Following my brief daydream of 928 ownership after watching the Wheeler Dealers’ Porsche 928 episodes last night, I couldn’t resist a quick eBay search of what was available.
I kept my search under £1000 and found two: a 1981 example which was utterly falling apart on a £1500 Buy It Now, and a D reg model with no wheels, horrid rear spoiler, no interior trim and a dead engine for £800. Forgive me for not sharing links to either.
A quick check on Twitter before bed showed my mate Nick Appleton had found something rather more impressive: this 1993 5.4-litre GTS Auto in Amethyst.
The seller’s text is as follows: 1993 L registration finished in Amethyst metallic with contrasting silk grey leather/rubystone trim with small wood pack, spec includes eight way electric seats, air conditioning, electric sunroof, cup 1 17″ alloys, cup mirrors, 84,000 miles with full service history, stunning colour combination, very rare car in today’s market, very clean throughout, £15,995
It’s not the sort of Porsche I’m interested in spending sixteen grand on, but what a peach if it’s your kind of thing. The sale is here on eBay.
Hot on the heels of a day spent with suspension experts from KW Suspension, came a chance encounter with the EXE-TC experts at Tuthill Porsche.
Graham Gleeson is the brains behind EXE-TC: the suspension engineering company that has underpinned Sebastien Loeb’s many world rally championships over the last few years.
EXE-TC and Tuthill are closely linked in classic Porsche chassis engineering, and development on these joint projects is always ongoing. The EB Motorsport RSR and the Janssens dog box car are two Tuthill-built competition 911s that have run EXE-TC gear in testing, but road cars are also used to get street-biased products working properly.
The car seen here is an Albert Blue amalgam of classic components, combined by Tuthills to build one man’s perfect Porsche. This is running an EXE-TC development subframe to reduce frame torsion at the front of the car.
Surprisingly, the alignment was set to toe out: I’ve never gone for toe out on an older 911 but the test drivers (two names you would certainly know) both say it works with this set up.
There are still some areas needing work here, so development continues. An interesting encounter with Graham, and nice to put a face to the name.
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.
Finally found time last week to get on the road and visit my Porsche 944, which has been parked in a mate’s farmyard for a few years while I get this Ferdinand thing off the ground.
You might remember I bought the 944 for its 911 number plate a few years back. It had been parked up for ten years in a soaking wet garage. I knew it needed a few bits repaired, which then turned into plans for a full restoration.
I subsequently broke two front-engined Porsches – 924 and 944 – for spare parts that might be needed, and the whole lot is stockpiled. I’m not in any rush to do this job, but am certainly glad to have a simple early 944 put aside, as Porsche is not making any more of them. Though this project is not a priority, it’s nice to check up on the car every now and then.
Above is the sight that awaited me – the Porsche being swallowed by a hedge. It’s sitting on gravel, so the underside is still dry, and better it is well ventilated than in some damp garage or barn. Nevertheless, I’m going to drag it back to Porsche rust repair experts Racing Restorations at Pershore sometime soon, and allow Rob Campbell to work his metal magic.
Robert and I have been friends for over twenty years, so have done plenty of projects together. The team of guys there do exceptional metalwork, and the restoration repairs will be invisible.
We’re following the WEVO Porsche 356 crew of Steven Harris and Hayden Burvill as they rally through South America on the Great South American Challenge 2013.
Yesterday was downtime for the boys in South America. They spent the day visiting the nearby waterfalls, pointing me towards other rally resources – the rally website is getting some routes wrong – and attending to Madam Lola’s every need.
Madam is doing well, which is more than can be said for Hayden. “Picked up a GT (generous traveler) flu on the way down from SF to Rio. I’m into the runny nose and hacking cough day and feeling pretty rough, but some spanner work on Lola will distract me and make me feel better.”
Hayden facebooked the top pic of Lola in bits for obvious servicing checks, carb tweaks and wiring in the Yellowbrick GPS tracker. There’s a good pic of Hayden’s rear end on Chuck Shwagger’s blog, tweaking something in the driver’s footwell: I’m sure he’s not backing out the throttle stop.
Today is Day 5 of the rally. They start at Foz do Iguacu (NE of the centre of this pic). The route heads north on secondary roads, skirting the Brazil/Paraguay border, formed by the Paraná River. The river is the second longest in South America, and takes its name from local words for “big as the sea”.
Paraná swallows the Paraguay River on its journey south, then merges with the Uruguay River and forms the vast Rio de la Plata before entering the Atlantic. The scale of the river as they travel north alongside it should be an eye-opener for the rallyistes.
The road continues to their overnight in Dourados on the fertile river plain: 503 kms in all today – about 300 miles. I don’t know what the stage plans are, but no doubt H will fill me in later.
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