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!
by John Glynn | Nov 18, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Race and Rally
Double World Sportscar Masters champion and rare Porsche parts reproduction specialist, EB Motorsport, rounded off its 2014 historic racing race season with a top twenty finish and two class wins at the legendary Spa 6 Hours.
Fielding all three EB Motorsport racing 911s over the course of the weekend, brothers James and Mark Bates claimed class wins in both the Pre-‘66 GT and FIA World Sportscar Masters races, before starting the headline event.
As torrential rain soaked the Francorchamps circuit during the classic Spa 6 Hours endurance race, the pair used their considerable experience to bring EB’s 1965 911 race car home inside the top twenty. Only one other 911 from the extensive start group claimed a top twenty finish: the short wheelbase car of Le Mans winner, Raymond Narac.
Spa 6 Hours for EB Motorsport Porsche
“We set a much-reduced race calendar for 2014, and Spa was our target event,” said Mark Bates, who finished the race under red flag conditions in P19 overall. “I made my 6 Hours debut last year sharing a short wheelbase 911, so was excited to race with James in our own car this year. Achieving a top twenty finish in atrocious conditions within reach of a winning Le Mans Porsche driver is a very special feeling.”
“It’s been a landmark year for me,” smiled James at the end. “A hectic workload and the impending arrival of my first born shrunk our race schedule, but the EB Motorsport cars are very competitive. Mark put some amazing laps together in horrific conditions and showed established Spa regulars a clean set of heels. It’s a cracking finish to the 1965 911 race car’s debut season.”
EB Motorsport sponsored by Millers Oils
EB Motorsport’s Porsche 911s are sponsored by Millers Oils, after dyno tests proved that Millers lubrication freed more horsepower from EB’s 3.0 RSR race car. The trio will be joined by a fourth in 2015: a 911R recreation, currently in build at EB’s Yorkshire HQ. “This one features the full range of EB’s 911R parts, including our featherweight doors at just 4.5 kilos a side: with the hinges,” says Mark. “Target weight is 860 kilos: we’ll see how close we can get.”
Alongside the 911R build, an exciting recreation of the 1974 Porsche 911 2.1 RSR Turbo casts an intimidating shadow, but that’s a story for another day!
See the full range of EB Motorsport rare and lightweight reproduction Porsche parts at www.eb-motorsport.com.
![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 | Nov 8, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
I’ve been swapping emails with friends at McLaren regarding Jenson Button’s future (not that they know anything) but another man at the Woking F1 team has a different connection to Ferdinand. Richard owns this Porsche 911 SC hot rod, which recently went back on the road after a long laid-up period.
I’ve been following the project for a while, after meeting Rich via EB Motorsport. The Porsche fan bought some of Mark’s Porsche 911 SC RS bumpers for narrow-body 911 models including the SC, and added a ducktail for fun.
“I was very happy with the EB Motorsport parts,” says Rich. “The ducktail engine lid fitted straight on with no issues, and the bumpers were good as well. I modified the smile at the front to make a centre bracket, which looks good and supports the front edge over the whole width.”
Gulf Porsche 911 SC
The 911 has just come out of paint and Richard has shared some new pics of the project. Normally, the Gulf tribute schemes involve light blue all over with orange stripes running from under the bumpers across the cars: it’s a look I’m normally not that sure about. Richard’s decision to go orange with the bumpers and carry a modified stripe theme is a good one: the car looks very cool.
“I’ve owned this Porsche 911 SC for more than 18 years. This is rebuild number three! It’s a pretty standard 3-litre SC engine, that has carried us more than 100,000 miles so far. Interior is RS-like, with 993 GT2 seats.
“Last painted eleven years ago, it came off the road for a few years when an oil leak required the engine out to repair. My wife was then ill with cancer and, after she passed away a year ago, my mates got me sorted with a barn with lift and it’s been keeping me occupied ever since.
“The engine was a filthy mess when I dropped it out, but we’ve done what it needed and tidied it up. It’s running very well: just needs lots of super unleaded!”
It’s always sad to hear stories of loss, but the aftermath of these traumatic events can be motivational, as we seek to cope with the loss and make sense of what comes next. My brother-in-law, David Bolger, was claimed by cancer over a decade ago: that was my wake-up call to share the Porsche love. What I do today is closely linked to his passing, and I think of him often.
Kudos to Rich for a car that looks good! It cheers all of us up to see long-owned air-cooled cars modified nicely, not just put back to standard and shoved on the market. A good way to move on: and well done to your mates for helping out too.
by John Glynn | Oct 31, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
The lightweight Porsche 911R race car in build at the EB Motorsport workshop has almost reached the end of its bodywork journey and is now being prepared for paint. Earlier this year, EB added another metal fabricator to their engineering business, who was also experienced in restoration. The new man has extensively rebuilt the rust-ridden chassis, replacing the huge amount of corrosion in the base chassis with nice clean metalwork.
Pictures I received of the project in progress made it look very nicely done. More shots just shared by Mark at EB Motorsport show the 911 with EB’s light composite body panels (handbuilt in the same workshop) attached, including front wings, doors and rear quarter panels. The roof is still steel, which begged the question why the guys didn’t use the EB Motorsport fibreglass roof panel to replace the original metal panel.
“Simple answer is that the lighter EB roof panel is perfect for replacing sunroof holes on cars originally equipped with a sliding roof,” says Mark at EB. “On a car without a sunroof, we would be putting a lot of work in to save two kilograms, so we’ve opted to leave things as they are and look elsewhere for weight savings.”
EB Motorsport reports a number of 911R kits sold to satisfied customers. I know a few people who have opted for a 911R conversion on their challenging SWB 911 restorations, using EB’s lightweight Porsche 911 doors and aluminium hinges, full front wings with built in sidelights, 911R tail light conversion and composite rear quarter panels. Target weight for the EB 911R is circa 860 kilograms: that would be quite an exciting achievement.
Also in the EB project stable is the 2.1-litre RSR “Baby” Turbo replica, which now looks little short of insane. Mark has been working on the flat fan conversion prototyping and recreating the magnesium oil cooler housings as per original race cars. He is also building a new front end for his Harley chopper. So much stuff going on up in Yorkshire: kudos to the guys there.
