by John Glynn | Oct 14, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Road Trips
I had been talking to Phil Bell at Classic Cars about doing something for the magazine, and making suggestions regarding feature cars. A mate of ours over there is big into MoPar (short for Motor Parts, and all to do with big old Chrysler-built muscle cars) so I had flown some pics past Phil’s window. He was looking for a needle in a haystack: a rare groove muscle machine. Eventually my buddy Alex found it: a low mile, 2-owner Hemi ‘Cuda.
The Hemi is a legendary engine, and that motor in a Barracuda was seriously hard core. Phil loved the pitch, so we set up a shoot and met the owner one Sunday morning in the hills above San Ramon. I heard the V8s rumble while they were still a couple of hundred feet below. Suddenly the Hemi was here and it had brought a friend: another Hemi, but a Road Runner. They were absolutely jaw-dropping; Alex had struck gold!
I love Road Runners. They are plain and simple bits of kit that make a huge noise and an even bigger statement. “You don’t like big cars? Too bad!” says a Road Runner. One flick of the gas pedal is a big injection of space between it and whoever is behind. The ‘Cuda however is a whole ‘nuther thing. It is mean and takes no prisoners. It is grand theft auto, gun-in-the-glovebox stuff. The Hemi ‘Cuda is is the archetypal automotive villain.
Our Hemi owner was the nicest guy in history. I was so pleased about the story that went with this car. He had put heart and soul into achieving a factory restoration rather than a candy-assed, chrome-splurged show job. This car retained all of its manufacturing ‘defects’ for authenticity. All the nitty-gritty details had been meticulously photographed before disassembly and put back exactly as they had come off: paint splashes on the distributor base, unpainted screws under the hood, tiny differences in the door gaps side to side. Guys like this operate in a different stratosphere to the rest of us.
After the shoot, we all went out for lunch at some Mexican place that wasn’t up to much. Even though I am fairly new to Mexican I know bad stuff, and this was very boring food. Beware of Danville Mexicans that flatter to deceive! We went our separate ways afterwards, but vowed to hook up again next time we are over. It was an honour to spend time with the owner and his cars, especially in slightly cooler weather, but still with oodles of Cali sunshine to make the Plum Crazy colour really fly.
Can you believe that this is a regular working guy and yet he has 4 fully-restored Mopars in his garage and one more on the way? The Hemi is probably a half-million dollar car and none of the rest are that much cheaper. I know it’s not about the money – we didn’t even mention it on the shoot – but still, it goes to show what one guy can do when he really puts his mind to it. As we say in California: awesome!
by John Glynn | Oct 12, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars, Road Trips
It was Saturday. We were headed back to Sears Point for the CSRG races and perhaps a feature shoot if we found the right car. First things first: coffee. We followed John Gray up 680 to Peets in Pleasant Hill, and met up with Mr Bob Tilton.
Suitably re-caffeined, we fuelled up around the corner (my first time sticking fuel in the SC) and headed north. Our three-car convoy to the track was good fun. There we said hello to Cary Noel, a fellow Grupper who owns a super Silver and Blue Carrera RS rep. The weather was glorious but that is one unmercifully hot sun, so sunscreen was the order of the day. I use factor 50+: translucent-skinned Irish people are always better off playing it very safe! 40 degree heat certainly takes it out of a body.
We had our wristband press photo passes so could go wherever. We did some paddock shots just in case we decided to sell an events piece to Classic Cars magazine (decided not to bother in the end) and I ended up at the pit lane exit, about 6 feet away from Can Am cars doing 150mph+ on the entry to turn 1. Never been so dumbstruck by fear and excitement in my life; I couldn’t quite believe they had let me take pics from there. But then the camera couldn’t cope and I was only slightly better! Here’s a pic (imagine insane amounts of noise and speed):
Back in the paddock, things were really hotting up, with temps soaring way past 40 degrees. We took a load off at John Thornton’s racebox, chatted with John, Fuchs-meister Harvey Weidman and Gray for a while before he and Tilton could stand it no more and shot off for lunch at an air-conditioned pizza shack.
Sears Point Porsche
We stayed for the wicked BBQ, before deciding to try and nail some pics of John T’s very groovy Emory-built 912 racer. We gave it our best, but had left some gear in the Martimobile from the day before, and John had to go get ready to race, so we left it for another day. It’s a great car though, and was worth the effort to get the few shots Jamie did.
Lesson learnt number three: Empty all gear into the works van once back at base camp.
While Jamie went to get some tracking shots up at the top of the circuit, I headed for the grandstand to watched some racing. I came down after the Jags had finished – just before I started to melt. Sadly, one of J’s lenses had not been so lucky.
Expanded by the unmerciful heat, it had taken a minor bump while mounted to the camera body and pulled the screws out of the mount, breaking its electrical contact ring. Hard to believe, but there we were: down one lens and fading fast. We decide to say our goodbyes, head for the ranch and try a few things to re-equip ourselves for our Mopar shoot the following day. Varmint had been sitting in the sun all day so was nicely warmed up…
by John Glynn | Oct 8, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
I’ve now been back from the USA for 36 hours. Our trip took us to lots of really great locations, so there are some fascinating features to write up over the next few weeks. Not everything will make it into a magazine though, so I thought I’d tell the story of the trip via a few blog installments.
