The 2012 Essen Techno Classica is now just three weeks away. With seventeen halls packed to capacity by car manufacturers, classic car clubs, historic vehicle dealers, parts suppliers and more, Techno is the world’s biggest classic car fair: I never miss it.
It’s an incredible feast of Porscheness, as well as a great place to see cars from historic collections of the manufacturers including BMW and Mercedes. Every year brings something new, and the auctions and privately-owned cars offered for sale around the fair are also quite exciting.
Where to stay for Essen is always a dilemma. I’ve done Dusseldorf and trained it to the show, Essen and walked in, nearby Oberhausen and driven in and without a doubt walking is the best option. Driving is ridiculous and the train should be the alternative to walking. Parking near the show is IMPOSSIBLE so don’t even consider it: park down the road and catch a bus or cab if needs be. I’m staying at a hotel 7 mins from the show by tube!
I’ll be at the show as Mighty Motor Media: solo and with UK and European clients. I’m arriving Wednesday and leaving on Saturday morning (last show day is Friday). It would be great to meet like-minded Porsche fans and perhaps a potential new social media customer at the fair: drop me a line if you plan to be there and maybe we can hook up for a coffee?
You can email me at mail@ferdinandmagazine.com. Let me know your plans for Essen and whether we can get together.
I’m spending two days after the show in that part of Europe, looking for some Porsche features. If you’ve got something that would make a good story, give me a shout!
I was down with some Porsche friends last week, doing a piece for Ferdinand magazine and talking about some other exciting stuff we have coming up together. Spent a few hours catching up, and then Jonas took me on a tour of his highly impressive facility.
As we walked through the showroom of Porsches for sale, one looked very familiar. “This is a car we sold and then bought back. It’s had a Cup engine with loads of 993 RS bits and a full respray: lovely car,” said the salesman. I knew all about it – it was Peter Heaton’s 993 hot rod that I shot for 911 & Porsche World magazine last summer, as part of my monthly ‘You and Yours’ feature slot.
Have to admit to being slightly disappointed that it was back on sale. Rolls-Royce jet engine specialist Peter seemed properly in love with the car when we worked together, and the 993 was exceptional throughout. I loved this shot of the front wheel: printed it for my office wall, and put it on my business cards!
I shot the car as it came out of the paint shop after a big-money repaint in Polar Silver. Peter arrived in friend Paul’s BMW M3 Coupe and that was what prompted me to buy my saloon version a few weeks later. The whole day was good fun and also nice to work with C&N Customs in Middle Aston again (they painted the car).
Price has gone up since the last time it was sold: Jonas is asking £44,000 for it. See the full Modified Porsche 993 for sale details here. Worth checking out if a unique 993 is on your list of wants.
Porsche shared a link to nice little video today, featuring Klaus Bischof and the cars of the Rolling Museum at the Philip Island Classic. Bischof talks about 935/78 “Moby Dick”: the longtail 935 that won the 1978 Silverstone 6 Hours by a masterful seven laps, and went on to reach 235 mph on the straight at Le Mans.
“Moby Dick was just to show the technique of turbocharging,” says Klaus. “You need a lot of fuel in this car: I was a mechanic with Moby Dick and we had to refuel every 35 minutes, so for preparing and running at Le Mans you can’t sit down! But it’s a fantastic car and shows what you can do with a 911.”
Porsche celebrated 60 years in Australia by bringing some very special vehicles from the company’s museum in Stuttgart, Germany: a 1987 962, Moby Dick and the Carrera GT you see in the background here. Moby was also at Rennsport later in the year.
Eight-time Bathurst winner and all-round legend Jim Richards was patron of the Queensland meeting. As well as treating competition winners to rides in his new GT2 RS, Jim was given permission for takeoff in Moby Dick for a few laps around the track. “I won’t give it a hard time,” says Jim to Klaus, the old mechanic replying to take it out and give it the beans: i.e. 820 horsepower (some 935s had 845 hp on tap!).
The final edit doesn’t show the pace seen in some period footage, but you can’t blame Jim for taking it steady. As Klaus says: “there is only one real Moby Dick: all the others are replicas.” Wouldn’t look good on the CV to be remembered as the guy that harpooned Moby.
Back in the UK after ten days in California at Rennsport Reunion IV. Jet lag be damned – have got straight back to work on the new garage/studio out the back and processing some pictures from my ten-day working tour. Here’s a hole worth 40 tonnes of spoil: 140 tonnes removed from the back so far and I think we may hit 200.
Anyway, back to Porsche. The TwinSpark Racing blog carries the story of Waldegard’s 911T from the 1968 Monte which was at the event. I didn’t spend half enough time with it, but I’m sure I can get more info from Björn when next we meet. I was born the day after this car crossed the line in 10th place. Love that.
Björn is driving a Tuthill Porsche for Race4Change in next month’s Safari Rally: I am blogging for all the interested parties and have a Waldegård feature in this month’s Total 911 magazine. It’s a good piece and a good-looking piece: more details when the issue is on sale.
Friend of Jamie Lipman, J F Musial and his team did the official Porsche video post-Rennsport. Jamie describes it as ‘shrink-wrapped awesome’, and he is right. Have a look at this and put Rennsport 5 on your bucket list. Don’t let us down!
This Porsche 911 RSR at Rennsport Reunion photo is currently going slightly ballistic on my Tumblr page. I call it “Big, Bad and Dangerous to Know”.
I took this at a low point in the weekend. Yes, there were low points! It was late in the afternoon, I’d just been refused a photo pass without prior approval and then scolded by a track lady for standing on a low wall for five seconds. I was dehydrating, sunburnt, carrying a heavy photo bag and life was generally shit.
But life don’t stay shit for long when you’re surrounded by classic Porsche machinery. Standing next to the famous Jeans RSR, the crowds parted for half a second and I was ready to rock. Bam! In the Nikon. I see it as a double page opener for my Rennsport story: we’ll see how that goes.
Ten minutes later, I was in the rental car with a bottle of water, aircon on and the Zuffenhaus boys in the back. We had an early dinner at Baja Cantina, then I dropped them for their flight home and headed off to bed early.
When I woke up, everything was all better. Sleep is the best cure for what ails ya.
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