Good times on the California Hot Rod Porsche Tour 2012 last weekend, as we made our first-ever trip to the monthly RGruppe Porsche meet at EASY in Emeryville, San Francisco. EASY stands for European Auto Salvage Yard: this long-standing meet was recently featured on Wayne Carini’s Discovery TV show.
The weather here is terrific. Temperatures in the mid-70s (24 degrees Celsius) ensured a decent turnout, and it was good to see old friends and meet a few new ones including EASY top dog, Jim Breazeale.
We spent Friday at WEVO in San Carlos and WEVO’s Hayden Burvill (above) also came to EASY. The rather battered Porsche 911 known as Rabbit was his transport Porsche of choice: a 1973.5 2.4-litre 911T, running the original CIS injection. Was fun to convoy with it across the San Francisco bridges and out of the city: more on that one later.
Other cars spotted at EASY included Joey B’s beautiful Beetle with 356 running gear and a spotless ’76 911 Turbo (above) in special order Albert Blue, which we’ve arranged to shoot for a feature this week. So many cars, and so much fun to come!
Had an email from my buddy Magnus Walker in LA last night, inviting me to the premiere of his Urban Outlaw Porsche film on September 28th. Assuming it was in California, I was forced to decline, but Magnus clipped me ’round the ear and told me it was London, as part of the Raindance Film Festival. Needless to say, I’m in!
Raindance is Europe’s leading independent film festival. An unmissable celebration of filmmaking, Raindance nurtures, supports and promotes independent films and filmmakers from the UK and around the world.
Ex-pat Magnus is thrilled to be showing his first short feature at Raindance in London, where his love for Porsche began. “Porsche began for me at the 1977 Motor Show: one look at the 930 and I was hooked. As a boy, I had the Turbo poster on my bedroom wall in Sheffield, but moving to LA was where it really started cooking. It really is the land of opportunity, especially the early 911 kind.”
California allows Porsche immersion like nowhere else on earth. No way could a UK-based Magnus have built a collection like the one he’s amassed over twenty five years in LA. In one sense, this premiere brings a virtual collection back to the UK, to be savoured with British 911 fans before heading off to the wider world. Walker agrees.
“A chance encounter with Canadian film director, Tamir Moscovici, earlier this year was the start of what was to become our Urban Outlaw short documentary film. Tamir’s movie vividly captures the soul of my Porsche passion/obsession & drive to succeed. Thirty-five years after that fateful London Motor Show, we bring our own motor show back to the capita: I hope we’ll get some Porsche fans there to enjoy it with us!”
You’ve seen the movie trailer previously on Ferdinand Magazine and the Classic Porsche blog, but it’s here again to remind you. UK hot rod Porschers and anyone else who wants to fly in are more than welcome to join us at the Apollo Piccadilly Circus on the night of Friday September 28th. Should be a great evening’s entertainment!
Fabulous top Magnus pic by our friend Maurice at Dutchman Photos, from his Total911 feature on the wild man.
Fresh from last month’s WEVO cover in 911 & Porsche World magazine, Team Glypman have the front page of this month’s Total 911 magazine with Mike Gagen’s Matt Black Porsche 911 RSR replica.
Designed by Neil Freestone, the cover features our buddy Mike Gagen’s 911 RSR, shot on the move in San Diego. Based on a ’69 T, the car is an R Gruppe stalwart on its fourth iteration.
Reading the piece a month after I wrote it, I’d really like to change the whole thing around. That’s pretty much the same for everything I write! The article is still fun to read, though the Jamie quote I included (my title here) was changed to “this car is sick”. If you’re wondering why I would write that, now you know I didn’t. As Lipman says, “this car is sicker than Gary Glitter” and no mistake.
No column this month, as the mag has knocked them on the head! You’ll have to buy Porsche World if you want a double dose of my prose in print this September. Here’s the start of the feature:
The Art of Stealth
Built in sunny San Diego, this skunkworks 911 RSR has the look of an SR-71 Blackbird and makes just about as much noise. What’s not to like?!
Built along a natural harbour, San Diego is a seafarers’ paradise. Entering the city on the legendary San Diego Freeway, we pass signs for Navy bases, and the submarine station at Point Loma. Warships of the US Pacific Fleet at anchor in the bay are waterborne Star Wars technology: nowadays, low radar signature is everything.
San Diego is all about stealth. This is the home of Stiletto: an advanced hull design that “passively dampens the visible and acoustic signature”. Trapped air bubbles suppress stern wake energy, also reducing noise from movement and machinery. The Navy’s soon-to-be-scrapped Sea Shadow stealth project also lives in San Diego; moored in a once-classified submarine salvage barge at Mole Pier.
