Took a ride out to Snetterton last week for the regular impactbumpers.com August memorial track day, held to remember a petrolhead who was with us there one time, many moons ago.
I don’t give myself much time off at the minute and any downtime is spent away from Porsches, so it was nice to be back around 911 guys for a few hours and to remember what it used to be like when many more people (including me) took air-cooled cars out on track. Some of those who no longer track their 911s have moved on to other cars, so there was a good mix of stuff to jump in for passenger rides, including Steve’s beautiful E46 M3 and Paul’s similarly desirable RS Clio 200 Cup.
What the modified 911 group lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality. In the mix was Ben’s 3.6-litre SC, freshly remapped by Wayne Schofield. Recent mods included a custom 2-out exhaust made by Walton Motorsport, which took power to 299.6 bhp on the Schofield dyno and measured 104db at Snetterton, which means it should just scrape into 105db days.
Ben’s SC was not the only 3.6-litre present, as Henry had come along for his first day on track. Snetterton is a great place for this, as there is plenty of runoff, the days are cheap and not always packed and the layout is easy to get your head around. Henry had fitted db killers for noise limit niceness, but the car still sounded excellent. This ’79 has had the usual rust repairs to sills and kidney bowls, all carried out by the owner, who learned his welding skills on previous cars including a Triumph GT6 and a BMW 2002 Tii. Looks great now and is clearly a source of much pride.
No IB track day would be complete without Longman and his secret sauce 3.2 Carrera, which makes numbers well above standard on dynos everywhere for no obvious reason. I think it’s a 3.4 conversion carried out back in the day but IB rules ban anorak oneupmanship, so if he doesn’t care what the reason is, then no-one else is allowed to bug him about it. Except me, that is. All Longman wants to do is drive it hard and that attitude is highly commended.
There were plenty of other cool cars on track and everyone had a great time. The main thing was a great day of social and we got to drink a glass of bubbly to JJ’s health. Cheers JJ and well done to those who turned up!
EB Motorsport is now offering a full body preparation and paint service for classic Porsche restorations. With a highly experienced spray painter employed to handle car builds and restorations on its own fleet of classic 911s, the Yorkshire-based classic Porsche parts specialist has the capacity to add paintwork for other Porsche enthusiasts to its list of capabilities.
“With so many Porsche projects in progress and quite a bit of paintwork generated by our engineering services and manufacturing plant, we decided to bring refinishing in-house last year,” says James at EB. “Only the best will do for our cars, so we installed an excellent UK-manufactured Dalby spray booth and use the same Glasurit 22-line paint system specified by Porsche. The results on our latest R build have been stunning and we will use the same materials on our RSR Turbo build when it is ready for paint later this year.”
“With the motorsport season in full swing, we are spending a lot of time out racing, so the EB paint shop has the capacity to take on some work for serious customers looking for the best finish,” notes EB’s Mark. “This might include fitting EB body panels as part of a road or race build, or repainting standard cars. Our painter has a huge amount of experience and of course there is plenty of his work here for potential clients to inspect. Workshop slots are available at very short notice.”
Interested parties can contact EB via their website. I have seen the R up close and it is a very special creation – no complaints on the paintwork either.
Working full-time creating content for several independent Porsche specialists has sort of drained my blogging brainpower in recent years. I began the year hoping to get out and about to meet more people and see their cars during 2017, but this has been one of the busiest work years yet, so blogging is running slightly behind schedule. I am working on it…
Anyway, the last few weeks have been pretty good for Porsche travel. I got out to Ireland following the Tuthill RGT Porsche on the Donegal Rally, then cruised down to my home town of Limerick, where another visit to Jon Miller at Classic Carreras was in order (love Jon’s approach to the life and a blog is overdue).
I came home from Ireland through Wales then and instantly headed back into Wales, again with Tuthills, to meet Federico and Lucia on the Nicky Grist Rally. The couple have been rallying air-cooled 911s this year, to earn enough signatures for their International Rally Licences and take on some marathon rallying from next year in something like a Safari car or similar. Their rally journey is super interesting and they are lovely people. That story is coming to a website near you.
