Jamie and I stopped off at West Coast Metric today en route to Los Angeles International, to say hello to legendary VW parts impresario, Lorenzo Pearson.
Lorenzo has a long track record in ‘making it happen’, so meeting the man himself was the perfect sign off to our week in California. Making things happen is what all the best car guys are about out west.
Pearson is also a massive Porsche nut, with some of the most beautiful classic Porsches imaginable in his compact, eclectic, exceptional collection. The 356 and 911 seen here are two of the most impeccably detailed classic Porsche hot rods out there.
Mr Pearson and I spent so much time being rally car fans, I didn’t get the iPhone camera out once, apart from taking a picture for middle daughter Ciara, of a pirate cannonball salvaged by Lorenzo in the West Indies. She’s got the biggest pirate thing in history going on at the minute.
I recently drove to Paris, to meet a Porsche on the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge. Lasting 37 days and 14,000 kilometres, and bringing competitors into countries normally closed to western traffic, Peking to Paris is the ultimate endurance rally.
Porsche 356 Peking Paris
Imagine arriving in China to find your rally Porsche waiting for you, along with one hundred other classic cars, from right across the world. Leaving Beijing, you race along the byways until you come to the Great Wall, where the Government have reopened a long-closed border gate, to allow the rally into Mongolia.
In Mongolia, you run the gauntlet of the Gobi Desert. Tents are pitched yards from the Trans-Siberia Express railway, with overnight temperatures dropping to -12 Celsius. After Mongolia you cross Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and into Iran, before roaring through Turkey and Greece, and arriving back in mainland Europe.
Weeks are spent driving tracks strewn with bunker-sized potholes and rocks like grapefruit, with what little time there is left after a 650km day’s rallying spent servicing or fire-fighting the latest mechanical disaster. Though I can visualise the whole thing in glorious technicolour through the windscreen of a classic 911, I may be choosing the wrong fantasy classic Porsche.
‘In inexperienced hands, a 911 can be too fast for this sort of event”, Francis Tuthill tells me. Francis is just back from the Morocco International Historic Rally, where three of his 911 rally cars finished in the top five.
Michele Mouton, rallying’s most successful female driver, was the first Tuthill Porsche pilot home, in a Safari car fitted with the ‘Challenge-spec’ 3-litre engine. These carburettor-fed engines, built for next year’s innovative ten-car Tuthill Rally Challenge, make a torque-rich 250 bhp. Despite her power disadvantage versus the winner, after nearly fifteen hours’ full-speed rallying, Mme Mouton finished second, just four minutes behind.
At the end of a trying first day, run over stages from the Paris-Dakar, Michele emerged assuming her 911 would be ruined, but was amazed to see that the car looked just as it had that morning, despite losing half an hour after a freak impact with a rock snapped off a brake caliper and wiped out the brakes.
The nature of good rally preparation on top of early 911 build quality, means these cars can take much more than you think. Nevertheless, when Francis built a car for the first Peking to Paris of recent times, in 1997, he chose a 356, as did my American/Australian friends on the most recent event. Lower power means the car can run on low-grade petrol, and the nimble little 356 steers clear of many obstacles that bigger cars cannot avoid.
Having driven through Asia on a number of endurance rallies, including the 1993 London-Sydney, which he won in a 911, Francis is well aware of the classic 911’s ability to outlast all comers. But, as we stand in the sunshine studying Lola, the WEVO-prepared Primrose 356C that has just won the post-1957 class of the 2010 Peking to Paris Rally, it’s clear that there’s more to taking a Porsche around the world than pure grunt. Success here is more about controlling the power you have, than how much you have to begin with.
Following my recent trip to the Porche Museum, I read an interesting item on the PetaPixel blog in which Neil Burgess, 25 years a photojournalist, head of London-based photo agency NB Pictures, former head of Network Photographers and Magnum Photos, and twice Chairman of World Press Photo claimed photojournalism was dead.
“I believe we owe it to our children to tell them that the profession of ‘photojournalist’ no longer exists,” says Burgess. “There are thousands of the poor bastards, creating massive debt for themselves hoping to graduate and get a job which no-one is prepared to pay for anymore. Even when photographers create brilliant stories and the magazine editors really want to publish them, they cannot pay a realistic price for the work.”
As someone who packed in working 9-5 to concentrate on being one of the “poor bastards…hoping to get a job which no one is prepared to pay for anymore”, this is disappointing news, assuming it is accurate.
I recently took a trip to the Porsche Museum, where I shot a few hundred frames on my Leica D-Lux compact camera. Some are seen here. I had intended the pics for blog and library use but, as I was pleased with the quality, I decided to pitch them to the editor at Total 911 magazine.
“What about people who take once-in-a-lifetime trips to the Porsche Museum, Schlumpf Collection, Spa Francorchamps Museum and so on?” I asked. “Why don’t we run a feature with the pics taken on a compact camera, like most folks will use on these trips? Let’s get Leica involved. I’ll go to London and talk to Brett, the Leica M photographer, get some critique on my pics, and ideas for myself and those coming after me to take with them to the museum.”
The editor liked the idea. I went to the Leica Akademie in Bruton Place, London to meet with Brett, and the piece is in this month’s magazine. It’s not the perfect manifestation of the concept, but I’m sure it’s not the last piece of this nature we three will do together, and reaction so far has been positive.
My first words-and-pics feature was the R Gruppe Bergmeister Tour in 911 and Porsche World magazine: it made the cover. I’ve since done a few more and they are steadily improving in my eyes, as is the copy that accompanies the pictures. What matters to me is exactly what mattered to every photojournalist that has gone before: that the vision is actualised and presented to a wider audience.
