I picked up my latest bargain last weekend. Have to say that the eBay description was short, sweet and very accurate.

I have owned this car for 15 years.  It has not run for 10 years.  It has been garaged for 8 years.  It needs a total new interior, new tyres, new brakes.  We were told by a mechanic that the engine turns over but it needs a new E.C.U. unit.  The body is in good condition for the year.  It has all original service pack etc. and an excellent number plate:  A911 DRY, which I am told is valuable.  The car is white. The car will need to be transported by the successful bidder.

I collected the trailer from Rob on Saturday evening and left home, destination Pagham, at 5am on Sunday morning. The M40 and A34 were clear, so 90 minutes later, I stopped for a coffee at Tot Hill services, just south of the M4. Tyre pressures checked and lights cleaned we were back on the road, but I immediately noticed a vibration from the truck that I couldn’t pin down to a corner, and the fuel started to burn faster.

The end of the road was 65 miles away, so I kept going, stopping a couple of times to check my tyres weren’t overheating and/or delaminating. I reached Pagham at 8am and found the house. Passing the car on the way to the front door, I could see the trim was absolutely destroyed. Not a disaster but not too attractive either. The 911 DRY plate looked even better in real life, so there was no doubt that I was taking the car. 

Steve (the seller) opened the door and we settled down for one of those conversations that quickly turns into two guys who could have known each other for years - the parallels were amazing. The car was his son’s, but Steve was handling the sale as the owner was abroad most of the time. They had bought the car back in the early ’90s from from Nick Faure, who was a friend of the family. The plate came later.

Steve was a very famous guitar player back in the day, before moving into the motor trade, so we had lots to talk about, and we did. After our tea, we went outside and loaded up. Once A911 DRY was on the trailer, we did the paperwork and I was gone, promising to return when the car was back on the road.

The drive home was laboured. The truck was shaking quite obviously at certain revs and the car was a little far back, so I stopped at Sutton Scotney services, rechecked the tyre pressures on all three units and slid the car up a touch - was much better over 60 after that. A quick look up the skirts of the 4runner revealed that the vibration was the prop UJ failing, causing the prop to bind slightly, dragging the engine down and pushing the fuel consumption up. Another job on the list. As we are stuck for space at home, I dropped the car at the farm, handed the trailer back and came home to finish the deal on a paraffin heater I had sold on eBay.

I hadn’t spent any time looking at the car before I picked it up and, though the inside is beyond distraught, the body looks good. Though it has been parked for 10 years, the car has only done 88K miles from new and there is plenty of service history (the book pack is mint). The brakes are completely seized, but off; not on. The exhaust, tyres and clutch etc are likely to be well past it, but I will buy a good runner with a test and a knackered body and swap what I need over, fitting power steering at the same time.

I am looking forward to getting this on the road, looks great and deserves to be in use - early 944s have to be worth keeping when in this sort of condition. I am tempted to Megasquirt it and see how that works out - could be very interesting!

I have always loved the look of the 944 - that Coke-bottle shape gets me every time. Around the time of my birthday, I’d been swapping a few emails with a chap on the south coast about his 944 for sale, for reasons which will become obvious. The deal never happened and I sort of forgot about it. Anyway, lo and behold, today I see the car for sale still and the timing this end is much better. So I bought it.

 What’s the big deal over an ancient 944, that has not run for over 10 years and apparently needs a LOT of work to get through the test? Watch carefully:

I did some work with my long-time hero Michael Bailie the other day for 911 & Porsche World. It’s great when legends like this supreme automotive snapper turn out to be everything you want them to be - and more. What a guy! Here’s a classic MB shot: JK and his cars (some of them anyway).

I never finished my mechanical apprenticeship. My boss (who had been ripping me off for ages over some damage I did to the works van, to avoid claiming on his insurance) found out I had been skipping college for over a year (full of half-baked inbreds), so rather than have it out with him, I decided to call it quits and come back to London to make my way instead.

While I worked on the tools, I never had much interest in mechanic-ing, preferring instead to do the running about on breakdowns and the like (I was playing drums 5 nights a week so I was making my money elsewhere). But once I was doing something else for a day job, I started to buy tools of my own, doing projects here and there to keep myself busy.  

The boys in Limerick never had the full-height toolboxes, they had cantilever boxes that they took home every night to do their out of hours work. It wasn’t until I started working in dealerships like Renault London that I saw my first Snap-On tool cabinet, and it made quite an impression. (more…)

 When it comes to 911s, there can sometimes be a big difference between perception and reality. John Glynn examines common knowledge through a psychic microscope.

It happened five years ago, almost to the day. My brother in law had recently passed away, and my company was in the midst of a management buy out, so I was surrounded by some big changes. I have no idea how or why I noticed it, as I never read the local paper, but my gaze fell upon an ad for a clairvoyant medium. 

Many of us swing between the romance of believing in everything and the reality of believing in very little - an incessant head-versus-heart melodrama, often instilled by a religious upbringing. One thing I do believe is that new experiences are good, whatever your faith. Curiosity had the better of me, so I dialled the number. A woman answered immediately, as if she knew the phone was about to ring. Good start.

We had exchanged some simple pleasantries, when the voice at the other end suddenly said “she is putting the pen in your hand”. My mind was clear on wanting to do more writing, so I asked who this pen-thrusting “she” was. I was given a compelling and clearly identifiable response; it was not the anticipated “grey-haired woman who used to be alive”.

Expectations were firmly in check when I met the seer two weeks later. An evenly-matched sense of humour and Irish roots on both sides of the table meant conversation came easy, but the ten pages of A4 notes I made recording the main points of our three-hour encounter tell a more serious tale. There were things that no way could this woman have known about, yet the feedback was right on the money, every time. It was truly a remarkable evening. (more…)