These client trips are great for me, as I get to do them on two wheels: my 1150RT for the Donegal trip and the 1150 GS Adventure to Wales. Coming back from Wales, I had enough time to put the bike in the garage, pack a bag and then fire up the Polo for a run down to East Sussex. I stayed the night at Classic Retrofit Jonny’s and we set off early the next morning to catch the Eurotunnel to France and drive on to Germany. I’d planned a three-day road trip to celebrate Jonny’s three-year anniversary in business and the first stop was Bebenhausen, just south of Stuttgart.
The trip down was fantastic, hotel was amazing and that left us with two hours to cover the next morning to get to Pfaffenhausen, for a day at Ruf Automobile GmbH. The godfather of Porsche tuning has tracked Jonny’s work for many months and Alois even visited the Classic Retrofit workshops to see the research and development process for himself. He extended an invitation for Herr Hart (below with Yellowbird) to visit and discuss engineering collaboration on their new CTR project, so Jonny took me along for the ride.
Many Porsche-owning friends have experienced Ruf as part of Porsche club visits, but I don’t know how many people have ever sat in engineering meetings with Ruf and his technical team: the guys who built the original Yellowbird and who now assemble the spectacular CTR3. Well, thanks to my clever friend, Mr Hart, and his excellent electronic skills, I am delighted to say that I have now sat in one of those meetings and even made a contribution or two. That was pretty cool.
We had a great day at Ruf. I lost count of how many times Jonny and I shot each other a look that said “is this really happening?” but it was a super successful day out. Alois is the perfect gentleman and was very giving of his time. Son Marcel is also great company and a highly trained engineer in his own right. The family business is in good hands and I will share some more stories from our visit.
Once we had finished at Ruf, we had a two-hour drive back to Stuttgart, where we stayed in a nice little hotel around the corner from the Porsche Museum. Next morning, we enjoyed a short visit to the museum and shop before heading home to consider our findings. All in all, it was an excellent trip which left me with plenty of work to do – the vicious circle of non-blog activity continues!
I’m currently back in Gran Canaria (off the coast of Morocco) and recently finished two books by the British adventure traveller and journalist, Chris Scott: Desert Travels and The Street Riding Years: Despatching through 1980s London. Each is an excellent read for bike fans and non-bikers alike, and Chris inevitably and entertainingly wanders off-piste into other areas.
I had just finished reading Street Riding Years, which devotes a good percentage of its pages to discussing the character flaws of the author’s various bikes through the years, when a question arose on a UK forum for BMW GS motorcycle anoraks. The original poster asked this and sparked an interesting thread:
I was chatting at the lights to a chap on a fancy new BMW. He was commenting that he liked his new bike, and it was eye-wateringly fast, but that he missed the character of his old R1150GS. I nodded, sagely, sitting aside my old R1150GS. But when he shot off, I thought – I don’t actually know what that means. Any thoughts on what makes character in a bike, and in a 1150 specifically?
I replied with a quote from Street Riding Years and something I had also read, written by Clarkson:
“In actor Eric Bana’s 2009 film, ‘Love the Beast’, Jeremy Clarkson assures Bana his recently smashed up 2009 Ford GT Falcon Coupe isn’t worth rebuilding because ‘muscle cars are crap’. Then, in one of his occasional spells of profoundness, Clarkson offers to explain ‘character’. ‘The cars we love the best are the ones with human traits, warts and all. Anything else is just a machine’. Jezzer nailed it. Did my repugnant MZs have character? Do bears floss after meals? Proper Brit bikes of the era had the love-hate qualities of character. Many [Italian and US bikes] too. But Jap Crap and Kraut Crates, not so sure.”
Chris is not a BMW fan. I understand the rationale, but do not share his opinion. To me, character involves the consistent delight of rider/driver, mile after mile. On that basis, the low-fi, hand-assembled 850/1100/1150 twins enjoy bags of character. I get the same joy in use from both my twinspark BMW 1150s (a GS Adventure and an RT) and my pre-VTEC VFR800 as I do from older Porsches and lots of my other cars. They are wonderfully built pieces of travelling equipment and their original designers should be proud.
