by John Glynn | Nov 12, 2012 | Classic Porsche Blog, Market & Prices
Jamie & I are decompressing in San Francisco after five days of flat-out photography on our 2012 California Hot Rod Porsche Tour. He’s outside messing with the beige Porsche 912 he bought from one of our mates at Shark Werks a few days ago, and I’m indoors with a cup of tea and the TV showing non-stop car auctions.
Mecum Auctions is the big name in hammer sales here in the USA. Apparently, they pay this channel to replay coverage of their previous sales, for car guys like me to watch in the mornings. Good job they do, as I’ve been glued on and off since we arrived. Boss man Dana Mecum (below, centre) is kinda hard work, but tracking the prices from sale to sale is interesting.
Another channel hosts Keith Martin’s What’s My Car Worth, where the price expert behind Sports Car Market meets people bringing their car to auction, gets the auctioneers to give a view on value, adds the seller’s expectation and hazards a guess of his own. Once it’s gone through, its surprising how close Keith ends up. As I write, he’s just hit the nail on the head with an RS that was estimated to fly as high as $375k by the auctioneers (Gooding), an owner expectation of $340k, but a Keith-predicted $275k which was the price eventually fetched.
Valuing used cars is a bit of a black art: something I got pretty good at in my ten years as an editor with Glass’s Guide, the English equivalent of America’s Kelley Blue Book. With a twenty-five year history in the motor trade and a solid valuation background, I do a lot of insurance valuations for UK Porsche, and have a small pile to do when I get home later this week, but you can never have too much information on what the market’s doing in other countries.
by John Glynn | Nov 8, 2012 | Porsche News
Porsche has just announced details of its ice driving courses for 2012/2013. The modern Porsche ice driving experience is held in Northern Finland, around Ivalo and Rovanemi: two places that will be well known to anyone who has ever run cold weather testing for car manufacturers. This is where much of it is based.
The winter offers of the Porsche Driving Experience give beginners and advanced drivers the opportunity to develop their driving skills under the guidance of experienced instructors, and to build their driving style, step by step, thanks to coordinated theoretical and practical training. Skills such as driving safety are enhanced by appropriate braking, avoidance manoeuvres, or controlled drifting on specially prepared ice courses. In the far north of Finland, participants will learn to gain even more control over their vehicle in three progressive levels of training – Precision, Performance and Master – in icy, but controlled conditions.
For fans of classic 911s, Tuthill Porsche has just announced a rebrand of its ice driving camp, including a move to Sweden. Now called Below Zero Ice Driving, the training courses runs Tuthill FIA-spec 3-litre rally cars, similar to those used in Safari rallying and marathon rally events.
Tuthill’s ice driving camp employs experienced rally driving instructors including rally winners and UK/European champions. Previous visitors to the school include Adrian Newey and a surprising number of other motoring ‘celebrities’.
Neither of these courses are cheap, but feeling the car flick around underneath you on a low-friction surface is the holy grail of Porsche car control. While Porsche have low friction water courses at their experience centres, it’s not the same as kilometre-long stretches of snow-lined ice road with a bundle of run off, driven in someone elses’ cars. What could be better!
by John Glynn | Nov 5, 2012 | Classic Porsche Blog, Road Trips
I picked up a major tick on my bucket list yesterday (Sunday), as I did a Porsche track day at Laguna Seca Raceway in an early 911. It was everything I dreamed it would be, and more! Very exciting track to drive in a classic 911, especially one which had never done a track day before.
Laguna’s been a JG magnet since I saw it in an Elvis movie or somesuch as a kid growing up in Ireland. Built on a dried-up lake bed (Laguna – Lake/Seca – dry), everything that draws me to California is here: great light, incredible sunshine, beautiful landscape of the Monterey hills, close to the ocean at Pacific Grove. And of course, always very cool cars.
This visit was as good as ever. Leaving the San Francisco suburbs at the crack of dawn (above), my buddy Gray and I arrived at Laguna just in time for the briefing. Our beginners’ first session was at 10am, so I passengered my mate for his first laps of the track. That was interesting, to say the least. I will spare his blushes here!
Second session was my turn. I did a warm-up lap, came back in the pits, tightened my belts to the max and rejoined the circuit. Our car is a 911T: 2.2 with E cams and S pistons, SC undercarriage and brakes, albeit with no servo. Tyres are street Michelins and brake pads are road Mintex. It was probably the smallest engine in our group, but we didn’t hold too many people up and even passed a slowish Ferrari 360.
I’m working on a separate post about the lap experience and will get it up later. As with any track day, the social side was good fun and it was great to hang out with Lars and Leif from Denmark (above): Porsche owners who were doing their day in a Chevy hire car. A station wagon! Gotta love Laguna Seca.
by John Glynn | Nov 5, 2012 | Classic Porsche Blog, Modified Porsche Hot Rods
Good times on the California Hot Rod Porsche Tour 2012 last weekend, as we made our first-ever trip to the monthly RGruppe Porsche meet at EASY in Emeryville, San Francisco. EASY stands for European Auto Salvage Yard: this long-standing meet was recently featured on Wayne Carini’s Discovery TV show.
The weather here is terrific. Temperatures in the mid-70s (24 degrees Celsius) ensured a decent turnout, and it was good to see old friends and meet a few new ones including EASY top dog, Jim Breazeale.
We spent Friday at WEVO in San Carlos and WEVO’s Hayden Burvill (above) also came to EASY. The rather battered Porsche 911 known as Rabbit was his transport Porsche of choice: a 1973.5 2.4-litre 911T, running the original CIS injection. Was fun to convoy with it across the San Francisco bridges and out of the city: more on that one later.
Other cars spotted at EASY included Joey B’s beautiful Beetle with 356 running gear and a spotless ’76 911 Turbo (above) in special order Albert Blue, which we’ve arranged to shoot for a feature this week. So many cars, and so much fun to come!
by John Glynn | Nov 2, 2012 | Classic Porsche Blog, Project Cars
Mark at EB Motorsport just sent through some development pics of the new SC RS one-piece front bumper for narrow body 911 front wings. Moulded from a genuine original SC RS part, this bumper is to fit standard (non-Turbo) bodied 911/S, 911SC, and 3.2 Carrera models.
The EB SC RS bumper is a one-piece reproduction of the factory 911 SC RS/SCRS front bumper, with brake duct/fog light holes. This bumper does not use standard mounts, as this is not possible with the smooth external finish. The EB part fits direct to the body: fitment should be obvious when the panel is in place and bracketry is apparently very easy to do.
Porsche 911 SC RS bumper fitment
Stiffening panels have been moulded into the bumper for quality and durability. EB also makes a matching rear bumper to fit both standard 911 SC & 3.2 Carrera, as well as an SC RS bonnet in lightweight composite material. This bumper is a great solution to corroding old aluminium bumpers in need of refurbishment.
The pictures show development parts fitted to the EB mule: an impact-bumper 911 used for test fitting. This is the part which will be used to produce tooling to manufacture production models.
As to when they will be available, once the tooling is done, the production lead time will be dictated by how much other stuff EB has lined up. I would expect to see them on sale by the end of November, which is perfect for most winter project schedules.
White gelcoat doesn’t give the ultimate impression of how the parts will look when painted and on the car, but I think the finished product should look pretty hot on a lowered 911 running the right wheels. What do you guys think?
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