I’m seeing quite a few Porsche cars around at the minute that, in my opinion, were hastily bought. When it comes to pre-’89 911s, this is not a good idea.
The usual Buyers’ Guides point out where to look. The spots are always the same but, since many guides have not been updated for a few years, the information is behind the market. This is not good either.
Even when the ‘what to avoid’ information is pertinent to the car in question, buyers are opting to ignore the clues and spend hard earned money on a Porsche 911 that has problems bubbling beneath the surface; ‘bubbling’ being the operative word. It’s high time I finished my own Impact Bumper Buyers’ Guide and I have recently returned to work on it. I’m hoping to have copies on sale here by the end of May.
In the interim, listen carefully. When it comes to 911s, there is one big thing to watch out for. It’s not the early 915 gearbox some guides bang on about, and it’s not the must-have full history others mention. It’s rust.
RUST is the number one thing to watch out for on any pre-’89 911. Once it’s in there, it is a proper nightmare to get it out again, and a double nightmare to keep it out. Opting to buy a classic 911 that shows obvious signs of rust, no matter how small, is a BAD IDEA unless there is absolutely no other option.
“They’re galvanised” say the sellers, “they don’t rot. That little bubble by the door latch is where I caught it with a bunch of keys and never touched it up.”
WAKE UP PEOPLE! Farm gates are galvanised, but anyone who has ever tried to climb over a 20 year-old one, only to find their foot breaks the bottom rung in half, knows that galvanising metal does not make it indestructible. These old Porsches have completely unlined under-arch spaces, with a few handy ledges for mud to build up and get trapped on, near spots that have been sandblasted raw by the gravel flung up on much-enjoyed roads. What do you think is going to happen there?
“Why did Porsche make such a mess of the design then?” you ask. They didn’t! Our beloved 911s still look fresh in terms of style, but they’re 30 or 40 years old. Some rot in that time is inevitable on a UK-supplied RHD car. A similarly-used MGB would be scrap in half the time.
Trust me: anyone who tells you Porsches are galvanised and do not rot is talking out of their tradesmans’ entrance. When conditions are right, the metal in these cars rots like any other.
Any statement by a seller (regardless of how respected you believe them to be) to the effect that the little bubble of rust on a 911 door slam, sill, under a window rubber, on a rear quarter panel or under a 911 headlight is just a stone chip left untreated, should be disregarded until you have seen the other side of the panel with a flashlight and a pokey thing.
In pound-note terms, if a 911 doesn’t have Fuchs, factor in at least £1000 with tyres to sort that and remember: most of the take-off wheels which come up for sale to help pay for Fuchs are worth nothing. If it doesn’t have an original steering wheel, add £100 minimum to sort it. Non original seats? If it had sports seats to start then £400 minimum.
But rust: what to knock off for rust? Put it this way. If you took a 911 with a few tiny sill bubbles showing above the sill cover (on an impact bumper car) to a bodyshop to have it repaired, you could end up paying £1500 a side to have sills and inner sills done including basic paint. More if it needs kidney bowls (see below) and B-posts (the metal panel where the door latches sit), and more again if the paint is complex metallic that has faded with age and is going to take some skill to match.
So the next time someone says “It’s a 911. It’s galvanised. It doesn’t rust”: remember this. It didn’t rust for the ten years the protection was guaranteed for, but that was the extent of its warranted chemical envelope. Car and protection are now in the region of three times that age: well past where you can expect rust to have started eating away at a car that has been in the salt-sprinkled UK all its life.
Yes, there are one or two rot free cars out there, but they are the absolute minority! Do your homework, get it inspected (I do inspections if you’re looking for someone quick and sensible) and take your time making sure it’s right for you. Don’t rush in to anything – unless you’re happy throwing money down a 911-shaped hole, that is.
It’s time once again for the endurance racing series that has taken America by storm. No, not ALMS. I’m talking of course about the 24 Hours of LeMons.
Lemon racing has been popular for a while in the UK (£500 bangers to Morocco etc) but in the ‘States they do it right. No charging ex-eBay scrap around Europe on public roads, mostly while drunk: this is a proper raceworthiness test of man and machine. Albeit very cheap machine.
Team Lemon Martini have been racing their 914 (above) for a few years now and it just keeps getting better – or should that be worse! Lemon Martini started with a rough Teener and made it even rougher, then took it out and raced it. The job was made a lot easier as one of their number is the legendary Jim Breazeale, owner of EASY Porsche Parts in San Francisco.