I started photography to support storytelling, and still see my pictures as helping to tell a story in three dimensions. Will my photography ever be as good as a full-blown professional’s work? In most applications, it doesn’t need to be; one way that photojournalism is evolving.
I feel the incredible buzz that surrounds these pieces, so I say photojournalism is far from dead: it is just assuming new forms in new media. After years of neglect, the art is waking up to endless potential, thanks to the rise of blogging, personal publishing, the iPad and all like it. To anyone who thinks they can make a living at it, I say you can.
Burgess’ career points call to mind a friend of mine who can make people laugh at a party feeling like she’s a natural born stand up, or another friend who once bluffed his way past customs, believing that he was a great actor in the making. Both are beautifully talented and both chased their dreams, only to discover that the commitment needed to transform that talent into a career is enormous; well beyond what either had imagined. The same is true of photojournalism in modern media.
Believe me, taking a salary from your vision is hugely challenging, but doable if you commit to it absolutely. Get ready to fall over a lot, and to be off the pace of many of your peers. If you don’t think you can turn that into something worthwhile that an audience will pay for, stay with the 9-5. But be sure the choice is yours: no one else’s.
November 2010 is 911 & Porsche World magazine’s 200th edition, so Editor Bennett has pulled out as many stops as possible to make it entertaining. The centrepiece is a conglomerative effort from all editorial contributors, in a feature called ‘Ultimate Porsche’. The idea was we had to pick our ultimate factory Porsche, and bring it to Bruntingthorpe to run them all back to back.
My ultimate Porsche is a 917: nothing touches that car for drama and all-round Porsche cleverness. Entered via loophole and raced hard by our favourite heros, the 917 demanded king-size balls to drive quickly. Just looking at it makes me feel a bit funny, so what it must feel like to drive one at 250 mph down the Mulsanne Straight, with the lightweight body flexing and pinning your foot to the throttle pedal, I have no idea.
I tried everywhere I could think of to get a 917, but to no avail. Once I was used to the idea of not being able to bring my Ultimate Porsche, the next best thing was probably an easier solution than most people would believe.
My take was that the Ultimate Porsche beyond the 917 should be something you can get into right now and take to the Bergmeister Monte Carlo route: surely the most incredible driving ever done in a car. So it had to be something within easy reach.
Looking in my garage, I had two 911s to choose from: my Carrera 3.0 and the 964RS I was advertising for sale on behalf of a friend. Both are quick, in nice condition, both sound and smell like a proper Porsche and both are wonderful to drive. So which one to take?
964RS v 3.2 Club Sport v 2.7 RS
Picking your own car for one of these things is dodgy ground. Much as I love my C3, there is barely an as-factory part on it. I also make no secret of the fact that it could one day go to a new home, so by definition it is not the last word in Porsche for me. If I had the asking price for a decent 964RS sitting in my bank account I would buy one, no question and with absolutely no hesitation. So, red one it is then.
This choice may seem tough to reconcile with my well-known love of the early and impact-bumper style cars, but it’s not that tricky really. The 964 Carrera RS looks like them, sounds like them, smells like them but goes faster than any of them in factory guise. The one in my garage was set up by Water Röhrl and rides beautifully. It’s built like the brick proverbial. Every time I get in it, I soon find myself driving like an eighteen year-old.
3.0 RSR v 997 Turbo v 964 RS v rest
It’s a time machine, plain and simple. If you want to make yourself twenty years younger buy a 964 RS. It comes from a time when Porsche built sports cars: the world’s best sports cars. And they all looked like classics, straight out of the box.
My Top Ten from the Ultimate Porsche line-up:
964RS. Uncompromising in every positive sense of the word. A Stuttgart V-sign to all Porsche-hating motoring journos, it says: “Don’t like me? F**k you, get me a proper driver.”
2.7 RS. Think of it like Scarlett Johansson lying on a bed, summoning you with her finger. There is no saying no.
997 Turbo. Faster than a shooting star strapped to a 4wd comet. There comes a point where outright ability matters: this car is past that point.
3.0 RSR. Won’t run under 4k rpm and is too noisy to take anywhere but I’d live in it.
911 2.4S. Every inch a classic.
356 Cabriolet. The original. The one that started it all.
Cayenne Turbo. A Porsche for every day. As Fraser says: if you could only have one Porsche for the rest of your life, then….
996 GT3. I’m never going to get past those headlamps. Sorry GT3 boys.
Carrera Club Sport. Gas-filled exhaust valves do not an RS make. If they’d gone further it’d be the Ultimate, but they sold us short.
I’ve spent the last few days thinking about my great California Porsche feature trips. The times I’ve spent out there have been absolutely magic: great weather, great drives, great cars and, above all, great friends.
Friends are key to what classic Porsche, and the Classic Porsche Blog is all about. Sharing proper Porsches with friends – and I include blog followers and magazine readers in that category – is the whole point of what I do. It’s about the mission: not the money.
I was led to this train of thought by a recent video discovery. This is two Porsche friends enjoying their 914s in sunny Southern California. The sun is gorgeous and the soundtrack perfect. Good times, no doubt about it.
Behind the joyous visual lies a tinge of sadness. The driver of the camera car, and man who posted the video, is no longer with us. His name was Howard Dranow and, if the tribute thread here and the amazing Howard Dranow forum here are anything to go by, he was an inspirational character and a good Porsche buddy to many, many Porsche people. Anyone who leaves this sort of positivity behind has spent their time on Earth well.
RIP Howard. I’ll be thinking of your video next time I’m out shooting Porsches in your glorious home state.
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