In the late 70's I knew an older guy that owned a bone stock 1966 Porsche 911S, original red paint ( I think it was called Polo red), kind of cool but thought it was pretty boring, I told him that a small block Chevy would be really cool in it and he looked at me like I had two heads. Now the hot thing to do is swap an LS engine in it, now it's me thinking I must be getting old!
When I was a kid living in SoCal, one of my dads friends had a 69 (I think) 911. I remember it being British racing green. He took us for a ride in it. It was really the first time I got a taste of going fast in a car. That car was his pride and joy. Took super good care of it. Then one day he had to take it to the store, due to his daily being down. He parked it way far away from everyone, was gone for about 15-20 minutes. When he came back, someone had went around the car a few times and keyed it. Was down to bare metal in spots. He got rid of it shortly after that.
I have a soft spot for the 928. About 15 yrs ago, I was seriously considering purchasing one. Came across a rare 5-sp 93 GTS for sale in Montreal. IIRC, it was around CAN$35K. Wife agreed it was ok to buy. Spoke to the owner. Was arranging to make an appt to view it, but in the meantime, I started doing some research on maintaining such a thing. Well, it didn’t take long to realize that one had to have deep pockets to maintain one of these things with yearly costs averaging $5K. Then there were the horror stories of fixing them. That did it for me, and I decided to pass. One of my favourite vids, is Mark Anderson’s 928.
Came across this a couple times lately on FB marketplace. lol! https://www.facebook.com/share/Q3Vs7ihwruVJPiCe/?mibextid=79PoIi
I know where I can buy the molds to produce Porsche 356 Speedster fiberglass bodies. There might be plenty of bodies on the market already. A good Bug pan is hard to find nowadays but a new frame would not be that hard to design. There are hundreds of front drive engine/transaxles to choose from and mount in the rear. You can probably buy a brand new reproduction VW setup and keep it air cooled. Dreams……
The Singer cars are wonderful. I think most are built from 964's or 993's, last of the air cooled, backdated to give more of the old 911 look. The craftmanship that goes into these is unreal. The price tag and the wait list befit the cars.
V8 swaps kind of ruin these cars… The whole point of a 911 can be summed up with one slogan: slow in, fast out. Meaning, with the rear weight bias you hit the apex slow and get on the throttle early. The end result is a balance of weight and momentum. As soon as you add more weight on the ass end and disturb this balance, the joy of the 911 on a race track dissipates. That… and the best part of building these cars isn’t really figuring out ways to make more power. It’s figuring out how to make them lighter and lighter.
My wife purchased her 1971 911 the day before she turned 21. We married 4 years later and purchased another 1971 911 in Oakland whilst on our honeymoon and brought it home to Australia. Converted it to RHD. A few months pater we purchased a 1966 911S, which was from California, sight unseen. Turned out to be a Belgium car that migrated to the States and so full of rust it was hard to spot the decent metal, We chopped it in 3 and welded a new short front and long rear into it. We used in Desert events for 4 yeas before selling it. The car survived a garage fire after we sold it and still is used in Rally's today. That gives it a 35 year competition history. We have a photo of it jumping off Big Red the tallest sand dune (at around 30 metres, 100 feet to American Citizens) in the Simpson Desert in Queensland. This car took more abuse than any vehicle I have known. It was used in the Desert, on a NASCAR track, Circuit Racing and Drag Strip plus as a daily driver for a few years, where it did stupidly well for what it was. They were all sold as our Children needed seat belts.
I had a ruby red 928s4, 1984 black gut and it was a 5 speed.probably the fastest car I've owned but not the quickest.It had the nicest sounding exhaust. It would drift nice going on some of our on ramps to the highway. I smoked a turbo eclipse one evening. You could wind it up and dump the clutch and just haze the the tires. Now they get some crazy money for the them. I don't have a picture but it was just like this one! Handled awesome 51 vs 49 % balance front to rear trans was in front of the rear end.
The above photos are from the Porsche Atlanta Experience center. Got the opportunity to visit their museum while working with them in Stuttgart in 2011, have to dig those out. Just finishing up the book “The Unfair Advantage” which is the racing biography of Mark Donahue, has a lot of detail about how they set up the 917 & 911 Carrera for racing, it’s a great read.
This thread just reminded me of a screenshot I took of Life360 on my phone one day. My youngest son had traveled to Germany with a friend from school that lived there and stayed with his family for a week over their Christmas break this last Christmas. I just happened to go look on Life360 to see where he was one day and noticed he was at the Porsche museum. He said it was pretty cool but we have never really talked about it. I just sent him a text and asked if he took pics while there and he did...so more to come.
Never owned a German vehicle, but always loved Porsches and VW's and boxy Mercedes-Benz. When I was 21 I test drove a '78 Porsche 930 Turbo for sale at a local car lot. I really wanted that car, but the monthly payment and price of insurance was just too steep so I bought a different (cheaper) car. I still drool over any 911 I see.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/rrM4bpNgj7wfo3BZ/?mibextid=UalRPS Porsche event at my old work place
The first car I bought was a Beetle so I have a soft spot for 911s, never managed to own one though. Would like a go in a 935, this was in my race at Silverstone Festival last year.
Got to see/hear one of these run at a historic race, what wonderful noise! Right up there with a Rolls Royce Merlin, big Pratt & Whitney Radial, or top fuel engine.
The Jalopy Journal
