It’s been a sad February, as my good friend Hayden Burvill passed away. Hayden was not only the brains behind WEVO, but also a passionate man living a full and inspiring life. His name appears all over the blog and my experience of being partly (unknowingly) mentored by him is woven throughout the last 18 years of my life. I will miss him. Let’s have a look back on some of his and our history. There is a memory board for Hayden Burvill here.
Hayden and me c.2009(?) with some massive Porsche-fitment Campagnolos from the WEVO stash
Hayden grew up karting, and started autocrossing in Australia in 1981. Graduating with a BA in Industrial Design from Curtin University in Western Australia in 1985, Hayden Burvill began a career in race car engineering. In 1992, he started at the back end of the Formula 1 grid, running Roberto Moreno. He always laughed about this as the Andrea Moda team was running on less than a shoestring. There followed spells with Allard, Reynard and G Force, where Hayden had a hand in designing some rather successful Indy cars.
In 1995, he came to IMSA racing, on Spice Chevrolet and Courage V8s. The next ten years brought Indy, Rolex 24 and ALMS engineering engagements, and the start of WEVO. In 2005, he engineered the Ferrari 360 for JMB Racing. Later that year, Hayden went to Brumos, to engineer the famous number 59 DP Porsche for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. He continued race engineering well into the 2010s at Le Mans and in the US. He also engineered a production Carrera GT to the US closed-course speed record. He kept that one quiet – I found out by accident.
In the period from 1996 to 1999, everything changed as WEVO was born. The young Australian race engineer and design graduate, who had abandoned the glamour circus of F1 and arrived in America to work in GT racing, spotted an ad for a 1972 911 in search of a new home.
“I’d owned a 911 in the USA since 1996: a ’77 S. We’d been using it to develop the XT-915 ‘dog box’ transmission, our Gateshift kit, shift coupler and suspension parts. When we (we being H and wife Tracey) decided to expand our WEVO Porsche parts idea, I felt we had to go for an early car that would represent the business and our catalogue more effectively.
“Identifying 1972 as my ideal year, I targeted just those cars. Back then, I was working for Dick Simon’s Indy Car team and flying all over the USA. I carried $15,000 with me everywhere and scanned the classifieds wherever we stopped.
“I saw cars all across America: North Carolina, Texas and Oregon spring to mind. Eventually, I spotted an ad in our local San Francisco paper. It was a ‘72T in Gulf Orange, for sale across the bay in Oakland. The odometer had just clicked over and it sounded like a decent car, so I went to see it.
“The owner was a car guy but no Porsche expert: I knew more than him. The car had sports seats, a vintage Prototipo and beautiful patina. We agreed a deal and I bought it on the spot.
“High level motorsport looks glamorous, but the reality is all hard slog. Unwinding is important. I started autocrossing in Australia in 1981, so that’s my switch-off. We found the Porsche Club had a vibrant autocross scene here, so we began to bring the orange car along.”
WEVO the brand came from Windrush Evolution; Windrush being the racing boats designed and made by H and brother Brett in Australia. Hayden was not obsessed by branding – he would happily have used any short name he could buy the dot com for. But WEVO it was and what a brand it became within our small niche of the Porsche world. H’s MO was always to either significantly improve on what Porsche had designed – work that he always held in high esteem – or to leave it alone. I am proud to run WEVO parts on my own 911.
Where do I start with my love for this man. I first heard of Hayden (we always called him H) after Jamie (Lipman) had been to California with Steven H and ran out of gas in a 911 RS. Hayden came to rescue him. I seem to remember Jamie describing H as a sort of Aussie surf dude mechanic rock guitar guy in shorts with a wild sense of humour and telling me I had to meet him. That opportunity came a few months later when J and I took our first trip to CA. It was a travel disaster that saw us arrive at R Gruppe Treffen at bed time and exhausted from transit through Chicago on a Friday night. We had enough time to drop into WEVO on the way home and an enduring friendship was formed.
Hayden was careful with his time and attention, but when he gave it it was always given generously. His appetite for curry was legendary and we spent some great nights in the curry house around the corner from my place, which he enjoyed. I introduced him to Tuthills and Twinspark Racing and EB Motorsport and he had some adventures with all of them.
