by John Glynn | Dec 13, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
Oxfordshire roads are dry and there’s lots of winter sun around at the minute. It was shining down on Tuthill Porsche when I stopped by this week, and spotted a line of classic 911s at Tuthill’s Wardington workshops for servicing.
Porsche 911 Winter Driving
It’s always good to see older 911s on the road in December. Some rightly take advantage of the workshop availability and service discounts to be found at some Porsche specialists in the slower months of winter, as they just can’t bear to be without their cars. I can totally understand this.
Winter is all about “to use or not to use” for classic Porsche enthusiasts. Do you keep the car taxed and ready to go, and catch a few dry days through December and January, or does it come off the road at the end of September, and go back on the road at the start of April?
There’s a lot to be said for keeping the car ready to run all year around. Parking a car for six months at a time is no good for anything, and the cost of keeping it taxed is minimal compared to the joy of driving on empty roads over Christmas and New Year. Whenever they are working, I keep my cars taxed year-round.
No one with some Porsche blood flowing in their veins would refuse to pay £30 for a drive of their classic Porsche, to escape visiting relations on Boxing Day. Five of those drives and the tax is paid. Tuthill Porsche can steam clean the underside of a classic Porsche on their outside car lift, before protecting it with waxoyl to remove all worries of corrosion. On the worst days with salt on the roads, you just leave it in the garage.
Where the weather allows, I think keep the Porsche ready to rock over winter. Early 911s spent many winters ploughing through snow and ice, living the life of a daily driver. I’m not saying make it suffer through winter, but no sense locking it away for half the year, either.
by John Glynn | Dec 12, 2013 | Porsche News, Market & Prices
Esteemed friend and colleague, Leonard Stolk from Twinspark Racing, runs a Gen 2 Porsche 997 GT3 as his daily driver. Leonard recently drove its successor at the Amsterdam Porsche dealer and reviewed the Porsche 991 GT3 drive on the Twinspark Racing blog.
“I put the PDK in automatic to see how that would work out. At 100 km/h you do not hear the engine. Boring as hell. If clients test drive this car without manual function engaged, pulling 7-8,000 revs, they will never know how this car differs from the standard Carrera. To enjoy the GT3, you need big revs: the payback comes from a sense of what historic Porsches feel like.
“The 991 GT3 feels even stronger than its already excellent predecessor. The sound experience is even closer to the historic racing engines I’m used to, and that sort of sealed my verdict. The PDK set up is brilliant and I can imagine people liking manual shifting, but to me this is just the next evolution of the mighty 911 and the PDK is progress! I was used to the shift system in a few minutes and wouldn’t hesitate for a second to buy the car as-is.”
Talking to another 997.2 GT3-owning friend in the UK last night, recent discussions with his official Porsche centre suggest 991 GT3s have not sold in droves. While waiting list spaces are said to be rare, he’s still getting sales calls three months after the 991 GT3 launch. OPC bids for his Gen 2 997 GT3 trade-in have risen ten grand since their first offer.
“The OPC guys say that 997 Gen 2 GT3 values have come up as much as £10k since the 991 launch, but then you know what happens at the dealership: they knock an excellent condition car the cost of a front-end respray, a bit of prep including skimming the discs all round, and then want at least six grand margin for resale. When the cost to change from 997 to 991 is £40k or more, who would get out of a low-mileage Gen 2 997 GT3 that does everything perfectly well?”
Just as current owners are staying in their Gen 2 997 GT3s, used buyers who have deferred a Gen 2 997 GT3 purchase, expecting prices to fall with the 991 GT3 launch and who can wait no longer may be the force driving prices upward. Gen 2 997 GT3s retailing at circa half the cost new of a reasonable spec 991 GT3 are reportedly selling well.
UK dealers are having no problem finding buyers for good examples of Gen 2 Porsche 997 GT3 RS: the low-mileage Grey and Red one above with some very nice options recently sold for just over £100k in less than a day. This black Gen 2 997 GT3 Comfort for sale with just 6,700 miles from new is a beautiful car, and seems well priced at £77k including full warranty.
I heard a rumour the other day (via someone I trust to have a clue) that 3,700 991s came into the UK in 2012, but the number imported was less than 1,000 in 2013. No idea how accurate that is – I’ll have a look at the sales figures. All very interesting.
