Flicking through the latest on Porsche’s Newscast app in bed this morning, I found this 911 video. It features a 991 Cabriolet in white with red top: I would find the right names for both these things but the Porsche car configurator is crashed at the minute on both sides of the pond. Blame me.
As ever, the copywriter seems to have taken inspiration from an ’80s actualize-your-ultimate-potential self-help manual (“and naturally, it’s about dreams: immensely precious dreams”), but the car and the photography are just beautiful. I don’t think I’d change a thing before ordering this.
You can’t beat a nicely shot Porsche 911 video!
edit March 6, 2012: Had an email last night from a video mate. “That 911 cab vid on your blog is terrible pretentious clinical fluff. Don’t condone it!” I guess I am sentimentally attached to 911 Cabriolets – can I help my bad taste?!
The 2012 Essen Techno Classica is now just three weeks away. With seventeen halls packed to capacity by car manufacturers, classic car clubs, historic vehicle dealers, parts suppliers and more, Techno is the world’s biggest classic car fair: I never miss it.
It’s an incredible feast of Porscheness, as well as a great place to see cars from historic collections of the manufacturers including BMW and Mercedes. Every year brings something new, and the auctions and privately-owned cars offered for sale around the fair are also quite exciting.
Where to stay for Essen is always a dilemma. I’ve done Dusseldorf and trained it to the show, Essen and walked in, nearby Oberhausen and driven in and without a doubt walking is the best option. Driving is ridiculous and the train should be the alternative to walking. Parking near the show is IMPOSSIBLE so don’t even consider it: park down the road and catch a bus or cab if needs be. I’m staying at a hotel 7 mins from the show by tube!
I’ll be at the show as Mighty Motor Media: solo and with UK and European clients. I’m arriving Wednesday and leaving on Saturday morning (last show day is Friday). It would be great to meet like-minded Porsche fans and perhaps a potential new social media customer at the fair: drop me a line if you plan to be there and maybe we can hook up for a coffee?
You can email me at mail@ferdinandmagazine.com. Let me know your plans for Essen and whether we can get together.
I’m spending two days after the show in that part of Europe, looking for some Porsche features. If you’ve got something that would make a good story, give me a shout!
I’ve always had a thing for estate cars – they look better than most saloons. The problem with being a Porsche fan is that there is no estate to choose from.
Recently, I’ve been looking at Cayennes to buy, but the majority of aftermarket specialists I spoke to said keep away. I was tempted to ignore them and go for it, but it’s spending £10-12k on a big car that costs thousands a year to run, plus the fuel, and whatever else goes wrong. I like my Subaru Outback and could better spend Cayenne money on my garage build and loft conversion projects. I needed a Plan B.
Ever since I saw the pictures here, I’ve had deep lust for the 924 Break/Kombi/Shooting Brake. There isn’t much about them on the Interweb – just some snippets of magazine articles, repeated ad nauseum – but I know it’s a conversion by Artz of Belgium from back in the day. Having seen the DP Motorsport ‘Cargo’ version at Essen one year, I thought the earlier 924 base was better looking, but for sure the 944 is a nicer platform. No one does these anymore, so I needed help.
Before I sold my last Mk 2 Golf GTi, my best mate and expert metalworker started talking about doing an estate conversion and I said I’d rather do an estate conversion on that Grand Prix White 944 I own. Ideas began to fire and that was it. The more I thought, the less I wanted to chop up a (quite rare) non-sunroof early 944 with relatively low miles and nice history; I’d rather restore that as-was. What I needed was a donor car to play with.
eBay has just thrown up a likely candidate: unloved but running 944 with some rust in the floors and a personal plate we can sell to cover some costs. The rusty floors are handy, as I want to size up an Impreza Turbo running gear install. Anyway, I’ve bought it.
*Edit* The eBay car was seriously misdescribed, so I went through eBay and got my money back. Now looking at S2s and low mile 924s. In the meantime, I have bought a Porsche Cayenne.
I was down with some Porsche friends last week, doing a piece for Ferdinand magazine and talking about some other exciting stuff we have coming up together. Spent a few hours catching up, and then Jonas took me on a tour of his highly impressive facility.
As we walked through the showroom of Porsches for sale, one looked very familiar. “This is a car we sold and then bought back. It’s had a Cup engine with loads of 993 RS bits and a full respray: lovely car,” said the salesman. I knew all about it – it was Peter Heaton’s 993 hot rod that I shot for 911 & Porsche World magazine last summer, as part of my monthly ‘You and Yours’ feature slot.
Have to admit to being slightly disappointed that it was back on sale. Rolls-Royce jet engine specialist Peter seemed properly in love with the car when we worked together, and the 993 was exceptional throughout. I loved this shot of the front wheel: printed it for my office wall, and put it on my business cards!
I shot the car as it came out of the paint shop after a big-money repaint in Polar Silver. Peter arrived in friend Paul’s BMW M3 Coupe and that was what prompted me to buy my saloon version a few weeks later. The whole day was good fun and also nice to work with C&N Customs in Middle Aston again (they painted the car).
Price has gone up since the last time it was sold: Jonas is asking £44,000 for it. See the full Modified Porsche 993 for sale details here. Worth checking out if a unique 993 is on your list of wants.
Porsche shared a link to nice little video today, featuring Klaus Bischof and the cars of the Rolling Museum at the Philip Island Classic. Bischof talks about 935/78 “Moby Dick”: the longtail 935 that won the 1978 Silverstone 6 Hours by a masterful seven laps, and went on to reach 235 mph on the straight at Le Mans.
“Moby Dick was just to show the technique of turbocharging,” says Klaus. “You need a lot of fuel in this car: I was a mechanic with Moby Dick and we had to refuel every 35 minutes, so for preparing and running at Le Mans you can’t sit down! But it’s a fantastic car and shows what you can do with a 911.”
Porsche celebrated 60 years in Australia by bringing some very special vehicles from the company’s museum in Stuttgart, Germany: a 1987 962, Moby Dick and the Carrera GT you see in the background here. Moby was also at Rennsport later in the year.
Eight-time Bathurst winner and all-round legend Jim Richards was patron of the Queensland meeting. As well as treating competition winners to rides in his new GT2 RS, Jim was given permission for takeoff in Moby Dick for a few laps around the track. “I won’t give it a hard time,” says Jim to Klaus, the old mechanic replying to take it out and give it the beans: i.e. 820 horsepower (some 935s had 845 hp on tap!).
The final edit doesn’t show the pace seen in some period footage, but you can’t blame Jim for taking it steady. As Klaus says: “there is only one real Moby Dick: all the others are replicas.” Wouldn’t look good on the CV to be remembered as the guy that harpooned Moby.
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