His run on the Peking to Paris Rally with Steven in Lola the Porsche 356 led to meeting former McLaren team boss Alastair Caldwell and their forming the most excellent friendship. H built a 912 for the two to rally from London to Cape Town, they also tried another event which took an early bath. They had a superb chemistry and it was fun to be around both of them, together or separately. I am blessed by my time with these two very enjoyable men and all the people I encountered with and through H. His intense curiosity meant he knew a lot of folks!
Hayden and Alastair – good times in California
Over the years we collaborated on so many projects together, including WEVO Europe with Twinspark, which I was a partner in at the time, I blogged all of his endurance rally exploits on both the WEVO website and on my own blogs, built the Porsche 356 5-speed website with meticulous oversight from himself, covered thousands of miles in WEVO cars including Steven’s beautiful fleet that H built, enjoyed his and Alistair’s combined craziness, wrote god knows how many Porsche stories, did some Tuthill stuff including sequential gearbox work, had a bunch of EB Motorsport fun, compared notes on life events and WEVO deals and just enjoyed our man-to-man dialogue. I also spent our time together trying to buy his prototype brakes for my car, but he wouldn’t have it at any price!
H was also great with youngsters; my kids loved him and still remember his energy. I remember Arjen B’s son Derek doing time with H and having a ball. Below is a pic of a dinner on the beach at Zandvoort with Mark, James and Jayne from EB and the six of us had a good night. I had a few nights on the whiskey with H in San Ramon and that was a laugh – he loved craft whiskey and dreamed of making his own. Tracey and H were huge F1 fans and we always had good fun with that.
It was so sad when I heard that H had a health issue, right when it seemed that life had awarded him an exciting new chapter. I reached out a few times but did not hear back – I figured he was taking some time to absorb it. I was mid-divorce and running a challenging domestic environment with kids keen to push the boundaries, and my own parents died around the same time, but I would occasionally see an instagram like or similar from him. And then my divorce was done and I was planning a CA trip and Fishcop (John F) emailed to say he was gone. I’m told that he was very brave all the way through his treatment and at the end went on his own terms with dignity.
For me, he remains an ever-present part of my daily experience. H had an immense work ethic, intelligence, high standards, joi de vivre (let’s say 95% of the time) and a warm willingness to give his attention to people he selected quite carefully. He was disarmingly honest – I had more than one critical review from H which I didn’t ask for, but always appreciated! Here’s an example (on Steven’s Aga Blue ’67 911S, which I wrote as a tour of the Bullitt car chase route in San Francisco:
“Great piece of work, beautiful combination of words and images that are obviously close to my heart for many, many reasons. I love how the vintage vibe of the subjects, both car and your film recollections manage to veneer over the modern cityscape and make it all revert to 1970, its a combination of however Jamie processed those images and the continual return to the past in the dialogue. Absolutely excellent! Constructive criticism, because I know not everyone would bother to give you some. The evidence that the piece is well researched could be more transparent. There are times when it jumps directly from one collected fact to the next – from a different source – and your writing style does not fully disguise that. As a result it goes from being a John Glynn piece to a piece of John Glynn’s homework and back again. I know you are proud of this and rightly so, so take my CC as a boost, not a slap.“
I cannot express how much joy I absorbed from our friendship over the years. A quote he once shared, which to me encapsulates his attitude perfectly: “Absolutely nothing less gratifying than praise from an incompetent, and ordinary work being overrated by those with low standards”. That still makes me laugh; he hated shit work and fake people.
So long H, you beauty. On the one hand, I will and do miss you. On the other, you are not far away mate. Forever at the table when the lime pickle arrives, or by the fire when the whiskey is poured.
It was good to hear from many R Gruppe friends after my recent post on the late Cris Huergas. One name that popped up in my inbox was Hayden Burvill at WEVO, who is about to put his 1972 Porsche 911 up for sale.
The car in question is Kenny: a 1972 911T built in May of that year and finished in rare Gulf Orange. The ‘oil klapper’ side oil-flap 911 now runs a 2.4S engine, rebuilt by Jerry Woods, but the matching numbers engine comes with the car.
Kenny has been owned by a handful Porsche enthusiasts in San Francisco’s Bay Area since it was new in 1972. It’s the car that inspired the Aussie engineer and product designer to begin modifying 911s – initially for autocross competitions – and develop a range of chassis and drivetrain products to sharpen the air-cooled 911 driving experience.
Products developed on Kenny include the famous WEVO shifters, engine and transmission mounts, anti-roll bars and suspension parts. Kenny is also fitted with several prototype parts that never went into production, such as the WEVO brakes that I vaguely attempted to buy several times but could never convince him to sell.
