Just had this photo (below) from Jeff Gamroth at Rothsport Racing in Sherwood, Oregon. Jeff is the US distributor for EB Motorsport Porsche parts and the pic shows a package of EB Porsche body panels arriving at the Rothsport workshop in time for trailering to Rennsport Reunion V, which takes place next weekend at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California.
Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway bills Rennsport Reunion V as “the world’s greatest gathering of Porsche race cars and the drivers who drove them to victory. Hosted by Porsche Cars North America, Rennsport assembles the widest variety of Porsche’s historic racing models from the nimble 550 Spyder of the mid-’50s through the mighty 917 and 956/962 of the ’70s and ’80s to the highly successful RS Spyder of the last decade. There are seven groups in which to enjoy the racing action as they navigate the technically demanding 2.238-mile road course and The Corkscrew.”
The previous Rennsport Reunion was held at Laguna in 2011, to coincide with the launch of the 911. I enjoyed the plentiful supply of great cars and catching up with Porsche friends from all across the USA, but the erstwhile presence of Porsche Cars North America’s marketing department and a few heavy-handed security guards was perhaps more pronounced than necessary, and there wasn’t much actual racing across the three days.
Consequently, I’m not feeling urgently in need of returning for this one, but Jeff will be there, ably assisted by EB Motorsport boss, Mark Bates, fresh from his top twelve finish in the team’s ’65 911 SWB at this weekend’s Spa 6 Hours. Make sure to say hello to Yorkshire’s finest Porsche pilot if you’re at Laguna: no doubt he’d love to say hello to classic Porsche fans from that side of the pond. 911 owner and race artist Nicolas Hunziker will also be at the festival: big boss Heather has organised a ton of merchandise to bring to Rennsport, so say hello to those guys also.
Rennsport Reunion V 2015 Schedule
Trucks will start arriving for Rennsport Reunion weekend on Thursday morning, but the event kicks off properly on Friday, with cars on track from 8am to noon as the seven race groups get their first practice sessions in. There’s a lunchbreak for track workers and plenty of VIP demo laps before practice starts again from 13:20-17:20.
Saturday starts with qualifying for all groups from 08:00-11:50. Everything on track is worth watching, but the groups most fans will aim for is Group 2 (the Gmünd Cup) for Spyders and 4-cam 904s, Group 4 (the Weissach Cup) for 906, 908 and 917 and Group 6 (the Stuttgart Cup) for 956, 962, GT1 and the hot works 911 racecars.
The first three races take place after lunch on Saturday, with Group 2 on track from 13:05. That’s followed by the classic 911s and then the first race for the GT3 Cup Challenge. Racing wraps up at 15:10, so there’s less than two hours of racing on Saturday. The day ends with a pit lane concours that goes on for two hours. This is longer than the racing, so make of that what you will.
On Sunday, the first of two races starts at 10:45 and the second is finished by 12:15. Lunch break follows, with the first afternoon race for the Weissach Cup group at 14:00-14:30. Then comes the Group 5 race from 14:45-15:15 and finally the Stuttgart Cup event from 16.05-16:35. When that final flag drops, the event is over, so it’s a long way to go for just four and a half hours of racing.
Everyone will have a great weekend and I’ll likely regret my decision not to attend this Rennsport Reunion, but such is life. Too much going on here with the builders on site and lot of work stuff happening. I note that I’m not alone in my decision, with R Gruppe friends living much closer than me also deciding not to attend. I’m heading out to Cali next spring, so I’ll catch up with all the post-event news at whatever EASY meet coincides with my visit!
Had a bit of a Porsche blog sabbatical while working on other projects and building my new Porschehaus garage & office. Porsche’s Mission E concept, a new 911 with turbochargers as standard and Magnus smashing his 911 into a parked truck with a journalist on board didn’t get me excited enough to pick up a keyboard, but today’s news regarding Porsche’s parent Volkswagen kickstarted some action.
A year after this story first broke in the UK’s Sunday Times (as reported on ConsultEV), America’s Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the recall of almost half a million Volkswagen group cars sold in the US since 2008, after uncovering cheat software in Volkswagen group diesel cars designed to lower emissions when being run through emissions testing. The defeat device software knocks Nitrogen Dioxide emissions down for testing, but NO2 emissions are up to 40 times higher than levels permitted in the USA at all other times.
Toxic by inhalation, Kings College in London blamed Nitrogen Dioxide for 9,500 deaths in the city during 2010. The Nitrogen Dioxide emissions cheat software has so far been located on just five VW And Audi cars tested by the EPA, but every car found to be running the cheat software will incur a penalty of some $40k for its manufacturer. The maths apparently totals to almost $18 billion for Volkswagen in the US.
