by John Glynn | Jan 15, 2015 | Art and Books, Classic Porsche Blog
Fellow 911 owner, artist Nicolas Hunziker, has just uploaded another “can you guess what it is yet?” Porsche painting to Youtube.
The first few minutes had me waiting for something discernable, then a 356 hove into view, then I thought I saw something else: surely Nicolas can’t be painting a water-cooled car. The end result is special and was very familiar – reminded me of a press photo maybe? Something I had seen before. The final dénouement was obvious.
Porsche Unexpected with Nicolas Hunziker
The book Porsche Unexpected was released last year. Telling the story of the incredible Ingram Collection, I bought two copies: one for me and one for a friend’s birthday. I had them both shipped to his house in California and not been able to get there to read my copy yet, but I hear it is very good. I’ll let you know!
Check out Nicolas’ interesting video below. These movies are fun but can be longer than you think (this is art, not speed art), so allow some time to enjoy the experience. Ciao!
by John Glynn | Nov 28, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Modified Porsche Hot Rods, Porsche People
Our friend Thorsten in Germany has shared some cool throwback pics of his early 911 in driver training sessions with a previous owner and a certain Mr Bell. It’s sweet enough to find pics of your car on track in a previous life, but how much more delightful to discover Derek Reginald Bell MBE sitting behind the wheel.
One picture shows the pitlane lineup, where I spied another mate: Bata Mataja, with wife Rosa and his super-cool Porsche 356 race car, Blue Baby. Bata has shared umpteen tales from the Blue Baby archives with Ferdinand, so it was great to send him a previously unseen photo of the car.
“Running Blue Baby at Laguna would have been very early on in my racing days. I’ll have to think about what club it was with: it may have been a Porsche Club event, but not too sure. Great picture: I think I beat all these guys! 😀 ”
I am also pretty sure these are Porsche Club driving days. Asking Thorsten led to discussions on his car and where it came from – it is a very cool story.
“Well, I was fortunate to find the car I was dreaming to find at Dunkel Brothers in 2003. It looked right and felt even better. The seller was a very nice guy that knew his stuff: he had taken good care of it and it was streets ahead of the other cars I had looked at within my budget.
“A good honest car, we instantly clicked and I have loved my time with it to date. It is tied to many priceless memories: I drove it out in LA for twelve months on Mulholland, at the German Autofest, Palm Springs, getting hooked up with the RGruppe right away.
“Then it came home to Germany and has since done local rallies, trips to Gmünd, drives through France, Belgium, The Netherlands and to Classics at the Castle in England. It’s even been on the proving grounds in Weissach.”
It certainly proves itself in these pics. Thorsten thinks some of the DB shots were taken at Sears Point, but I know this DB pic was taken a few weeks ago at Collier Dade Airfield in Florida, where our Jamie recently worked with Derek again, this time on an official Bentley shoot. A well-matched pair of Porsche fans: the pic still makes me laugh. Perfect!
![Video: Rob Dickinson Singer Porsche Explained]()
by John Glynn | Nov 10, 2014 | Modified Porsche Hot Rods, Porsche People
“It’s not a revolutionary idea; taking an old car and adding some new stuff polishing it up a bit and… ‘tah-dah’. It’s not revolutionary: lots of people have done it, especially in this country with Mustangs and ‘resto mods’ as they’re called over here. I don’t think any company has been crazy enough to do what we’ve attempted to do in such a cross-the-board, spectacularly over-the-top way.”
Whatever about polishing Porsche parts, the likeable Rob Dickinson has certainly polished the rhetoric regarding his Singer 911s since our first meeting, when Jamie Lipman and I were the first guys Rob invited to see his creation, and shoot Singer number 1 on the road in California. Back then, the Singer idea was still forming: what base car, what market, what price?
Rob Dickinson Singer Porsche
Unveiled in 2003, Rob’s Bahama Yellow RGruppe ’69 E hot rod was an inspiration for me, and for many others who followed their hearts to the air-cooled 911. This latest video on Singer eschews the same old Singer shots and lets the organ grinder talk on how his dream has developed. In fairness, the approach could have led to Rob digging a rather large hole for himself, but I think he makes heartfelt sense of his concept and product. Kudos, mon ami.
“Freeman Thomas started this club (RGruppe, with co-founder Cris Huergas) for hot rodded sports purpose early 911s in 2001, so I immediately joined the club when I built my car in 2003, and my car became quite well known in the RGruppe. As I enjoyed being part of this ‘clique’ if you like – this team of guys who had similar tastes – I started to see these expensively executed hot rods.
“My little car was done on the cheap, but a lot of people started to show up to the yearly meetings of the RGruppe in very expensively restored early 911s which had big engines shoehorned into them, and spectacular brakes, and some of these cars were better than others. I happened to drive a particularly well executed version of this car, and was just blown away at how refined and sophisticated an early 911 could actually be.
Steve McQueen references are so important
“That was part of the germination of this idea that these cars don’t have to be rough-and-ready hot rods with limited appeal. The 911 is so evocative – Steve McQueen references are so important for the vibe of this car (and everything that surrounds this car is important) – if someone was to restore a 911 so that it had a wider attractiveness for a wider audience, you could probably appeal to that audience and make a business out of it.
