Jamie and I stopped off at West Coast Metric today en route to Los Angeles International, to say hello to legendary VW parts impresario, Lorenzo Pearson.
Lorenzo has a long track record in ‘making it happen’, so meeting the man himself was the perfect sign off to our week in California. Making things happen is what all the best car guys are about out west.
Pearson is also a massive Porsche nut, with some of the most beautiful classic Porsches imaginable in his compact, eclectic, exceptional collection. The 356 and 911 seen here are two of the most impeccably detailed classic Porsche hot rods out there.
Mr Pearson and I spent so much time being rally car fans, I didn’t get the iPhone camera out once, apart from taking a picture for middle daughter Ciara, of a pirate cannonball salvaged by Lorenzo in the West Indies. She’s got the biggest pirate thing in history going on at the minute.
I had to share this official Porsche video. It’s an excellent bit of filming and editing, shot on location at the Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone, showing the GT2 RS at its wild best.
I’m posting this video for all those who insist that the only Porsche worth having is some obscure race special that was built in low volume back in the day, before being delivered to owners who drove the tits off them and sent them to the great Zuffen House in the sky.
It’s usually the case that the loudest shouters have never sat in their ‘one true Porsche’, let alone driven it. A large part of the attraction for some seems to be the unobtainability, but how pointless is lusting after the unobtainable?
The GT2 RS is another Porsche destined for this fate. All are sold out, there are no more to be built and many are bound to be destroyed. It’s just a matter of time before today’s 10 year-olds are tomorrow’s forty year-olds, banging on about how the 997 GT2 RS is the “only 911 worth having”, despite this video being the nearest some of them will ever get to it! As Jean-Baptiste Karr put it: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”!
I understand enthusiasm for a model, but not to the exclusion of all others. There’s something good in every Porsche, even if the best one can say is that it keeps the AG coffers full for Porsche Classic fun.
Anyway, all this rambling brings me to my point! Rare-groove snobs usually reckon that Porsche is trading on past glories and can’t build sports cars any more. To them we say: stick this mental 911 in your pipe and smoke those rear tyres, baby!
I was out with the Porsche World magazine crew all day yesterday. We were at Bruntingthorpe, shooting a feature for the magazine’s upcoming 200th anniversary.
The article’s premise will be revealed in the mag in due course, but here’s a few shots from the day. The regular contributors had never all gathered together in one place, so it was fun to hang out in the sunshine with so many cool cars and good people.
Coolest one there? For me, it was between a friend’s beautiful 3.0 RSR and the 964 RS I brought to the party. It might sound crazy but, on the basis that I drove a number of fast track laps and then got to bring it home again at the end, the 964 RS just pipped it. If the asking price was closer to £35/40k, I’d have bought it by now. It is the last word in hooligan transport and would keep me young for ever.
My first 964 RS job would be to junk all the heater controls and put manual levers in! Maybe I should just stick an RS engine in my Carrera 3.0 instead, and get Hayden to help me add ultimate suspension and brakes. Now that would be incredible.
I’ve spent the last few days thinking about my great California Porsche feature trips. The times I’ve spent out there have been absolutely magic: great weather, great drives, great cars and, above all, great friends.
Friends are key to what classic Porsche, and the Classic Porsche Blog is all about. Sharing proper Porsches with friends – and I include blog followers and magazine readers in that category – is the whole point of what I do. It’s about the mission: not the money.
I was led to this train of thought by a recent video discovery. This is two Porsche friends enjoying their 914s in sunny Southern California. The sun is gorgeous and the soundtrack perfect. Good times, no doubt about it.
Behind the joyous visual lies a tinge of sadness. The driver of the camera car, and man who posted the video, is no longer with us. His name was Howard Dranow and, if the tribute thread here and the amazing Howard Dranow forum here are anything to go by, he was an inspirational character and a good Porsche buddy to many, many Porsche people. Anyone who leaves this sort of positivity behind has spent their time on Earth well.
RIP Howard. I’ll be thinking of your video next time I’m out shooting Porsches in your glorious home state.
If you’re not freelance, bank holiday weekend Sundays are all about taking it easy. If you are freelance, then the only difference between Sunday and any other day is that the post office and some petrol stations are shut. If there’s a job to do, you do it!
Supercharged Porsche 968 magazine feature
I got a call the other day, asking if I wanted to write a feature on a supercharged Porsche 968. The owner was coming up from the far end of Britain and would be at Castle Combe for the PCGB gathering. Could I get there? Yes. If there was no photographer could I cover the pictures too? Errr – a trepidatious yes. Sooner or later, you have to affirm aloud: ‘this is where I want to go!’ and start heading in that direction.
I left home early to go scouting locations west of Bath. Rain en route wasn’t the best news ever, but there were a few hours before our shoot meet: I kept driving and bode my time. The run down through the Cotswolds was excellent and set me up for the afternoon. I told Sean the sat nav to take me the short way, so he sent me down every back road from Banbury to Bath via Burford. Very cool!
Once in Wiltshire, I found some locations fast enough, then went and grabbed a bite in a local pub while waiting for the 968 owners. They arrived soon after and we got cracking.
I’m not going to claim it was a pro job from start to finish, but we ticked enough boxes to do the feature justice. These two are a couple of outtakes. I’ve made notes on my performance and will work on improving, but I am slowly climbing that learning curve.
The run home took me back across the Cotswolds through a beautiful sunset, and I didn’t spare the Subaru’s horses. All in all, I’d call it a good day!
911 & Porsche World magazine have put the R Gruppe Grand Tour on the front cover of this month’s issue. This is the news stand version and not the subscriber copies.
To say I’m pleased would be an understatement: the Grand Tour was one of the best events yet, so to document it in my first words-and-pictures feature, and then have it make the cover is a dream come true.
The feature is spread across eight pages and looks good. For me, there were other pictures that better relate to the in-betweens of the piece – most of the shots in the feature came from the two on-the-move shoots we managed to grab. So, knowing what went on behind the scenes, I think it looks me look a little repetitive on style, but I don’t envy the guy who has to choose the pics! It has come out well and a number of people have complimented me on it, which I really appreciate.
All in all then, I’m over the moon: a Porsche World cover on your first attempt is a killer endorsement of a great story. I have to pay tribute to my editor: Steve Bennett hails from the heyday of Cars and Car Conversions and is the easiest guy in the world to work for. He just lets me gt on with it and runs the pieces as they leave my Mac. Apart from one bit, when I was looking for a way to describe how fast the temperature fell when we left the 40-degree Autoroute and headed up into the Swiss Alps on day one. I said it fell ‘like a log off a waterfall’ which I then changed to ‘dog off a waterfall’, but ran in the magazine as ‘quite suddenly’! LOL – gotta love stuff like that.
My next words and pics is a supercharged Porsche 968 coming through Porsche World next month. Looking forward to seeing how that turns out.
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