The bigger story will come from the fallout in Volkswagen’s other markets, paticularly back home in Germany. Also count on a slew of class action lawsuits against VW in the super-litigious USA. Perhaps the most bemusing aspect to this story is that emissions cheating is absolutely commonplace in vehicle testing. From my own conversations with car manufacturer-employed friends over the years, it seems that most if not all modern manufacturer ECUs are programmed with cheat software, designed to recognise throttle patterns common to rolling road emissions testing and shut down as much combustion as possible while the tests are being carried out.
A recent European Union report says that real-world emissions from cars can be up to 40% higher than seen in emissions approval testing, so this Volkswagen story is just the tip of the iceberg. You’d think the EPA would have known about this all along. I smell a rat in a Tesla lab coat, or maybe an EPA bod who stopped getting hush money. Either way, you know the discovery is no real shock to the emissions testing system: it’s a PR campaign designed to shock consumers and batter VW.
How does this affect Porsche? Well, imagine if your dad was fined $18 billion and 50,000 Americans started suing him. You would bloody know about it.
Regular readers will know that I occasionally sell classic Porsche cars for friends. My designer friend James has asked me to sell this interesting 911 for him, due to lack of time to use it (car is now sold – thanks all). It’s a 1985 Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera Coupe with above average mileage, but it’s had a huge amount of work done professionally and is now a very nice car. I’ll be putting it on eBay and Pistonheads later, so get in touch if it’s something you’re looking for.
Porsche 911 Restoration
Bought by James in 2007, this right-hand drive 1985 911 Carrera showed 185,000 miles on the clock, had been much enjoyed by its one previous owner and needed some restoration. James took the car to Tuthill Porsche and had the bodywork restored: the front wings were replaced, and common impact-bumper 911 rust spots like the inner front wing tops, front bumper mounts, windscreen apertures, sills and kidney bowls were repaired before the car was repainted in its apparently original colour of Viper Green.
At this time, the aluminium bumpers were also replaced with lightweight Ruf-style bumpers: anyone who has taken the bumpers off their impact-bumper car knows how much weight that saves and how much better the car feels to drive. Impact-bumper blades could easily be refitted if one preferred that style, or fit Speedline wheels for the full Ruf look.
Classic Porsche Maintenance Costs
The original colour is Speedway Green, which is a shade away from its current colour. Greens like this were not offered on 3.2 Carrera Coupes, so consider this car one of one. I have the bills for the last seven years and more than £10,000 has been spent on mechanical upkeep at Tuthills, including a full gearbox rebuild with replacement crownwheel and pinion, and a recent service, new brakes, new Bosch battery and MOT, costing £1500. This does not include the body restoration or the engine rebuild, both carried out at Tuthills.
I spent most of yesterday driving this 911 and it is superb on the road: as good as any 3.2 I have ever driven. The rebuilt engine pulls cleanly and is very strong on power: a treat to use with that rebuilt Porsche 915 transmission. The interior is good: Grey Beige leather with electric front seat height, all working fine. Hand stitched extended leather to door pulls and storage pocket lids: another factory option.
Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera for sale
Seats are in good shape, with only minor bolster wear showing on the driver’s side. The 911 also has a Momo steering wheel, which is very nice to use. The sunroof works well, as does the optional rear wiper on the flat rear engine cover. Rear seats are in nice condition: no rear seat belts are fitted. The car has a Sony CD player and comes with the jack, compressor and the original toolkit (that needs restoration but a nice job for someone).
I had a good look around the car and found a few minus points.
The sunroof seal needs replacing
Crack in the front bumper under one side grille
The leather dashtop has a small split to the left of the binnacle
Optional black headlining sagging around the sunroof
Front wiper arms a bit scruffy
One rear floor carpet is missing: an aftermarket mat is in its place
Heater works but service invoice notes that the flaps could do with replacing
Bodywork is always the big concern on a 911, and no 911 is rust free. Expect to do a bit here and there over the next five years to keep the bodywork in A1 condition. I can see a few little bits but nothing overly concerning. Other than that it looks a good example and drives exceptionally well on very good tyres. I will update this post with more history as and when it becomes available.
Classic Porsche 911 Prices
As for price, let me put my professional Porsche valuations hat on for this bit. Solid 911 Carreras in similar condition generally hit the market with 125-135k miles and now sell for about £38-40k privately. They also usually come with Fuchs wheels: a set would cost circa £1500. This car has clocked up about 25k miles since restoration, so now has 212k miles on the clock, but remember this Porsche has had a huge amount invested in its upkeep over the last eight years and I cannot fault how it drives.
Adjusting for the mileage, the absence of Fuchs – which most buyers will budget to fit – and making a generous adjustment for the condition issues raised above, I’ve set a selling price of £24,995 (now sold) to buy a great classic 911 that is ready to use right now.