Lemon Martini’s latest incarnation is an absolute classic. The boys have painstakingly replicated the runt of the litter from an unholy 908/914 union. Jim takes up the story:
“We used an old 912 front bumper and turned it upside down. A bit of trimming, bending and “persuasion” made it fit to form the front of the car. We then used an old aftermarket 911 fiberglass front bumper to form the bottom half. The tops of the fenders were formed by using parts of fenders from old 924 Porsches. All Porsche parts, just not intended to be used on a 914. The rudders were formed from electrical conduit and sheeted with 20 gauge metal. The rear deck is the old rear lid turned upside down.”
And you all thought it was an MX-5 front end! Never!
Good luck to Jim and the whole Martini ‘Teener team, racing this weekend in the 24 Hours of LeMons at sunny Sears Point (Infineon Raceway). Check the LeMons website for more details and have a drink for me.
I’ll never forget my 13th birthday. I had an appointment with an orthodontist in Cork to have a brace fitted, so my dad drove me down from Limerick in his new E21 BMW 320. Zero present presence on my first day as a teenager had left me suitably depressed, with the prospect and process of a brace fitting killing it completely. But all was not lost.
After the dentist, we went to see my dad’s buddy, Dermot. Dermot was a gas man who ran a company out near Cork airport, importing German hi fi gear which we sold in our music shops. Dermot, the airport and Jury’s Hotel were my top three things about Cork.
When we arrived at Dermot’s HQ and warehouse, it was obvious I was not enjoying my first day as a teenager. He promptly took us through to the back and opened up a crate that had just come in. Inside were some Formula 1 look-a-like cars that were actually FM stereo radios. One of those got the party started. Then it was tea and biccies upstairs looking out over the airport and the (admittedly not many) planes coming in and out. The finishing touch was a bit of business with Jack, followed by a spot of lunch at Jury’s. My birthday had gone from dead loss to dead good in a matter of seconds. 29 years later, I remember it vividly.
While I was riding the emotional teenage rollercoaster down in Cork, another Porsche fan was having his own ups and downs in the French Alps. Deep into the 1981 Monte Carlo rally, Jean-Luc Thérier (below) was battling to keep his Alméras Frères 911 SC ahead of a pack including Bjorn Waldegaard and Ari Vatanen in Mk 2 Ford Escorts, the always-entertaining former European champion Jochi Kleint in the Ascona, Mikkola and Mouton in their Quattros (first WRC outing for them), Ragnotti in the R5 Turbo and Fréquelin and Henri Toivonen in the hard-charging Sunbeams. Also racing was a certain Herr Barth in a Porsche 924.
Jean-Luc’s first WRC event had been in 1973, the year of his first French Rally Championship, driving an Alpine A110. On the Monte, J-L took his first stage win and finished fourth, behind Mikkola in the Escort. The Alpines had been a force to be reckoned with: 6 of the top ten were A110s, with Porsche man Bob Wollek finishing 14th in another. Rear engined, rear wheel drive set set the scene for Thérier’s year: the erstwhile 110 powering him to victory in Portugal, Greece and San Remo.
In 1975 and ‘76, Jean-Luc ran the Monte in A310 Alpines and retired both times. 1977 and ‘78 brought a Toyota drive, and retirement from every event he started. ‘79 brought him back to the Monte in a Golf (if only everything in life was as reliable), but again retirement beckoned. The dawn of a new decade was a chance to wipe the slate clean. For the Tour de Corse, Jean Luc and the faithful Michael Vial jumped in a Porsche: an SC built by the Alméras brothers in Montpellier. They won the event.
Life was pretty sweet for Jean-Luc when he rolled into Monaco on January 23rd, 1981 and prepared to drive a car he had already won in; a car he knew could win. He was immediately on the pace and, by the last day, held a useful lead over Ragnotti’s Renault.
That final night, some spectators pushed a load of snow into a corner close to the end of a stage. Thérier’s SC, first on the road, slid wide, damaging the nearside rear corner (seen above en route to the scene of the accident). Jean’s lead was gone, and the 911 was out. Dead good to dead loss in a matter of seconds. Note the face in service afterwards:
1982 was a good year for JLT: a second French championship, again in a Renault and another Monte 911 drive, this time finishing third. The 911 was in good company: behind Rohrl’s Ascona 400, which had led commandingly all event and the Quattro of Mikkola, which had fought back on the last few slippery stages of an otherwise dry event to snatch second.
And so, Jean Luc, we salute you. Porsche life would be so much poorer without the following Super 8 footage of your exciting Esso 911 SC charging through the Alps on the way to what might have been, and so very nearly was.
