Monthly Running Report

Having lived here on the farm for the last 10 years we have slowly built up a collection of useful garage tools from a bolt extractors through to a torque wrench that takes two people to lift. From ceramic coating through to upholstery refurbishing I am pretty sure we could give everything a go with varying degrees of success. Along the useful stuff, there is the accumulation of some expensive detritus of dubious value which threatens to displace the cars from their warm and dry garage. With sporadic breaks in the weather we embarked on a clear out and the construction of no less than sixteen Ikea two metre high cupboards to house what remained.

Ideally we need an industrial unit to stash the burgeoning selection of semi useful ‘things’. But in the south east of England such luxuries are scarce or remote so the prospect of having an social media star style car shrine is unlikely at this point in my life. Having been asked to review the architectural plans of one of these ‘toy boxes’ back in my architectural days I am fully aware as to how far things can get out of hand. That particular design was at an airport, and included a two jet hanger, sixty seater cinema and loft apartment the size of a hotel built overlooking a runway. But for now we will be content with sixteen Ikea cupboards and some white floor tiles.

eBay is part of my evening ritual, less so to fill the garage with other people’s garbage but more for scouting for items long out of print or manufacture. I also monitor the asking and selling price of various Porsche models and have saved searches for bits that I need for the cars that don’t warrant the expenditure of a new item. Now and then I manage a bargain but even more interesting is the people you meet selling these items.

The image of some shady tracksuit chav fencing loot from a remote lock up is always the fear, but the reality can be somewhat different. The first chance meeting was when buying a Carcoon which found me chatting to the vendor who turned out to be a solicitor who had a small collection of 911’s from a 930 through to 997 GT3. Even more interesting, his clients were no less than F1 and Porsche AG in the field of intellectual property. Several hours of chatting in his study perusing his collection of memorabilia we left googling and reading out Wikepedia entries on the journey home.

The next encounter was even more bizarre when I won a collection of Christopherus Magazines for all of 99p. Arriving to collect them in the depths of the Surrey country side the first inkling that this was was going to be one of those serendipitous encounters was pulling into the drive and spotting a 904 Carrera GTS headlight visible through the cracked garage door. An hour or so later after pawing his 356 Amelia Island Concours show car and hearing tales of his 914, 912 park in display up in the main house we headed home, with a boot full of magazines eager to once again google who exactly had we stumbled upon in our eBay adventure.

So the man with the extraordinary collection of pristine old Porsches was none other than the Head of Special Vehicle Design for a very famous British supercar brand. There was nothing to suggest this from his car, poster and ephemera collection which was exclusively dedicated to Porsche and from my brief session of online stalking, he had never worked for Porsche or bore any direct allegiance to Porsche but had chosen to build a personal collection of them in spite of who he worked for.

On both occasions I refrained from snapping photos having been let into both gentlemans inner sanctums so to speak during the course of post purchase conversation. If either had wanted or needed social media clout, their remarkable cars and stories would have made them famous already.

The poor weather and prepping the cars for the coming driving season means outings have been few. We did manage to head up to the NEC Practical Classics for a short break. 911’s thin on the ground with only two green ones spotted being fettled on the Tipec stand, but we did bump into Andy and John from Stuttgart South who was prowling the stands, microphone in hand interviewing people for their ‘My Dad’s car’ podcaste which I listen to along with the favourite 9Werks Radio.