Stealth plays heavy on my mind as I follow Mike’s Gagen’s monster black Porsche down through San Diego’s Granite Hills, towards our city limits shoot location. The car screams “look at me” louder than a fat man in a wetsuit, but the driver is so possessed with stealth, he’s driving to the shoot with the engine off.
Behind the wheel of our Nissan rental car, I’m struggling to keep up. Gagen’s a veteran track addict and Porsche Club of America instructor, with the stickers to prove it. Despite my screaming the auto gears in this Marlon-Blando Eurobox, the switched-off RSR is getting away.
Maybe it’s sticky tyres and a stealth paint job stymieing my senses, but Mike’s machine seems to make better use of gravity. Hammering down Mount Helix at a decent rate of knots, the big black 911 seems more magnetically attracted to the bottom than my slabby silver hatchback. Yes, black is more magnetic: that’s what this is.
I can’t recall a busier two weeks, ever. Porsche stuff everywhere is totally brilliant, but a bugger if you’re trying to find time to blog!
I’m in the middle of writing three Porsche features, two of which are nicely linked by the video clip at the bottom. One is the story of my recent trip to the Nürburgring 24-Hour with the Falken Tyres GT3 R, and the other is the WEVO GT3 Cup-engined 912 we call PVX.
The Carrera GT in the video was taken on a lap of the Nürburgring by games developers looking to gather data. They put the footage on a video involving some of the worst narration ever. Like “the brakes are incredible: the harder you push, the better they work”. FFS!
The link from this to WEVO is Hayden Burvill (Lord WEVO, below) engineering the closed-course speed record Porsche Carrera GT at Talladega Raceway in 2005, with driver David Donohue (DD & Jay Leno, above. Proper pic mix up, this one) and a Porsche team led by Norbert Singer. Hayden didn’t volunteer the information, I had to drag it out of him. But it’s a good story: worthy of a feature one day.
The PVX story is in next month’s 911 & Porsche World magazine. The Falken words and pictures piece will run in Total 911. Both are brilliant, but I would say that!
The July issue of 911 & Porsche World magazine just landed on the mat. It’s an interesting edition, with a 924 group test, Cayman R UK drive and the story of Manon Borrius Broek: a Dutch heiress who has accumulated a beautiful collection of Porsche machinery.
I’ve had a flick, but not read any feaures yet. In all honesty, there’s a good chance I won’t. Like most journos, reading magazines is looking back in time. We finish a piece, send it, and look forward to the next one. I usually speed read my own articles, to see what the mag has done with layout and check for any typos, but otherwise I point myself ahead.
That is not to say I ignore the magazines – I definitely do not. My first port of call in any magazine or newspaper is always the letters page. Here we get a golden opportunity to gauge ambient temperature amongst the readership: what they think is hot and not.
Custom Porsche 911s & Porsche World Magazine
This month’s Porsche World carries a great letter (Rise of the Replicas) from John Hammond Jr in the US. John gives the thumbs up to Porsche World’s ‘hot rod’ group test last month, but cautions against the rise of what he calls ‘cookie cutter’ hot rods: the margarine creations of a backdated 3.2 with a center filler cap, recipe repro seats and vacuous roll hoops. “If we’re not careful,”says John, “it will be like the kit car world, where every man and his hound wants to build a Cobra kit car, to the extent that owners of genuine Cobras become tired of being asked what kit they used.”
Not surprisingly, I agree with John. Nothing irks more than a lack of imagination. We’re living in a time where unlimited online inspiration, vinyl wraps and energetic new paints make creating something different a little bit easier, so where are those cars? The scene is certainly starving for them.
Jamie and I have just shot some very unique, proper hot rods in the US, and I’m tracking some European builds that look right on the money, so they are out there to be found. Help is on the way for John Hammond Jr, and all those looking for down-home hot rod spirit from their Porsche periodicals.
God bless the boys and girls who want to stray from the herd: they’re the ones keeping things interesting!
Awesome shoot with Jamie Lipman today. We took a Diablo Red (named by us) Porsche 911 RSR backdate to Bethlehem, New Hampshire on Rapture Day.
The angle I had in mind was take a cool 911 to the start of things, at the end of things. So far no end, but it was a fun morning, touring the town and unleashing some divine Porsche havoc.
Porsche 911 RSR backdate in Bethlehem, New Hampshire
The car is an ’84 3.2 Turbolook that’s been substantially revised, with steel RSR flares, classic low-fat interior, WEVO transmission and suspension set up and a 3.8 litre Rothsport engine.
We shot the car next to the Police Station and in the roads around the town. I’ll let you know what magazine it ends up in.
All the time we were working, I had this shitkicking U2/BB King track playing in my head. LOUD. It’s still playing!
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