Jamie and I shot this piece while in California in September and October of 2009. The day was fraught, with huge traffic on the way to our rendezvous on Mulholland Drive, then the car had a few running problems and stopped on the bottom of a bumpy and incredibly busy Friday afternoon rush hour Mulholland where it was found we needed a new battery. While locating a new one, night fell. It was a DISASTER.
The schedule was tight for the remaining days, but we had flown 8,000 miles mainly to cover this car, so no way were we leaving empty handed. Jamie produced a miracle, managing to pull some of the best statics of his career out of the bag in a pitch dark car park overlooking Burbank and the valley below. We eventually finished shooting at 10.30PM, Rob having bribed security to give us some extra time.
Next day, we headed up to the hills above Malibu to shoot Bata Mataja’s 356, afterwards shooting the Singer tracking shots on the Pacific Coast Highway as the sun went down. It couldn’t have worked out better – the pic above is one of Jamie’s best-ever shots. The car made the cover of the mag for both UK and US editions. Development since then has gone really well, and we’re back to drive the car properly in April 2010. Anyway, here’s the piece:
John Glynn meets the Singer 911 prototype and its English designer, to find out whether the car is the ultimate 911, or the ultimate ego trip.
I remember the summer of 1993. My then girlfriend was a promotions manager for a record label, while I played in a band that was doing OK. Travelling to and from gigs, we’d listen to her label’s recent releases. One night, the selection was ‘Chrome’, by Catherine Wheel. The album’s intense opening track: ‘Kill Rhythm’ is still one of my favourite driving songs. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that songwriter Rob Dickinson was a fellow petrolhead, with a passion for early 911s.
Seeing Dickinson’s ‘69 911E for the first time was a real eye-opener. The car featured sports purpose references alongside original design ideas, such as a drilled plexiglass engine grille, a sweet mix of tan body, yellow stripes and green graphics, and orange surrounds to 911R rear lights. Throaty tailpipes hung beneath the 69 POR licence plate and screamed rock and roll. Its owner had once again struck exactly the right chord.
It’s been five years since I first saw that E online. Today I’m standing next to it, in a car park off Mulholland Drive: home of the infamous LA street races of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. It’s just before sunset, and Rob and I are waiting for his latest project to arrive. The Singer Vehicle Design 911 is almost an hour late, but it’s hard to be upset when our Hollywood Hills location offers such an unbeatable view of the city below.
I’ve written before about my love for the bacon sandwich: see The Bacon Sandwich Sonnet for more info.
My latest lunchtime creation is the bacon and mushy pea omelette sandwich – snacktime genius if I say so myself – but, when there’s no bacon and no mushy peas in the fridge, the classic fried egg sarnie is where it’s at.
The fried egg sarnie is like a 911: quick, simple and can be optioned up to become whatever takes your fancy. Add a little salt to the pan with butter on the bread for simple comfort food, a bit of sweet chili if you’re feeling kinda spicy. I am going through a semi-Elvis phase at the mo, so here’s today’s recipe:
Heat a small pan & add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to it. Add your egg and immediately break the yolk. Give your slowly cooking egg (pic) the shape of the bread with a table knife. Yes, a metal one. Yes in the non stick pan. Don’t give me any crap about damaging the coating – I’ve been doing this for years and the pan is fine. Frying pans only cost a few quid: stop going on!
In the time it’s taken you to read thus far, your egg is cooked on the bottom. Flip it and cook another 20 seconds max. Your bread is already buttered with a tiny bit of onion relish, right? Put the egg on it. Make the sandwich. Now put it back in the pan. YES THE WHOLE THING. Cook over heat for 30 seconds. Then turn it (don’t flip it unless you are a total messer) and do another twenty. Now your lunch is ready, the pan just needs a quick clean and you have the ultimate in high cal single-filling bread based snacks. Serve with a cup of tea and espresso for dessert.
What you’ve done is a: feed yourself well (good job you) and b: charted the evolution of the Porsche 911. The classic fried egg sandwich is a 911 2.4S Targa: cracking the shell to bring out the goodness. The onion relish and lid of the bread made it better: a small-cranked, lightweight Orange Carrera 3.0 Coupe. Frying it in luxury made it a 993 C2S: like a classic Carrera but fatter and a little tastier to some. The cup of tea is like a 996, perfect for an everyday drink but you don’t seek it out on special occasions. The espresso gave it a kick: GT3 RS.
When it comes to frying eggs and 911s, I know my stuff. I feel a cookbook coming on!
What’s the moral of the story? Stop at the onion relish.
