by John Glynn | May 2, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Race and Rally
Today was a good day, spent hanging out at Tuthills watching the finishing touches going on a brand new Safari car.
This 911 is destined for Kenya in November, but the Swedish owner will run the car at in the 2013 Morocco Historic from May 13-18 as an African ice breaker.
Tuthills have three cars in this year’s Moroccan event: all three will go on to race the Safari. They have all just been prepped for North Africa at the Wardington workshops, and this is the first to depart. Driver Phil trailered this one to Calais today, where the owner will take over moving it to Morocco.
We often think of 911s as soft little flowers: those slender side pillars and sculpted door handles imbuing a sense of finesse. Tuthill Safari cars retain those classic 911 motifs, but are the hardest Porsches I know.
Eight hundred hours or more goes into every Safari shell to ensure it’s stiff and strong. The suspension is bespoke – none of your revalved Bilsteins here. Engines are built from powerful, reliable components, most run MFI and are tuned to over 300 horsepower. Transmissions are custom built, with specially calculated ratios to suit the modified gearing and tall wheel/tyre combinations.
Inside is a workspace. Nothing surplus: all is function. Under the front is the oil cooler pipework, a custom fuel tank and a pair of full-size spare wheels, each ready to be changed in under a minute if you know what you’re doing.
Now costing £160,000 plus VAT a piece to build, Safari cars are easily my favourite 911s. I never get tired of looking at, listening to or riding in them. The ultimate do-anything Porsche!
by John Glynn | Mar 2, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Porsche News
Day 17 of the WEVO Porsche 356 South America rally and the boys are driving from Cusco to Arequipa: around 600 kilometres.
Thanks to Yellowbrick GPS technology carried on board the cars, you can track their progress on the rally home page under ‘results‘. Here are a few screen shots demonstrating what is possible.
Time now in Cusco is 08:22, and here is their current position. Untick everything except the Class C box to see the cars in their group.
This is a wider view of the route so far plotted by GPS: it likes to use a straight line to minimise data points stored. Bit of a pain when map data is overlaid but not much choice here.
by John Glynn | Feb 28, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Race and Rally
News from the Americas! Hayden and Steven have just enjoyed their second rest day of the event, at Puno in Southern Peru, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. This update was from Tuesday night.
Nice drive this morning, 0500hrs wake up to leave La Paz early enough to avoid road blockages by striking workers. Lovely drive and little barge crossing to Peru border, leaving beautiful but contradictory Bolivia behind.
Great hotel on Lake Titicaca makes rest day tomorrow even more anticipated. Lola still faultless, but the Porsche 356 will get a greasing and general spanner check. That said, Lola needs new plugs again, as poor fuel has been hard on plugs in all the old cars. T is bringing three more sets to Cusco in 2 days.
We have run at over 14,300 feet without re-jetting the carbs, so very happy and proud of our sea level work and the choices Brian and I made in setting these up! Our faith in physics continues.
Yesterday on the way into La Paz, we sat at 120 km/h (72mph) for an hours or so at just over 3,900 metres, or almost 13,00 feet. Where else in the world can you do that? That’s like a highway joining all the high peaks of the Rockies. Amazing!
Today rest day, tomorrow Puno to Cusco, in the foothills south of Machu Picchu. Next day is another rest day to allow some exploring in the legendary Peruvian ruins, followed by a 600-kilometre drive to Arequipa, not Aeroquipa as per the rally notes.
Second biggest city in Peru, the historic centre of Arequipa has been granted UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status. The old town’s beautiful heart is balanced by some of the highest levels of solar radiation in all of South America, thanks to the nearby Atacama Desert and local air pollution. Break out the UV sunblock! More news when we get it.
by John Glynn | Feb 20, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Porsche News
We’re following the WEVO Porsche 356 crew of Steven Harris and Hayden Burvill as they rally through South America on the Great South American Challenge 2013.
Yesterday was downtime for the boys in South America. They spent the day visiting the nearby waterfalls, pointing me towards other rally resources – the rally website is getting some routes wrong – and attending to Madam Lola’s every need.
Madam is doing well, which is more than can be said for Hayden. “Picked up a GT (generous traveler) flu on the way down from SF to Rio. I’m into the runny nose and hacking cough day and feeling pretty rough, but some spanner work on Lola will distract me and make me feel better.”
Hayden facebooked the top pic of Lola in bits for obvious servicing checks, carb tweaks and wiring in the Yellowbrick GPS tracker. There’s a good pic of Hayden’s rear end on Chuck Shwagger’s blog, tweaking something in the driver’s footwell: I’m sure he’s not backing out the throttle stop.
Today is Day 5 of the rally. They start at Foz do Iguacu (NE of the centre of this pic). The route heads north on secondary roads, skirting the Brazil/Paraguay border, formed by the Paraná River. The river is the second longest in South America, and takes its name from local words for “big as the sea”.
Paraná swallows the Paraguay River on its journey south, then merges with the Uruguay River and forms the vast Rio de la Plata before entering the Atlantic. The scale of the river as they travel north alongside it should be an eye-opener for the rallyistes.
The road continues to their overnight in Dourados on the fertile river plain: 503 kms in all today – about 300 miles. I don’t know what the stage plans are, but no doubt H will fill me in later.
by John Glynn | Feb 19, 2013 | Classic Porsche Blog, Race and Rally
WEVO Hayden has just finished Day Three of the 2013 Great South American Challenge with Steven Harris in Lola, the 1964 Porsche 356C. This is the fifth event of Hayden’s marathon rally career that I’ve covered as official WEVO blogjacker and it’s bound to be another good story.
Last used in anger on the 2010 Peking to Paris Rally, Lola has undergone a programme of evolutionary improvements on its P2P spec. Steven has a bit more experience under his belt and Hayden has done a few rallies with the competitive, experienced and thoroughly hilarious Alastair Caldwell, so is now a surgically precise co-driver navigator. I’m expecting cool runnings from Lola and her crew this year.
Team WEVO’s hard-earned expertise broke cover for the first time yesterday, when Steven and Hayden took first place on the day’s sole special stage of 19 kilometres: the only car to clean the run. Lola took the complete day’s drive of 693 kilometres from Curitiba to the wonderful Foz de Iguacu waterfall on the Brazil/Argentina/Paraguay border in her stride, a minor misfire at the end of the day due to suspected dirt in a fuel jet.
Today is the first rest day of the event, so time to visit the falls, clean the car and the carburettors. The team can catch their breath after a rushed start to the event, when Lola was delayed through customs: arriving at the start point (above) well after other competitors had finished packing their cars and stickering up.
So it was that Lola ran naked through the initial 488km transport stage from Rio to Campinas, skirting the edge of Sao Paolo in an enjoyable first day’s driving. Day 2 was another sub-500km run from Campinas to Curitiba, through the open plains of Brazil’s wheat bowl region, before climbing into the Apial Hills.
Parking alongside this magnificent straight-eight Buick shows her size in relation to most other competitors but they don’t spare the old stuff on these rallies: everything gets a proper thrashing. Car budgets include the build cost and the repair cost afterwards!
Today’s rest day will be mostly about settling into the marathon rally rhythm. Extended rallies are not just driving: there are rest/tourist days and fixit days, days to catch up with overseas news but any real downtime is about soaking up the unique pace of life: a pace that will dominate until March 24th, when the rally finishes in Tierra del Fuego: South America’s southernmost point.
Thirty-nine days rallying in a Porsche 356. I think we could all go for that, right!?
