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:
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:
There’s been good interest in Porsche tractors at auction all year, so it will be interesting to follow this 18hp Allgaier Porsche tractor through the auction at Brooklands Historics on November 25th. Porsche tractors are a fascination to me and, while prices have still not gone crazy, their simple, honest and ego-free nature makes them a superb place to put a bit of cash in my view, especially if you have a bit of land to enjoy them on.
Having kicked off the people’s car concept with the VW Beetle, Porsche turned its focus to the land, creating a range of strong and reliable tractors for the masses. The first designs were registered in the early 1930s, but after WWII, only companies that had been making tractors before and during the war were allowed to produce agricultural machinery. So Porsche put its clever designs up for licencing and partnered with two companies: Allgaier in Germany and Hofherr Schrantz in Austria.
Produced as “Porsche System” products, more than 125,000 tractors were built under this arrangement from the 1950s until 1963. The old Zeppelin factory was used by Mannesmann, who took over Allgaier production from the mid-1950s.
The Brooklands tractor is an 18 hp, two-cylinder model from 1957. Originally supplied to an estate in the south of France, it eventually passed to a Belgian doctor in 2009, who restored it to immaculate condition and stored it in his drawing room. It was later sold to an historic racing driver and is now coming up for auction.
Brooklands estimate the tractor at £10-15k, which sounds about right to generate interest. The end result probably depends on how much activity it attracts amongst European buyers, so it could even go higher that that. I spoke to my friend, Michael Hodges, at Brooklands and got his take on the current classic market, which is broadly in line with how I am finding things.
“Things remain buoyant as far as historics are concerned, with a consistently high sales ratio. Last sale was a little down, but the market has hardened. As you know, the market has been high for a very long time. We find that classic Porsches remain good when realistically priced, but some sellers have unrealistic expectations.
“Some market commentary – generally from the less informed – is not helpful, nor accurate. Certainly, at the high end of the investment market, buyers are more cautious but it’s inappropriate to suggest that’s representative of the market as a whole.”
I am hoping to make it to Brooklands and watch the tractor go through. With 140 lots including 44 vehicles consigned for this sale, there are a few more interesting cars open for bidding, including a LHD Gen 1 GT3 in Viper Green with 39,500 kms, which is estimated at £115-140k. The sales results will make interesting additions to my Porsche Valuations database. More news from Brooklands later.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
One of the rare RHD Porsche 964 RS Touring models has just sold for quite strong money at the Silverstone Auctions Porsche sale, creating an interesting data point for my Porsche-centric classic car insurance valuation service.
Everyone knows how the 964RS was the first 911 to sport the desirable RS designation. Like the 2.7 RS, the cars developed from racing and were available in two model specifications: Lightweight and Touring. Most 964RS models were Lightweights, with just a handful of RS Tourings being built.
I’ve come into contact with the RHD Tourings several times in the past through dealer clients and RS-owning friends. I value a couple for insurance, and it was one of my valuation customers who emailed me from the sale to let me know how things were going.
The RHD Porsche 964RS Touring just sold at auction was chassis number 491385. Built in early 1992, the spec included black paint with black trim, sports seats with the tri-colour inlays and a sunroof. The RS was sent to JCT Brooklands and – would you believe this – did not sell until September 1993. The consigning entrant was owner number five, who purchased the car from Josh Sadler at Autofarm in 2002.
There’s a bit of paperwork with the car, which presumably confirmed the declared mileage of just 51,000, albeit that confirmation is not mentioned. It had some mechanical work at 46k with my former clients JZM Porsche, who fitted an upgraded exhaust . The RS then had a thorough inspection at 51k miles, with full service, four new tyres and chassis alignment carried out by the guys at RPM Technik in Buckinghamshire.
“Early lots failed to hit their bottom estimate,” reported my source at the sale. “I think they over-egged the estimates, so some of the sellers might be disappointed. I was surprised at the [high] prices of the front-engined cars, though.
“The RS shot up to £185k very quickly, so it was obvious that many people had come specifically to bid on this 911. The pent-up demand released and then bidding began to slow down. It finished at £195,000 plus commission and VAT, which totals to £219,375.”
This tallies with what I was expecting the rare RS to achieve: not quite £200k, but not far away from it. I have updated my RS data accordingly – just goes to show what difference rarity with low mileage can make in what is currently a very slow market for ‘regular’ Porsche sales.
Pics from the Silverstone Auctions website
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
Words fail me today as I have just learned of the death of Chris Drummond: a friend and Porsche enthusiast, who I first encountered back in 2008. After a long-term love affair with the Porsche marque, Chris had finally found his way to the impact-bumper 911s, ended up at my forum at impactbumpers.com and started to understand how modifying Porsche 911s brought the best out of them.