Great Motorcycle Rides: A5 Bangor-Llangollen-Oswestry
I was at home in Ireland on two wheels last month (see above), clocking up 1500 miles in a week. On my way back to the UK, I parked my 2003 1150RT next to a German biker while waiting for the ferry in Dublin. He was reminiscing about his 100,000 kms on an 1150RT before changing it for the new 1200RT he was riding. We stayed together out of Holyhead for a while, before I came off the main drag for the wonderfully twisty A5 at Bangor. I rode this excellent road down to Llangollen in mid Wales and on to Oswestry, just inside the border with England.
Starting the route at 7pm, I basically had the 90-mile road all to myself. It was as close to heaven as I’ve ever been on a bike. When I eventually got to the end of the best bit, the A5 was closed and I was sent on an additional 20-mile diversion in a southbound loop to the M54. I was a bit weary after a late night with my dad the previous evening, but I stayed happy and arrived home content after almost four hours of riding. When you end up being pushed a lot further than planned and can still keep a smile on your face, that probably says something about a machine and its character.
Vintage Porsche Character
Driving my orange 3-litre 911 is a similar experience. It is hot and noisy inside, but I have never been tempted to change much of that – I just take off a few layers once in a while and wear earphones whenever I drive it. God only knows how many delays and diversions I have experienced in that car over ten years of ownership, but there is something about the machine that just clicks. I turn the key, make one gearchange and am instantly reminded just how much I love it.
With many older cars (and bikes), there may even be a sense that the machine has been imbued with some of the spirit of its builders. There is an awareness of the expert human contribution to the creation of a nicely-built older machine, which then deserves a considerate/likely capable user to get the best from it. At the peak, there exists a techno-spiritual connection to the emotional aspects of what is really just a pile of cast metal, moulded rubber and a few bags of bolts. All emotional conjecture projected by the rider/driver, but I am sure some of you will go with the flow on this.
An engineer could probably make a good list of components that help create the impression of mechanical ‘character’ but, to me, the twist of a key, the momentary clack of an oil-filled cam chain tensioner taking up the slack, the snick of a WEVO or BMW shifter and the rising burble of a flat twin or six go some way towards telling me I have a good thing coming.
What does character mean to you? I would be interested to hear your thoughts below.
Leaked pics of the new Porsche 991 GT2 RS are currently doing the rounds online ahead of the car’s official release, which apparently is happening this weekend. Presumably that will be at Goodwood.
Some people get very excited about new top-end Porsches. While the car looks great, I see what happens with these cars after they are delivered and a life of rarified storage is nothing to freak out about. For a few months after launch, journos rave about them, snappers glorify them, magazine readers drool over them but what does it all add up to? Ultimately this is just another quick Porsche in a world of quick Porsches and most will never go far.
I know a couple of people who buy these things and drive the crap out of them (fair play, and I look forward to the passenger rides), but it’s also the case that lots of the people who manage to acquire one of these upper-atmosphere supercars tell me they are ultimately bored by them. Once they’ve had it delivered and done a few miles, they are just new cars with too much driver-isolating technology to be consistently interesting at regular speeds. Hence all the low mileage examples sitting around in showrooms five years down the line.
Much of the time, the thrill was in the chase: getting one’s name in the order book. The car eventually arrives, sits around going up in value and comes back to the market at double the price, then another manufacturer releases their latest and greatest new model, prices for the older toys start to go soft and the whole game starts again.
Some people eventually get fed up with it and want to get off the dealership treadmill. It’s a bit like the iPhone upgrade cycle. Eventually the gains are so marginal and the upshot in ownership experience so minimal that you just stay where you are, or maybe even go backwards. Dump the new tech for old tech: Apple Watch goes for a Rolex, GT2 RS gets sacked for an early 911 instead.
I get regular emails asking about the ideal spec for a light, fast, no-frills early 911 and am currently involved with a 911 hot rod build for a chap who has owned just about every hypercar you can imagine. He has all the money a person could want – certainly much more than I would ever want – but finds nothing in new cars to hold his attention. Now he just wants something with character and an old Porsche is the ideal first step. After that it might be a trick little Alfa, old BMW or maybe an E-Type with muscle car running gear.
The true thrill of driving does not need a new GT2 RS. A person can find it in plenty of other places without needing to do the order book rain dance. But as there is no doubt that it is a badass automobile, here are some pics!
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
