porsche 911 Targa and the Bethlehem Porsche 911 ST backdate story both came from that trip. The roads in this part of America are good fun to drive on, especially with mates alongside, and there is great character in the landscape. I’m interested to hear what the competitors say at the end, as it seems an interesting route across the continent: a journey I hope to make myself in a Porsche 911 on my half-century (not long now).
Game Girls Galore in Trans-Am
One other friend on this event is former McLaren team boss, Alastair Caldwell, of Porsche 912 on London-Cape Town rally fame. I recently bumped into Alastair at the Tuthill Porsche workshop with his SWB 912 rally car, but he decided against shipping the 912 to Canada. Instead, he’s running a beautiful 1963 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II across America, with mum Dorothy as navigator.
Now a spritely 97 years old, Dorothy has competed in a number of previous rallies and thoroughly enjoys the experience: no doubt the craic is good in Canada tonight. AC reckons she has the best room at the palatial hotel they’re staying in for the rest day. Rightly so: she deserves it!
Pictures courtesy of Gerard Brown/Endurance Rally Association
A Porsche 928 art car painted by eminent German artist, Heinz Mack, will be auctioned at the Lempertz Contemporary Art sale in Cologne on May 30, 2015. Though classic Porsche 928 values are rising along with prices for all other older Porsche models, the likely value of this car is more closely linked to its artistic connections.
Heinz Mack and ZERO
Born in Lollar near Frankfurt in 1931, Heinz Mack attended the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts during the 1950s, also attaining a philosophy degree at the University of Cologne. In 1957, Mack started an art magazine ‘ZERO’, which ran for a decade and gave rise to the eponymous ZERO art movement.
ZERO held to the notion that art should be void of colour, emotion and individual expression. Founded by a trio of German artists including Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker, ZERO later encompassed a wider group of primarily European artists including the Swiss Jean Tinguely and Argentinian-born Italian, Lucio Fontana.
The central theme of Heinz Mack’s art is light. His ideas have been expressed through sculptures and pictures in a hugely diverse range of materials and locations. Often working in open spaces ‘untouched by the fingerprint of civilisation’, Mack’s most recent project, Nine Columns under Sky, was created on the beautiful Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in my favourite city of Venice. Nine seven-metre columns covered in more than 800,000 gold-plated mosaic tiles inspired by the Sahara Desert invite reflection upon this long-term epicentre of Mediterranean art.
Porsche 928 Art Car & Value
While Mack is reputedly a passionate collector of cars, his tastes lean more toward British machinery. Preferring Aston Martins and Jaguars, Mack was asked to paint the Porsche 928S by a friend in 1984.
The Porsche is a 1978 4.4-litre 928S manual with TUV approval to August 2015. The odometer reading shows unknown kilometres but the car is said to display signs of its age. Signed by the artist on both doors and taking some inspiration from period aero tests, the design is said to “accentuate the aerodynamic silhouette of the sports car with small triangles on both sides and a colour spectrum that morphs from white into black”.
Porsche Museum 928 provenance
Previously exhibited at the Porsche Museum, auction estimates for the car run from €40-€45k. Given current prices for standard Porsche 928s of similar vintage, this seems ridiculously low for a bona-fide art car.
The most recent large scale auction of ZERO artist output came at Sotheby’s in 2010, where a catalogue of of 49 paintings and drawings sold for more than four times the original auction estimates, to hit a total of more than £54 million.
Mindful of where the art market has soared to in the five years since, current interest in the unique early 928 and the parallels between classic Porsche and modern art collecting, I can see this car outperforming all expectations at auction. I am excited to see how it goes.
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