I’m in sunny California at the minute and loving every minute of it. Today is being spent with those wonderful people at WEVO in San Carlos, plotting our group assault on this weekend’s R Gruppe Treffen, down in Monterey.
Lined up for Team WEVOs weekend works outing is a great bunch of classic Porsche enthusiasts from all over the US and Europe. R Gruppe started as a California club but its influence now stretches much further afield.
Hayden’s got some great cars here at the minute. In one corner is the GT3-engined 912 we are shooting tomorrow: the car that’s kicked the hot rod goalposts into the stadium car park. In another is the black 911 being built for Burvill Senior. Black with orange leather: properly cool.
Outside are the 993 used as shop delivery bus and the ’67 Aga Blue 912: a 36,000-mile all original car with patina that can’t be beat, including the obligatory baked paint.
Also on site is Hayden’s BMW 2002 Touring, owned since 1990. It’s just had a new twin-choke carb installed under outwardly standard California-legal air filter housing and emissions system. Loads of 2002s around here, including the ‘Golf’ car I got a wave from this morning while I was driving Kenny.
Kenny is a ’72 running a 2.4S engine, Recaro sports seats, one-off WEVO brakes, development suspension, Tall Boy WEVO shifter prototype and enough additional trickness to make a grown Porsche fan weep. I’ve just found a spare hour in the schedule so we are shooting it tomorrow.
Just whizzed my 1976 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 down to the local tyre shop, to fit some all-weather tyres in place of the well-worn Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tyres I had been using. Or not using as is a better way of putting it: the classic Porsche has not turned a wheel since July of last year.
As ever, the Porsche fired up straight away. I just reconnected the battery isolator and the miniature Odyssey battery cranked it into life on the first turn. I crammed four Continental Sport Contact tyres into the cabin and off we went.
The damp weather today gave me some interesting new-tyre moments on the greasy roads. A massive powerslide out of the tyre depot T-junction make a few people laugh, including me.
Off to the UK launch of the new 911 Carrera GTS down in Bournemouth now. Will try to post some pics and details later.
About the 1976 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0
This model is uniquely important in the history of the 911 series, as it was produced for two years only (1976-77).
The Carrera 3.0 used standard impact-bumper bodywork (with Carrera RS-width rear arches) and offered much improved performance over its 2.7-litre 911 and 911S contempararies. In magazine road tests of the time, the Carrera 3.0 set quicker 0-60mph times than the 911 Turbo or 930 model.
Key to the appeal of the Carerra 3.0 is its 2993cc engine, using the same cast aluminium crankcase as the 930, with the lightweight six-bolt crankshaft from the legendary 1973 Carrera RS.
The Carrera 3.0 engine was developed from the very rare Carrera 3.0RS, which formed the basis for the 3.0 RSR cars: highly successful racers in the 1974 and 1975 seasons, winning both the FIA GT Championship and the IMSA Championship each year.
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.
If you’re not freelance, bank holiday weekend Sundays are all about taking it easy. If you are freelance, then the only difference between Sunday and any other day is that the post office and some petrol stations are shut. If there’s a job to do, you do it!
Supercharged Porsche 968 magazine feature
I got a call the other day, asking if I wanted to write a feature on a supercharged Porsche 968. The owner was coming up from the far end of Britain and would be at Castle Combe for the PCGB gathering. Could I get there? Yes. If there was no photographer could I cover the pictures too? Errr – a trepidatious yes. Sooner or later, you have to affirm aloud: ‘this is where I want to go!’ and start heading in that direction.
I left home early to go scouting locations west of Bath. Rain en route wasn’t the best news ever, but there were a few hours before our shoot meet: I kept driving and bode my time. The run down through the Cotswolds was excellent and set me up for the afternoon. I told Sean the sat nav to take me the short way, so he sent me down every back road from Banbury to Bath via Burford. Very cool!
Once in Wiltshire, I found some locations fast enough, then went and grabbed a bite in a local pub while waiting for the 968 owners. They arrived soon after and we got cracking.
I’m not going to claim it was a pro job from start to finish, but we ticked enough boxes to do the feature justice. These two are a couple of outtakes. I’ve made notes on my performance and will work on improving, but I am slowly climbing that learning curve.
The run home took me back across the Cotswolds through a beautiful sunset, and I didn’t spare the Subaru’s horses. All in all, I’d call it a good day!
911 & Porsche World magazine have put the R Gruppe Grand Tour on the front cover of this month’s issue. This is the news stand version and not the subscriber copies.
To say I’m pleased would be an understatement: the Grand Tour was one of the best events yet, so to document it in my first words-and-pictures feature, and then have it make the cover is a dream come true.
The feature is spread across eight pages and looks good. For me, there were other pictures that better relate to the in-betweens of the piece – most of the shots in the feature came from the two on-the-move shoots we managed to grab. So, knowing what went on behind the scenes, I think it looks me look a little repetitive on style, but I don’t envy the guy who has to choose the pics! It has come out well and a number of people have complimented me on it, which I really appreciate.
All in all then, I’m over the moon: a Porsche World cover on your first attempt is a killer endorsement of a great story. I have to pay tribute to my editor: Steve Bennett hails from the heyday of Cars and Car Conversions and is the easiest guy in the world to work for. He just lets me gt on with it and runs the pieces as they leave my Mac. Apart from one bit, when I was looking for a way to describe how fast the temperature fell when we left the 40-degree Autoroute and headed up into the Swiss Alps on day one. I said it fell ‘like a log off a waterfall’ which I then changed to ‘dog off a waterfall’, but ran in the magazine as ‘quite suddenly’! LOL – gotta love stuff like that.
My next words and pics is a supercharged Porsche 968 coming through Porsche World next month. Looking forward to seeing how that turns out.
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Hayden’s got some great cars here at the minute. In one corner is the GT3-engined 912 we are shooting tomorrow: the car that’s kicked the hot rod goalposts into the stadium car park. In another is the black 911 being built for Burvill Senior. Black with orange leather: properly cool.
