I got an email from Mr Total 911 magazine editor Raby the other day, telling me he’d be near the house this week. Did I want to meet up for lunch? “Sure thing,” says I, “let me know where and when.” The ‘when’ was today. The ‘where’ was the Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone.
At just over ten miles from IB Towers, Silverstone is a favourite haunt. As another Silverstone fan (& lap record holder/race instructor) wanted to meet for a coffee and to discuss my potentially helping to sell his ex-Walter Rohrl-driven 964RS, I hooked up with him at the circuit diner, before trundling around to the Porsche Centre for lunch. Yes, my life is hard!
First impressions of the Porsche Centre are positive. On arrival there’s a C-plate Flatnose parked outside, so it’s not all current product. Good sign #1.
Inside, there’s a beautiful 356 Coupe, a Spyder race car and some very nice new cars, including a Vader-spec Panamera and a McQueen-spec 911 Carrera S: good sign #2. The 911 is painted special order Lamborghini Grey: the same colour Pete von Behrens chose for his insane WEVO-built Cup-engined 912, previously featured on the Classic Porsche Blog. With white wheels and the white S side flash, the car looks fabulous. A brave factory order for a demo!
Upstairs, the restaurant has one of the Fuchs-like Sport Classic rims hanging in the wheel display: good one #3. iPhone pic:
Nick Perry, fellow car anorak and media man at Porsche tells me that UK prices for the Sport Classic wheels are not yet set, but I expect more than a few modern 911s to start wearing these as they become available. Editor Raby has info suggesting the double-bubble Sport Classic roof is on sale at OPCs for a tidy £900, but the man from Del Monte says the roof, ducktail and paint code/trim colour are all unobtanium, to preserve the car’s rarity value.
Surely just a matter of time before someone figures out a reproduction: I’d put money on a Ruf Roof and Ducktail package in due course. Given the sea of RS reps in existence, Sport Classic reps are an interesting thought.
Lunch at the Centre was excellent, and left time for a quick tour of the place before Phil and Ali got started on their feature: shooting the Classic Experience. The Classic setup is an ’85 3.2 Carrera, a 993 and a 997, all owned by the centre and intended to give the driver an impression of how the 911 has developed over the years. Both classic Porsches came in through the dealer network.
The centre also keeps an average of 20 cars on its test fleet: manual and PDK versions of all production models, as well as examples of various power levels: with and without ceramic brakes and special suspension packages.
Alongside the Classic Experience, the Porsche Driver Centre runs other menu experiences (download the pdf here). There’s the GT day for a very reasonable £400, which includes a bundle of laps behind the wheel of a GT3, and ‘YouDrive@Porsche‘ days, where you can sample the centre’s facilities using your own four wheels (including a go on the skid pan/handling section), and round it all off with half an hour behind the wheel of a 997 Carrera.
In spite of my diehard corporate cynic gene, I enjoyed my visit to the Porsche Experience Centre. It’s not trying to sell you anything: it exists to support the dealer network and, more importantly, new Porsche customers who want to understand what their car is capable of. It’s a unique facility that sets our favoured manufacturer apart, so hats off to the guys who made it all happen.