Chris Drummond – Apprentice Porsche Outlaw
Up to that point, Chris had owned two 944s, a 968, a 964, a 993, three 996s including a Turbo S, which he had at the time that we first got together. He went on to add a Cayenne S to his history, but of course it was his G50 Carrera which outlasted the rest. Once he found IB, he enjoyed a few runs in various modified impact bumper member cars and loved the loud and lightweight ethos. He soon set about dumping weight from the 3.2 coupe and making the car sharper.
Various Chris D threads began to appear on the board, including “how do I upgrade my brakes?”, “what big end shells do I need?” and “who do I talk to to refurbish my Fuchs?”. Chris embraced the modifying big-time and loved to tinker at home. We got together to talk about lots of stuff, including maybe doing some work together, and spent an afternoon discussing how to use social media to promote his HR business. All the time we were talking shop, I knew Chris just wanted to talk about Porsche and of course that never changed.
Once I went solo freelance in 2010, I went off to work flat out on other stuff and only bumped into Chris here and there. He was always smiling, always friendly and always had plenty of questions! The IB crew around Chris’s house stayed busy with him and no doubt he made some great friends with his car.
The years ticked on, we caught up every once in a while when he needed an updated insurance valuation. The last time was in May 2015, and all went quiet until the following year, when he emailed me out of the blue to tell me his news. It was absolutely shocking.
In June 2016, Chris Drummond sailed out of New York as part of a crew on the final leg of the Clipper Round the World yacht race. Five days into the voyage and 200 miles out to sea, he suddenly developed serious chest pains – they thought a heart attack. Medics on board stabilised his condition and called on the Canadian air force to airlift him to urgent medical care in Halifax. Here’s what happened next in Chris’s own words:
After two weeks hospitalisation in Halifax, Nova Scotia I was told my heart was OK, however following tests and scans they identified that I had advanced secondary cancer of the liver. The medical team in Halifax, who were absolutely brilliant, arranged for me to have further tests and biopsies when I returned to the UK to find out where the primary cancer was located.
Following scans and biopsies in mid-August (2016), my oncology consultant told me the primary cancer was in the oesophagus, that there was no cure for my condition and that any treatment would be about prolonging life. The prognosis was that I had between 12 and 18 months at best, depending on how I responded to chemotherapy treatment which I started in early September.
January 2017: I’ve now completed the six-cycle regime of chemo and will have a scan at the end of this month to find out whether the chemo has arrested the cancer or not. The mid-term review after 3 cycles of chemo was pretty positive so fingers crossed.
Chris Drummond’s Race Against Time for Stand Up to Cancer
Chris was a man who always saw opportunity, and he quickly realised his time was limited in making the most of this one. Once he had told his family what was going on, he set about launching a public campaign to bring awareness to the early diagnosis of this disease, noting that he had experienced symptoms of esophageal cancer for nine months before doing anything about it. By the time he saw a doctor, it was too late.
The story resonated heavily with me, as a similar thing happened to my brother-in-law, David, who had lived with pain for months before talking to someone. The end came swiftly for David and also for Chris. After posting his final blog in April, Chris finally passed away last week.
When Chris emailed me to share his news about cancer, he asked for ideas to help with fundraising. He had a few things going with PCGB and Cancer Research, involving using the Porsche to draw attention to the message, but all input would be greatly received. The journalist in me focused on the deadline of 18 months away, so I considered that there was some time to get this organised. Chris was not urgent, so neither was I! I had a few thoughts, but was busy on so much other stuff that I didn’t really get my first ideas going until a month or so ago.
Today I went looking for JustGiving links to finish the thing before emailing Chris, and found out he had recently passed. I am shocked at the speed of his exit and angry with myself that I didn’t move faster – he deserved a good morning’s fun with an IB crew that held him in high regard. I will miss him but that is no good to his cause, so the energy now is in how to support what he hoped to achieve.
Organisations including Porsche, PCGB, Autofarm, Driver’s Collective and more picked up on his campaign and publicised the fundraising, but the total is currently less than £8k with a target of £30k. Here’s how his supporters say that you can help to increase this total.
We can’t stress enough how much it would mean to the family and everyone who’s supported Chris’s campaign, if we could reach his charity target of £30k. If you haven’t donated already, then please text RATP88 £10 to 70070 and together we could achieve Chris’s wish. Please continue to share and show your support.
Chris’s car will be auctioned for Stand Up to Cancer later this year, we will crack on with some fundraising events and find more ways to contribute towards his target. The Race Against Time JustGiving page is here: please give whatever you feel is appropriate to express solidarity. He was a good guy and any one of us could be there but for the roll of a dice in an incredibly random universe.
More thoughts on this in due course – RIP Chris and all my love to his wonderful family. My heart goes out to anyone also experiencing this pain: I know there are a few people suffering. Do not waste time in going to help ❤️
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