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by John Glynn | Dec 11, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Race and Rally
A number of projects have been enforcing wee-hours Internet trawls for material from the 2013 Safari Rally. This was the first year for a while that I didn’t follow the rally as it happened, so going back through Youtube videos and enthusiast coverage unveils a more human story.
What continues to stand out about the rally is the whitespace. Whitespace on a page is space for the content to spread, unfold, stand on its own and filter into your grey cells. The Ferdinand website runs a ton of whitespace, as that is how I like to read. Whitespace on Safari is fresh air, big landscapes and beautiful light.
Whitespace on a road trip allows room for the tendrils of the experience to wind through the windscreen, into the cracks and crevices of our psyche to massage our imaginations. The greatest journeys take us on a metaphorical learning curve of self: no one comes back from a road trip less resolved than how they departed.
Essentially a competitive road trip, rallying offers similar spirituality – don’t be scared off by the word – in a more challenging context. Testing their stamina, ambition and resourcefulness, the competitors scrape another layer off their ultimate capability. Putting the body and mind under extreme duress is part of the thrill of existence: and is there a better way to have existence fully envelope a consciousness, than fighting for victory on one of the great marathon rallies?
Porsches and philosophy on a misty Wednesday morning: you’re welcome. Anyone who wants to stay up late drinking whiskey and potentially talking this stuff in a remote Alpine ski lodge next June should find a way onto the Twinspark Racing Bergmeister Tour. In the morning, the philosophically less interested take off to drive legendary mountain passes and we hang back, mentally drifting off piste and doing our own thing. The best times await us when we just let them come.
Tuthill Porsche ran an amazing sixteen 911s on this year’s Safari Rally, which must make Richard Tuthill the most philosophical of all of us: he is certainly an inspiring person to work with. Though he will vehemently deny this, his reponsibility for so many epic past projects tells a different story. If you’re looking for the ultimate Porsche Road Trip, then Safari is your thing.
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by John Glynn | Dec 4, 2013 | Race and Rally, Porsche People
“Some people call me the Space Cowboy, Some call me the Gangster of Love”
I don’t know whether anyone’s ever called Michael Christensen the “Gangster of Love”, but from next year they will be calling him a Porsche Works Racing Driver, which might be even better.
The impressive 23 year-old rookie from Denmark has spent the last two years as a Porsche Junior, racing 911 GT3s, and impressed Stuttgart enough to earn a slot in the works driver lineup. Those who’ve followed Christensen race and win will applaud with the decision. There’s real speed and intelligence in Christensen’s driving – unsurprising when you look at his CV.
Karting from an early age, Christensen rose to become one the of the best by winning Nordic and European Junior titles, finishing second in the World Formula A series and taking back to back German kart titles. He won the Formula BMW Europe Rookies Cup in 2008, and notched up a pile of wins in 2009, only to lose them in a battle over tech regs. Two years in GP3 followed, before he took a shot at the Porsche young drivers selection process, winning a comprehensive support package as a Porsche Junior in the Carrera Cup Deutschland.
Christensen crowned his maiden season with a win at Hockenheim in front of all the right names. In 2013 Supercup, he took a win at the Nurburgring, and made the best rookie award his own. Time will tell what Christensen can do with the works drive, but having him on the team is no bad thing. Graduating to the works team from Supercup at least gives the series some good news this year, following the loss of Sean Edwards.
Congratulations, Michael! Here’s to a great 2014.
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by John Glynn | Dec 3, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Porsche News
The Porsche Museum has a special Rennsport exhibition running until March 17, 2014, celebrating “60 Years of Super Sports Cars”.
Porsche Museum Rennsport Exhibition
Some rare birds can be seen in the exhibition, including this beautiful 550: the first Spyder ever bought by a private individual. I don’t know the chassis number, but the colour scheme is perfect for a privately owned car. I’ll try to get a few more details.
Also in the show is Herbert von Karajan’s unique lightweight RS-bodied 911 Turbo: a factory special for the famous German conductor, which featured on the cover of his Famous Overtures album, recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic. Porsche 911 Turbo is classic rock ‘n’ roll!
The Porsche Museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9.00 to 18.00. Entry is €8 for adults and UK readers can fly to Stuttgart return from £120 (Flybe out of Birmingham for a January weekend: Friday-Sunday).