The car is with me near Banbury. I can pick you up from the nearest train station (Banbury) or if you are up in Scotland or in Ireland etc, you can fly in to Birmingham and catch a direct train down to inspect. It is ready to drive home once taxed and insured. I can also organise transport to any UK port for overseas shipping. Contact me with any questions.
In the week that German prosecutors suspended investigations into twelve members of the Porsche supervisory board accused of 2008 stock market manipulation by a number of hedge funds, I resolved the battle between my Porsche 944 and a Worcestershire hedge.
Long-time readers will remember that I bought this early 944 on eBay in 2007, and collected it from Chichester, where it had lain unloved in a leaky garage for more than ten years. It was a case of out of the frying pan into the fishery for the 944, as I parked it on a friend’s farm & fishing lake, where it was subsequently absorbed into the landscape. Now he wants his farmyard back to build a house on, the 944 had to be dragged out of the way.
Arriving at the farm with Rob Campbell of Porsche bodywork restorers, Racing Restorations, both he and my farmer mate were sure that the car would be ruined after five years sitting in the brambles. Obviously I was on the 944’s side: I knew it had survived.
We set about pulling the hedge apart, but the farmer insisted we leave it alone so it looked better after the car was removed – hilarious given the state of the place, but he is the boss. I shifted a few thorns out of the way and hooked a chain onto the front anti-roll bar, we attached that to a tractor and the car was pulled free. Nothing like a nice bit of weekend gardening.
The 944 looks fine: plenty of dirt but there’s no more rust than it had when it was parked up. One sill is holed and the battery tray still leaks: we can easily sort all that out. I need to find a bit of storage near either Banbury or Daventry where the 944 can sit until my garage gets a roof on next month, then it can come home for a bit and I’ll do a few jobs, such as fitting a repaired fusebox and loom and trying to get it started.
Here’s some video of the moment when it was pulled from the undergrowth. A female friend compared it to childbirth: yikes!
Not had much time for blogging lately as I’ve been doing more building at home, continuing the office and garage extension (codename Porschehaus) that fell by the wayside when the original Ferdinand owners went bust, owing quite a lot of money to me and many others. It’s taken a while to get finances back up to speed, but lots of good things are now happening and the project is moving again.
I find building very satisfying. My Victorian house was built in the late 19th century, so part of the joy is in chasing materials: architectural salvage from hundreds of years ago. Unearthing a stash of two thousand bricks from the same kiln that fired my own house was a result, as was winning a truckload of blue ridge tiles for just 99p and paying the same for barn skylight windows (for parts).
I cursed a bit (ok, a lot) when I missed a round cast-iron Victorian window on eBay but have found a good skip guy, concrete supplier and source of steel beams not far from my house. Researching the best sources is all part of the fun when putting this stuff together, but it does eat time in the process. All this will sound very familiar to classic Porsche people.
Part of the fun of Porsche ownership has long been finding the parts to go with them, but as prices for cars have all gone through the roof, parts prices have soared, too. Gone are the days when a pair of Fuchs could be bought for £350, or a nice old pair of Recaros snapped up for less than £100. I sold quite a chunk of my parts stash for that sort of money to pay the mortgage when I first went freelance five years ago, but I still have a few bits remaining. Now that the Porschehaus project is back up to speed, I’m excited to plan for my parts to come home, as well as the cars, of course.
While dreaming of where this stuff will go, I had an email about a new Porsche-inspired lifestyle brand someone wanted me to look at. It made me wonder where the line was between gathering Porsche cars and parts with the odd bit of memorabilia, and adhering to the doctrine of a Porsche “lifestyle brand”?
I’ve made a few runs of Porsche-themed t-shirts and the odd grille badge over the years, but all that stops well short of defining a lifestyle. Friends often say my lifestyle is more pikey* than Porsche, which is probably fair enough, given the brick dust, Jack Russell Terrier, Irish accent and their lack of imagination (you know who you are).
I understand the attraction to branding, but the idea that people would define their whole lifestyle by the car they drive seems quite restrictive. I doubt that a majority of my classic Porsche friends would call their car a lifestyle choice: it is not about ticking each box in a catalogue.
Old-school Porsche boys got by without worrying too much about what t-shirts to wear when driving their cars. No doubt we are all bound by this cult, but don’t get bogged down in where “people like us” go or what we should be wearing. There are more books to read, more bricks to lay and many more cars to enjoy before our time here expires. Keep the faith, but don’t do it blindly.
* US readers, I don’t know what your equivalent of a pikey would be: perhaps a wheeler-dealer crossed with a hobo. Submit your definitions!
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