The WEVO brakes remained in prototype due to projected retail price against the value of air-cooled cars at the time. The numbers would probably make more sense nowadays, but life has moved on and there are other products out there. Hayden instead developed his 5-speed conversion for Porsche 356 models and that has been going well since launch.
Kenny has been part of my world since 2008, when I took my first trip out to San Carlos to meet Hayden and Tracey at WEVO. They could not have been more welcoming and our friendship continued when Twinspark Racing became WEVO’s official European distributors. I was a partner in Twinspark at the time, along with my friends Leonard Stolk and Lex Proper, so we did a fair amount of business together.
Hayden’s exploits in historic rallying on events like the Peking to Paris alongside Steven Harris and more recent rallies with Alastair Caldwell have kept us in touch. Our last time together in person was when Ciara and I joined H and the EB Motorsport guys for dinner on the beach at Zandvoort after the Masters Historic Grand Prix in 2018. Great times.
The world has turned on its head in two years and the pandemic has shifted life goals for both of us. Hayden’s responding by selling some cars and doubling down on a sustainable lifestyle. His 993 daily driver has already departed and Kenny is next on the block. The cool blue 912 is also likely to go.
Long-time followers will remember our feature on Kenny, which ran in one of the Porsche magazines back in the day. Jamie and I took the car to Pacific Grove near Monterey before sunrise and shot it on the coast as the sun came up. It was an unforgettable experience.
I’ve driven a lot of miles in this car, incuding down through the redwoods from San Francisco to Laguna Seca (above), where the car has seen many great days on track. As Hayden was an early R Gruppe member, Kenny was one of the earliest R Gruppe cars, attending all sorts of group events over the years. There is an air of authenticity about this one that later R Gruppe creations can’t hope to match. The aim is to place it with someone who will appreciate the history and keep piling the miles on, enjoying the car while we are still allowed to drive them.
Hayden wrote up a great spec on the 911 and you can download a pdf of that here. I’ll put the main points below. This is a special 911 with room for cosmetic detailing if you want to go that way. I would probably just run it as-is (with one of Jonny’s electric air conditioning kits, of course).
1972 Porsche 911 for sale – Specification
Engine
That original engine was replaced by the current engine, a 2.4-litre MFI engine from a 911S that was dressed using the original yellow “T” fan shroud and a combination of 2.4S intake system, recalibrated MFI pump and the highly regarded Elgin “Mod-S” camshaft grind. The engine made ~195hp at 6750rpm on the Jerry woods dyno with airbox, filter and Abarth muffler installed.
The engine was detailed when it was installed in 2004 and the installation is otherwise stock. There is no external oil cooler, it has the stock MFI fuel pump mounted in stock location, stock fuel filter and fuel cut-off valve all mounted and functioning.
WEVO SS engine mounts are fitted. The current exhaust is stock MFI heat exchangers (cabin heat connected) and a stock MFI muffler with the period correct ribbed outlet. The accessory package that comes with this car includes a rare Abarth 4-outlet muffler, an equally rare and unique 6-outlet muffler (for when 4 is not enough!) and a rare, unused 2 x 2 muffler with a pair of chrome outlets exiting wide; one on each corner of the rear bumper.
The engine has a WEVO 915 Streetlite Clutch kit using a spring-centre friction disc. The low inertia and added performance of this clutch kit is especially noticeable at full throttle in second and third gears.
Transmission
As one would expect given WEVO’s unique expertise, the transmission has been through a variety of revisions, at times running a WEVO super lightweight spool instead of an open differential. It currently has a Porsche factory ZF limited slip differential. It has a very deliberate build suited for easy street driving, or aggressive track driving. 80% build configuration giving the maximum friction surfaces, then carefully shimmed to have a very light pre-load of only 10 ft/lbs.
This configuration gives a high locking action during aggressive driving and easy rolling and steering at low speeds. The transmission has a suite of WEVO products, including XT 100 Side Cover, WEVO 915 GateShift kit and XT 032 bearing retainer plate. The gearbox is in great operating condition and needs no repairs.
