Jersey Porsche mate Jamie sent me this pic a while back and I am well overdue in sharing it. It’s his 1972 911S, now running as an ST. Originally Viper Green, the car runs a 2.9-litre flat six built by Bob Watson, so goes well enough.
Jamie hillclimbs the car on the island: you’ve got to do something with a car like this on an island with a blanket 40 mph limit! Given that it’s 911-50 year, the most recent Bingham hillclimb as part of the Jersey Motoring Festival had a significant Porsche focus, so no doubt his beautiful car turned a few heads.
“We had 30-plus 911s from the 1970s to date, including RS 4.0, original RS and various 993RS etc all doing parade sprints. Healeys were over in force from the UK, so there were a lot of very nice, very quick cars taking part. We had our work cut out for us versus the 450bhp race-prepped Healeys, but we gave it a good go! Just nice to be out in the car, having fun with like-minded people.”
Original Viper Green 1972 911S running as ST. Is there any finer expression of the roadgoing early 911? That 76 912E shell I’ve got in the USA is heading in this direction.
Jamie’s car appears in this video from the 2012 event. His 2013 entry led to fourth in class and lots of Porsche fun. Good job mate!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QGSUjDebFQ
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Chris Harris videos continue to evolve and entertain. His latest production (apparently filmed on his own) is this one below on the new Porsche 991 GT3: a world exclusive drive of a development car, somewhere in the hills of southern Europe.
Talking to GT3 owners, some are still cross at the technical upsets: PDK-only, electric power steering and a non-Mezger engine. But many more like this fastest, revviest, most-button Porsche, and covet new-spec trinkets like the centre-lock matt silver wheels and that racecar front airdam.
What most are not liking is the financial pain to take to get it. As a good friend and GT3 owner said the other night: “I paid £70k for my first GT3, £80 for my second one and the latest is getting on for £100,000. Porsche are quoting £30k plus my low-mile Gen 2 GT3 RS to get into a new one, rising to £40k when I add some spec.”
The problem is not the lack of forty grand. It’s the airiness of Stuttgart thinking and pricing, the value (and trust) lost in what is still a satisfying machine to drive and the emerging sense that Porsche will keep jacking up the price, every time there’s a new model. You can’t pin all those price hikes on inflation.
Over on Apple’s product treadmill, owners are increasingly fed up with the latest dangling shiny bit mocking their spend on the last upgrade. An iPhone 5 upgrade costs a small fortune, only to find Apple shoving a must-have ‘S’ upgrade out six months later, costing contract holders similar daft sums to upgrade.
Apple has tackled upgrade apathy with some brains, retaining the camera and overall operating system from 4S to 5, so the upgrade was just to have a bigger phone and slightly faster processor. For people who use their iPhone mainly as camera and web device, a change made little sense, so the faithful can wait for the 5S and a step up in camera technology, and let the fashionistas take the 5 to iron out all the bugs.
In contrast, Porsche’s move from 997 to 991 GT3 threw out all the old stuff and went straight to GT3 5S: a big change in spec with a whacking hike in price. Before today, looking at this car on paper begged the question, “is all this new tech really that great?” Masterful demonstration of the tech at work dismisses any notion that this isn’t an improvement.
The facts and the feedback make this a no-brainer. The video rips the numbers to perfection and Harris is Porsche’s best salesman. There is no reason to avoid this car when he shows you what it can do.
With no access to the car and none of this talent behind the wheel, I must talk philosophy. As Harris puts it, a car with this ability, in this shape and making this noise should be the last bastion of a manual gearbox. But with the GT3 now so well engineered, the downside to a manual would be cockpit confusion when really pressing on: the driver becomes a log jam in the flow of speed from chassis to tarmac, and that is not what GT3 is all about.
Will Porsche build a GT3 5S-S with a manual transmission? Not in the short term. We’re now talking about Porsche past – manual transmission as ultimate go-faster bit is history. As Porsche sees things, if you want a manual box, you’re hankering for old technology in an older car, so just buy an old car.
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Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
Belgian Historic Rally Champion, Glenn Janssens, thanked his lucky stars last weekend after walking away from a huge 100-mph crash in his amazing Tuthill Porsche 911 rally car.
Rallying the opening event of the season at Haspengouw, Glenn had just shifted into fifth gear around a right-hand bend when a hint of oversteer escalated into something bigger, leading to a series of barrel rolls at very high speed.
The landscape surrounding the crash was ploughed fields in usual Belgian style, but the ground was frozen solid. Imagine crashing on rutted concrete and you get the idea. This video shows the damage suffered, and also shows the guys walking away: the only happy news for Janssens fans from this event.
Tuthills have been building rally cars for over thirty years and crashes are part of the world they live in: I’ve got plenty of crash damage pics from the workshops over the seven years we’ve been working together.
It’s never pleasant to see a car bent and broken, but it’s always very satisfying to see a Tuthill Porsche roll cage work as intended. This won’t be an easy repair but I’ll keep you up to date with the rebuild as it unfolds.
I’ve got three girls, but that doesn’t mean all television is My Little Pony. My two youngest are quite technically minded and like to know how stuff works, so Discovery Channel’s How It’s Made is perfect.
Here’s a piece we just watched together – the two youngest are home from school with colds this week. How It’s Made filmed this at Brembo’s manufacturing plant for ceramic brake discs. It’s pretty fascinating stuff: no wonder ceramic brakes are not the cheapest things out there.
Porsche 911 997 GT3 models with centre lock wheels built between February 2009 and April 2010 were recently recalled for an issue with the rear wheel hubs and bearings. Transport authority notices note that “in rare circumstances, the wheel hubs and wheel bearings on the rear axle may break. If the rear wheel hubs and bearings break, the driver may lose control of the vehicle and create a hazard to the driver and other road users.”
Porsche representatives have allegedly told other mags that hubs and bearings “don’t break” and are being replaced “to standardise the revision intervals”. But owners discussing this in a Rennlist thread note that Porsche Cars NA has been telling owners not to drive their cars until the replacement has been carried out.
A number of owners on GT3 forums have shared how their hubs did break, causing their cars to go out of control. Something else to check if you’re in the GT3 market and another big reason to buy from a Porsche 911 GT3 specialist. This video below shows what happened when one owner’s hub gave out at speed on the Nurburgring. Much harder treatment than the majority of owners will ever give their hubs, but still pretty scary when you know what is coming!
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