“I started to see that, and the combination of how my car was reacted to in the taste-making world of Los Angeles with the aesthetics, and then I’d got in this car where the engineering had been well sweated, and I thought: put these two together and there’s some fun to be had and maybe some business to be done.
“We generally try and improve every aspect of the car, while honouring everything that is Porsche. We hate custom cars here at this shop. Maybe ‘hate’ is a strong word, but the idea that our car might be seen as a custom car makes me feel nauseous. Our car needs to be seen as a Porsche through and through. We only put Singer badges on our car for the sake of clarity: this is a Porsche 911 that’s been touched by us.
“Hopefully, it’s a line in the sand as to how good an air-cooled 911 can be that isn’t a race car. It’s very easy to build a thinly-disguised race car for the road, but that’s not something we’re too interested in doing. We want to do a properly rounded car which is properly usable, that can be driven to the office on a Monday and driven to the track at the weekend: it has that wonderful duality but just fine-tunes the focus a little bit.”
I have a feeling that the high-end hot rod Rob tips as inspiration is SHTang: the 3.6-litre early 911 built by WEVO for Steven Harris, but I might be wrong. I’ve done many miles in SHTang, but not driven a Singer yet, so can’t tell you how the two compare. That is the obvious next step.
Pics by JamesLipman.com for Car & Driver
by John Glynn | Oct 13, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Race and Rally
More bad news via email recently, when I received these pics of a crash involving the ex-Sam Gassel 1973 Penske Sunoco Porsche 911 RSR recreation at the 2014 Coronado Speed Festival. Sam bought the project unfinished from Gib Bosworth of Kremer ST replica fame, and built it into a very fine replica of the Penske car. It’s distressing to see it take such a heavy impact, but these things happen in racing.
The Coronado Speed Festival is part of San Diego’s annual Fleet Week, which is held at the US North Island naval base in San Diego to open the base to the public and recognise the contributions of San Diego’s military community. It is the US Navy’s only open-house event on the US West Coast.
Not too much information about the crash online, but it looks like it all kicked off in the first five minutes of qualifying. The pics suggest a wide mix of cars on track, and it certainly looks that way to me, having seen some video of the session shot from good mate Mike Gagen’s ’88 IMSA GTO Camaro, which was on track amongst a bunch of prototypes and a few 914s too.
If you’re thinking that a spread of cars from the 1960s to late ’80s on track at once is asking for trouble, you might be right. Regardless of fault in the incident, this is not a fun way to go racing. I can’t imagine that the car escaped lightly, which is very sad given how much work Sam put into this labour of love. Hopefully any damage caused to car and driver is entirely fixable (pic here from Flickr):
It was recently announced that America’s SVRA had been awarded stewardship of the Coronado Speed Festival from 2015. SVRA already organises some of America’s biggest historic motor racing events, so hopefully affairs like the RSR crash will become a thing of the past. Gagen reminds us of a famous saying amongst vintage racers: “your car already has race history, so the only history you can add is bad history.” ”
SVRA also oversees the popular Monterey Historics, so picking up Coronado and its sister events at Sonoma and Portland means that SVRA now runs all the major West Coast vintage racing events. Given some of the feedback on the cliquey-ness of certain race meetings, I’m not sure that is such a hot idea, but it is what it is. Hopefully my info is behind the curve and there will be room for everyone to take part. There is nothing quite like racing, California-style.
by John Glynn | Oct 13, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Market & Prices
A Porsche friend has entered this matching numbers 1979 Porsche 930 (911 Turbo) for the classic car auctions at the NEC Classic Motor Show next month. Normally my advice is to take care when buying at auction (i.e. what most auction buyers fail to do) but I have seen this car more than once, and it has always struck me as a decent example, so am happy to share it on Ferdinand. That said, buyers should still do their homework.
The car was found in California by Tuthill’s US buyer around the same time I bought my 912E. At the time, Tuthills were rallying that white 930 on Midnight Sun and I did think this might end up as a rally car. As quite a unique colour and spec – Bamboo Beige with dark brown Recaro sports trim – it was one of the first impact bumper 911s I was hoping would not be modified! Not my usual approach, but this was low mileage and really quite nice. Happily, it found a fine home as a road car.
On arrival in the UK, it was given a thorough inspection and much work was done to recommission the Bosch CIS K-Jet fuel injection system, including fitting a brand new fuel tank. Earlier this year, Paragon Porsche fitted new suspension, before it came back to Tuthills for a diff rebuild and new clutch. The car has only done 46,000 miles or so, but the owner has never shied away from spending money on it. He tells me he is selling to buy a horsebox for his daughter: how the other half lives!
The estimate for this car is £40-46k. As a left-hand drive, low mileage 930 in a rare colour, it may find the interested parties it needs to get some competition going on bidding. My only real bugbear is the polished Fuchs, but it would be easy to repaint the centres in proper satin black, as above. Then the car would look like quite a special impact-bumper 911, in my opinion.