Interior
Hayden’s interior spec goes into quite a lot of detail but, in short:
Fitted factory sports seats
Abarth 360mm sports steering wheel
WEVO 915 shifter with +40mm lever (my 911 also has this: perfect mod)
WEVO PSJ shift coupler and XT 147 clamp
Accessories package includes bespoke carbon fibre seats with custom rear cage
Bodywork
Again H has added a lot of detail to the bodywork section. In summary:
Sunroof 911 finished in original Gulf Orange
Rust-free car that has lived in California for almost fifty years
Distinctive WEVO-logo graphics
Presented as RS with SC/Carrera rear arches
Fibreglass bumpers and ducktail
Bespoke front brake cooling ducts
H1 headlights with Euro rear lenses
Accessories package includes original steel rear bumper and deck lid, and an early S steel front bumper
Suspension
See the full pdf for details of this. One could hardly ask for a better suspension setup on a sports-purpose early car:
21/26 torsion bars
RSR raised-spindle front struts with Bilstein inserts
WEVO Camberking top mounts with Teflon monoballs and carbon fibre cross tube/strut brace
Weltmeister 19mm front ARB
WEVO Spring Plate system rear end (now unobtanium)
’76 trailing arms with SRP monoballs and WEVO E-Z pins
Designed to fit inside 6×15 wheels with a nod to 930 brake performance
315 x 28mm front brake disc
standard 930 rear disc with handbrake bell
930 pads for ease of replacement
Accessory package includes set of new discs and all brake servicing literature
Wheels and Tyres
Kenny runs on nicely restored 7 & 8×15″ Fuchs, with Avon CR6ZZ Classic 185/70 front and 215/60 rear tyres. The spare is a 6 x 15″ Fuchs with a 185/70 tyre.
Enquiries and Price
It can be difficult to price cars like this and would be all too easy to get that wrong. Setting the mods aside, we have a low-owner ’72 oil flap 911T with sunroof in a relatively rare colour with a matching numbers engine and the original panels ready to be refitted. The only major change is the SC arches.
Adding in the mods we have a Jerry Woods 2.4S MFI engine making circa 200 horsepower, custom WEVO transmission with pretty much everything you could pick from the catalogue, custom suspension, custom brakes, simple but desirable period trim that one could improve and so on. It also comes with a ton of additional parts, including the original engine.
The key to this car for me is that it is not fake. It is not a poser. It was forged at the centre of air-cooled 911 culture and has been driven and developed over twenty years of ownership. What was created specifically for this car may now be found on thousands of 911s all over the world. But there is only one original. Does that story add any value? Well, the buyers will decide. What price romance nowadays?!
So to the price. Hayden is open to offers circa $150,000, which is £114,000 or €126,000. To find a similar rust-free 1972 911 and fit it with an S engine with the WEVO bits one can still buy would easily exceed this. And that car would not be built by WEVO. Add in the unobtanium, the spares bits and who knows what else the boss will include and you have a unique piece of air-cooled history.
The car is located in San Francisco, but can of course be shipped anywhere in the world. I am helping out with this one should it make its way across the pond to the UK or Europe, so you can contact Hayden via WEVO.com or drop me a line – john@johndglynn.com – or give me a call on +44 7565 348453.
The cool thing would perhaps be to quote Groucho Marx (“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member”) but, when the late Cris Huergas sent me an email in 2007 to ask if I wanted to join the R Gruppe, it caught my attention.
Founding R Gruppe member, Gib Bosworth, owned several air-cooled 911s including a very original Carrera 3.0 (super rare in America as never sold new there) and found my 1976 Carrera 3.0 through impactbumpers.com. He liked the community spirit I was building on the impact bumpers forum, with a focus on driving the cars, learning more about them and doing one’s own maintenance.
Gib’s view of what worked carried weight, and impactbumpers presented by Gib resonated with Cris. The fact that I was writing for pretty much all of the British Porsche magazines at the time didn’t hurt my case either, as Cris was into his car magazines. He overlooked the minor technicality that, although I did own a ’71 project bought from the Gruppe’s ‘Dutch chapter’, my ’76 was not a longhood – a membership must at the time. In any case, I got the email, paid my dues and was member number 466.
I remained with the Gruppe for more than ten years and spent lots of time with Cris on our California visits. He was a working guy who’d been through a few ups and downs, so 911 ownership was behind him by the time we hooked up but, as the Gruppemeister he always had shotgun, and many friends would happily lend him cars on events.
Cris Huergas (right) by Frank Kayser
He also loved to come out on shoots: the energy around these things was ridiculously infectious and Cris loved being in the thick of it. He usually knew much of the story behind the cars we were shooting, so period voice recordings invariably feature a high-pitched Huergas prompting the owner on something they forgot.