My flight over on Virgin Atlantic was great. Arriving at my buddy John Gray’s house late at night meant I didn’t get to see much of my new 911 until the next day. In daylight, there was a bit more sun damage to the paint than I had been expecting, but I wasn’t that bothered: it still looked like good value for money. Driving it was initially a little weird, as the clutch had a slight on/off action that I think has since calmed down. We soon got the hang of it, and it was an entertaining daily driver while out there.
Buying a ride rather than renting is definitely something I will do again. There were a few minor jobs we had to do to the SC while in CA, but I’ll detail that stuff in a later post.
Our first full day was a mix of settling-in stuff. After picking up some coffee at Peets, we took a spin out to Sears Point raceway, where the CSRG race weekend was taking place. Jamie and I got some press wristbands and bought our tickets (it’s a charity do, after all). The weather was properly hot – about 110 degrees – so we came back in the early afternoon and played with the Lipmobile: a Honda Cub which had just been ridden 3,800 miles from Chicago to California, by my erstwhile photographer friend and colleague. Here’s a pic:
Later on, we took a trip to the unit our host rents with a couple of other petrolhead buddies. They have some very impressive stuff there! Roommate Alex is restoring a pair of Road Runners, and was working on a ’63 Dodge Polara owned by a drummer with a successful local rockabilly band. The Polara was originally a 440, but it now had the 426 Hemi motor fitted. Talk about sweet! I could just imagine the shoot, so I pitched it via email to a UK magazine who never came back to me, which was a bit disappointing.
Here’s a pic of the Polara in the workshop. It is inch-perfect sixties drag nostalgia, with slicks on the back and a Hemi in front, all wrapped up in black with hot red trim – pretty cool! An evening in the company of big block hot rods could only be followed by dinner at Max’s Diner, with a pint of Coke float, curly fries and a world-class burger. Heaven!
That was day one, and there’s plenty more to share. I’m keeping clear of jet lag so, as it’s 1 am here, I’m hitting the sack – will continue this tomorrow.
by John Glynn | Sep 20, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
I collected my ‘new’ classic Porsche 911T project this weekend. Worked out quite well as the seller (good friend and superhero, Mr Bosman) was coming over for the Goodwood Revival, and offered to trailer it across on the ferry for me. Here was a kindness I could not refuse.
We met early today and I borrowed Bos’s trailer to bring the car to a buddy’s secret storage yard, where some nice project cars are stashed in sea containers. I wanted the T out of the way for a few months, while I get finished with the projects I have on the go, pay for this new one and get my garage building moving on apace. Once I have a better grip on my to do list, I’ll drag this out again and get properly stuck into it as a spare-time R Gruppe build.
The easiest thing for me to do (to get this back up to speed fast) would be to buy a bodily ruined SC, break it and put all the mechanical bits into this after a refurb, and I’m pretty sure that’s how I’m going to go. Rusty SCs are getting ever more common in the ‘States now, so it should be easy enough to find something mechanically sound that would otherwise be on its way to a breaker. I will put my hot rod 3 litre motor into this one – not the tired original from a scrapper.
This T is in good condition to look at, but it’s not perfect. It has serious paint issues in the luggage compartment for example, where the painter has simply painted the whole thing rather than taking stuff out. It’s not a big deal for me, as I am ripping out all this early stuff anyway (hate fiddly twin batteries and that messy-looking fusebox) and reworking the loom to run an in-dash fusebox. I will also bin the early dash column switches and run IB stuff. Same with engine bay wiring etc. Also same with suspension and brakes, though I will not run a servo. Oil system will be bespoke: a front nose cooler with a relocated tank – things like that. The oil tank that came with this is one step from scrap anyway so that has to go somewhere else.
None of this is said against my buddy, as it comes to me almost exactly as it arrived at Bos’s place from Canada. He started doing stuff, saw the work involved in getting it nice and it was just not a project he fancied finishing, so it has come to me instead. I have wanted to try early car ownership since driving one of Tuthills early rally cars many moons ago, so this should be fun to play with. I don’t want to build anything remotely factory original: it is hot rod all the way, with no “bolting back to standard” in this car’s future.
by John Glynn | Sep 17, 2009 | Classic Porsche Blog, Modified Porsche Hot Rods
Sheena Easton had the look back in the day, but this R Gruppe Hot Rod Porsche 911 T has it now. The owner has asked me to keep him out of the limelight, but I can’t resist sharing some pics. This car looks amazing: almost exactly how I want my own longhood, which arrives in the UK in just over 24 hours.
You just can’t beat the look of these custom Minilite equivalents – available through secret channels only heroes know about. I also love the centre filler, the track rubber, the wider front arches, the simple bumper etc. Race numbers are the icing on the cake, and are not for show: the car competes at the hands of both husband and wife.
The power in this one comes from a custom Euro-spec 2.7 built into a ’66 2.0 case. It runs 46mm PMOs, custom cams, a strengthened 901 transmission with 915 LSD and some sweet internals. The front end is Carrera (classic early-car mod) and the exhaust is SSIs with a Monty muffler. The owner did everything himself, including the 8″ flares and the paint. The inside is wicked also but I’ll save those pics for another day.
I’ve put a hat on now, just so I can take it off to the man who built this car. Thanks for the inspiration and for sharing some details. The car is perfect – hope to see it in the metal one day!