Our first meeting was at the Fogcatcher Inn on the Pacific Coast Highway in Cambria, California in 2008. Jamie (James Lipman) and I made our first trip from the UK to CA to see what went on at an R Gruppe Treffen and I decided we should shoot Bob Tilton and Chris Nielsen’s SWB 911s.
It is difficult to explain to recent arrivals to air-cooled Porsches just how unloved short-wheelbase cars were at the time. Super cheap and often scrapped, here were two guys who had invested heavily in two SWB 911s, spending well over market value to realise their individual visions in very different, but equally convincing ways.
Tilton and Nielsen were more than just 911 guys; they were tastemakers. Tilt was fastidious about every tiny detail and Nielsen matched his microscopic focus to the miligram. What I found within each of them was that they looked back for inspiration, but were not driven to mimic. They interpreted their influences rather than imitating them. This is what made their cars special and the two we had to shoot on that first trip to America.
In the years that followed, 911 prices took off into the stratosphere and R Gruppe became quite the sensation. Cris loved grass roots enthusiasts and would make an effort to talk to new faces. Someone with a cool 911 who came to a few meets and showed they were not a complete pain in the arse was generally given a number, but Cris would also occasionally slip numbers to people who maybe didn’t have the grass roots background, but turned up in a serious car. Maybe they didn’t build it, but they had a vision of quality that worked for him, and they had a clue about cars. Cris also brought in the occasional trophy member – which was not a bad thing.
Huergas was a serious petrolhead and, while he liked old 911s with patchwork-quilt provenance, he also knew a proper car. He and his brothers were all into cars, and the crew around Cris was similarly knowledgeable. It’s no accident that Cris started R Gruppe (so called in a play on words around “Our Group” and the underdog history of the 911R) with Freeman Thomas, one of the most respected car designers of the 20th century. Cris could hold his own in that sort of company and his inner circle were serious geeks when it came to details on more than just Porsches.
Still, it was always the garagistes that did it for me: home builders who had a vision and didn’t really care whether it fitted what has since become a fairly prescriptive early 911 recipe book. My favourite Cris quote is “everything you do is right” – meaning that, if you liked it, then who cared what anyone else thought?
Whether it was Bob Aines’ orange E that was driven from Texas to California every Treffen, Rolly Resos’ famous red and white car, Harvey Weidman’s Martini 911 or Gib’s beautiful Tour de France recreation, the early R Gruppe cars were incredibly elegant. The cars were my air-cooled royalty and their drivers were true elder statesmen, in every sense of the word. We never wrote features on any of the cars I mention above and I do not regret that: a magazine splash would have spoiled their allure. Better to shun such vulgarity.
That’s not to say that the Gruppe 911s we did shoot were anything less than superb. With so many great cars to choose from, and only four weeks a year to gather the material, we shot what we could get to and saved a few others for later. Not all of our cars came through the R Gruppe, but it was the main portal for some wonderful times and I remember them fondly. In the centre was Cris: always on the hunt for 911 fans to add to the cocktail shaker he called R Gruppe membership.
In the same way that Tilton and Nielsen expressed their 911 visions as a unified blend of countless influences, Huergas delivered his vision of the car park dinner party everyone wanted to be at in the shape of the R Gruppe. Now that Cris has left us, things are likely to change.
It is fortunate, therefore, that German photographer, Frank Kayser, captured the last months of R Gruppe under Huergas for The R Book. A look through some of Frank’s photos shows many familiar faces, all of whom were devoted to Cris for bringing them into the fold.
“I had complete creative freedom for this book,” says Frank, “so I got to document the things that inspire me: beautiful landscapes, cool dudes and loads of awesome cars. The old air-cooled Porsche is the connecting link of it all. The book is not just another coffee table book about cars, but my statement for analogue values such as freedom, friendship and the fun of experiencing the real world together.”
The R Book website describes this as a “10 x 13” coffee-table book of 580 pages that’s filled with 840 brilliant images of awesome cars, candid visits of member’s private garages, and beautiful Californian landscapes. Well written essays about the history and the attitude towards life of America‘s cult Porsche car club”, but to those who experienced the Gruppe under Cris, it will be more than that.
One of my favourite books bought this year is “The World’s Fastest Place”, by another German photographer, Alexandra Lier. Alexandra’s work (above) is exceptional, but I can only imagine how much more meaningful the book must be if you are part of the Bonneville Speed Week community, around whom this book is based.
Beautifully presented, the R Gruppe book is not cheap at €180, and it’s no substitute for being part of Huergas’ R Gruppe before the world went crazy for air-cooled but, for 911 fans looking for something to evoke memories of good times with friends and old Porsches, it is worth a look.
I leave the last word to my R Gruppe compadre, Guenter Kehr, who I climbed many Alpine passes with on the epic Twinspark Racing 2010 Bergmeister Tour: “More a piece of art than just a book, but great stuff for any Porsche guy and a great memory to the late Cris Huergas.”
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I spent part of yesterday writing a blog for the Classic Retrofit website covering Patrick Motorsport’s latest project car: a 1986 Porsche hot rod 911 Carrera 3.2 backdated to ’73 RSR style.
Originally supplied as a factory black 911, Patrick retained the original colour and went with blue as an accent shade inside and out. The blue interior is all about impact and takes zero prisoners. The result is a head-turning build that took the Sponsor’s Choice award at the recent Werks Reunion in the Corral de Tierra Country Club, Monterey.
Jonny’s electric air conditioning for air-cooled Porsche 911s was part of the spec for the award-winning build, hence the blog on his website. Patrick Motorsports did a video of the A/C in action, showing a reduction of 30°C at the dash vents versus the ambient temperature. No doubt that was impressive, but the additional spec of the car looks equally impressive.
The builder went through a rough spec on a video shot at the Werks Reunion prize giving. It apparently runs a turbocharged engine, later transmission (I presume this means G50), big brake conversion and more but if the story of what sounds like an interesting build is available online, I couldn’t find it. I think I understand why this might be.
We can all allow what is everyday in our world to feel normal and unworthy of mention. As we do more cool stuff on top of cool stuff, the cool stuff becomes normalised and starts to feel old hat and uninteresting to others. If you were a chef and knew how to poach the perfect egg, poached eggs would feel boring to you. Egg plus boiling water: what else is there to say? But there is lots more to say: poaching the perfect egg was a challenge that took me boxes of eggs to master. Cooking is simple when you know where to start, but that does not mean that a Michelin chef explaining how to poach the perfect egg is something no one wants to know more about.
I have now been writing about Porsches for over fifteen years and have spent most of my working days with at least one 911. They feel very normal to me, so I am probably guilty of skipping across stories that others who don’t spend as much time around these cars would find quite interesting. Clients who have been in this game much longer than I have can be quite blasé about their work on road car restorations or engine rebuilds, but these things are always of interest to owners and they are always worth mentioning.
The weight of life’s other projects – raising kids, maintaining investments, running a business and keeping clients happy – sometimes makes it inevitable that we will take things for granted. Mindfulness and other practices of increasing awareness can help us fight this and focus on what is important, but there are not enough hours in the day to do everything, including enjoying the fruits of our labour.
If your 911, 944, Boxster or GT3 has begin to feel normal and perhaps even boring, stop and think about that. These cars are definitely not boring, so have you just normalised ownership? If you’ve managed to keep Porsche ownership fresh across decades of ownership, how have you done it? I would be interested to know your tips and techniques.
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A friend in Ireland has asked me to help find a buyer for his RHD 1971 Porsche 911T, which he has owned since 2013. It is a matching numbers car and has covered an indicated 90,000 miles from new. I have just had the car brought back to England and am offering it for sale on his behalf (now sold – many thanks).
Built in Stuttgart at the end of 1970, the Porsche was sold through AFN and registered as YBH 760J on May 14th, 1971. The history pack for the car shows no details of its early life in the UK, but it ended up having a colour change to red somewhere down the line. In 1999 it was sold by a London garage to an owner in Somerset.
History with that owner shows a series of bills including torsion tube replacement in September 2000, conversion to pressure fed cam chain tensioners in 2001 at 74,500 miles, a new fuel pump and several services. The car covered minimal mileage through to 2003, when it was MOT’d with 75,428 miles on the clock.
The car came back to the market in 2009 and was sold to Brian Kane, a well known air-cooled Porsche specialist at Harmonstown Motors in Dublin. Brian imported the car into the Republic and carried out a detailed restoration, including a conversion to non-sunroof spec using genuine new Porsche parts from the scuttle panel back. There is a huge spread of parts bills right through Brian’s ownership, showing that more than £10,000 was spent on parts alone from 2009 to 2012, with Brian’s labour and other trade services on top.
After several years ownership and enjoyment, the car was seemingly involved in an accident in Ireland at the end of 2012. The parts bill from Porsche Centre Dublin including many genuine panels, a new Porsche oil tank and genuine heat exchangers totalled over €27,000, but an assessor’s report of the time shows the “concours winning car” car had a pre-accident value of €80,000, so the second restoration began on a jig with a Porsche approved repairer. Interestingly, a letter from the insurers in the history shows the damage was not recorded.
This restoration during 2012-2013 put the car back to its original factory silver and into the condition seen here. Bonnet, bumper, front wings, front wing joiners and front pan are all new and rust free. The engine and transmission were rebuilt by a noted Irish specialist in 2017 and prepped for regularity rallying. The car was running on throttle bodies for a time but has now been put back on Webers and runs very well, starting at the first turn of the key. It drove from Dublin to Northamptonshire with no dramas.
The Porsche 911’s rallying history was an important connection for the owner and this car carries a distinct sports purpose theme, with the hood-mounted Cibie Pallas lights painted in body colour over a simple front bumper, the twin-centre exit exhaust and those classic 6 x 15″ anodised Fuchs all round.
The interior was planned as simple T/R spec until the decision came to sell the car, so the interior may be something for the next owner to work on. The leather trimmed steering wheel, dash, seats and door panels are in good order and the seats and original seat belts are as one would expect on an old 911, so they may simply be retained or upgraded. The carpets are original and a new carpet set would give the cabin a lift.
There are a few areas that would yield improvement with a bit of time spent. The engine could do with a new sound pad and detail, a geometry and ride height adjust would be a good idea, I would add an RS bonnet prop as the lights are quite heavy and there is some wiring here and there that could be tidier. But as a vintage Porsche ready to drive, with body restoration and engine and transmission rebuilds all done, it seems a good opportunity to obtain an affordable pre-’73 911 that can be modified and enjoyed.
The car is still registered on Irish plates but it is not a hard job to import to the UK and there should be no duty to pay. Most cars brought back into Britain go back on their original registrations. This one is now MOT and road tax exempt as it is over 40 years old. An MOT may be required as part of the re-importation process. If the car is being exported to further afield, then the paperwork is easily done.
The asking price for this honest 911 is a sensible £54,995 and I am happy to assist potential buyers from the British Isles and beyond. Inspection is recommended and that can be done at the storage facility. The car is stored near Junction 11 of the M40. Drop me an email with any questions.
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Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
I visited well-known Porsche collector, Frank Cassidy, last week and enjoyed a guided tour of his new Boxengasse development. Set in a beautifully landscaped 100-acre property in the heart of rural Oxfordshire, the Porsche-only business park is a bit of a game changer.
Independent Porsche specialist Autofarm is about to move in as Frank’s first tenant. Their new buildings combine old-school brickwork, smooth polished concrete and modern LED lighting and insulation and offer more than enough space to lay out a free-flowing Porsche workshop. The transformational workspace is one of the main drivers behind the relocation and is something that the company’s current premises on the other side of the M40 cannot facilitate.
Hats off to Autofarm bosses, Mikey Wastie and Steve Wood, for embracing the challenge to relocate the comfort and charm of their loft-like current reception space, which I really love, and take such a familiar customer experience to the next level in an all-new environment. I’m excited to see how Autofarm develops in the new location.
Oilcooled Porsche Festival
Helping that settling-in process along is an Autofarm/Boxengasse open day sometime in spring, followed several weeks later by ‘Oilcooled’: a two-day festival over a mid-August weekend aimed at air-cooled enthusiasts.
Oilcooled begins with a Saturday track day at Silverstone, then a cruise back to Boxengasse near Bicester, where an open-air cinema will show a Porsche-themed cult classic that is rarely seen on the big screen. Oxford Fine Dining is supplying the catering and Onassis Events is bringing in cars and enthusiasts in from all over Europe for a big open day on the Sunday.
These two days of Porsche-centric activities have been split up into separate components, so one can drop in and out as preferred. I can envisage arriving for the Saturday evening cinema in some sort of Porsche convoy, enjoying a warm August evening in a beautiful landscaped estate, surrounded by friends old and new in what will hopefully become a regular fixture on the air-cooled calendar that doesn’t require a round trip of several hundred miles to attend. Tickets are now on sale on the Boxengasse website.
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