PAINTED 911 · MARK’S BEEMER · TIMELINE
Another company offering bespoke classic 911s. Warning: artists at work...
We’ve driven a new restomod 911 in California... wait, come back, this one’s really good. Also, Mark’s BMW gets a surprise MoT test pass
Apparently, it is possible to eat too much honey and almond granola. There is a point at which rewatching the collected artistic output of Arnold Schwarzenegger gets boring. You can reach critical mass intellectually while watching cute animal videos on the internet. It is very possible, therefore, to have too much of a good thing. And thus it was with a healthy dose of skepticism that I approached this: the Porsche 911 RSR Rebel. Because it is yet another reworked retro Porsche. Except it isn’t.
The reasoning goes something like this: as we speak in 2020, the world is awash with custom, hot-rodded, reimagined and retro Porsches. So much so that soon, the rarities will be anything over two decades old that hasn’t been lightly outlawed, tweaked or primped. And, even as eyes are turning to more affordable, older Stuttgart product, the one model that has been subject to the tender ministrations of the fettler’s hammer is obvious: the 911. Of course, there are some beautiful creations out there. Cars that have been improved and enhanced to keep them going for far more years than the gentle obsolescence of age might usually allow, if not lifted from obscurity, then at least future-proofed for a bit.
But bombing down a backroad in the slick, oozy Californian sunshine in this reworked 911 feels different. This isn’t just a set of wheels, a lowering kit and patina paint. This is a hybrid of art and dynamism that sits in a peculiar little bubble of acute vision. And it is good. It gets better the nearer the redline the engine sings, better the faster you go, better the more you understand about why, and how. As the nose rises and dips following the coiling Californian road, as the wide, tallsidewalled tyres squirm and track the ridges and imperfections in the road surface, as the steering wheel direct-dials the back of your eyeballs, you realise this isn’t wide-band perfection. It’s a laser-guided interpretation of one man’s will and passion.
The first thing you notice is the paintjob. And this is a paintjob, not a slick-but-easy vinyl wrap sticker set. Now, I have nothing against wraps – they are a cheap, easy, effective and nonpermanent way of doing something interesting with your car. But when you realise this livery is actual professional paint, the respect levels up. One, it’s much harder to do, and two, the commitment to this kind of artistry is immeasurably more than if you could peel it off in six months and start again. Add to that the fact that this paintjob’s lines were laid down by none other than Freeman Thomas, the designer of the new Beetle and now iconic (a hill I may be prepared to die on) Audi TT, and a man whose first job was at Porsche (1983–87). He’s a name. And he laid out the similarly iconic vintage Porsche livery you see in the pictures, grifted from the early Seventies – lightly feral – legendary racing Porsche 917s.
Of course, stuff like this doesn’t happen in isolation. And the clarity of vision usually has to have somewhere to anchor itself. In this case, a guy called Jon Gunderson. Now Gunderson was lucky enough to get himself in his first Porsche 911 when he was just 18 years of age, and has been infected ever since. His perfect 911? The RSR from the early Seventies. His favourite look? The aforementioned ‘art car’ liveries of those contemporary race-bred 917s. Fast forward a few years, and useful business acumen has allowed a passion project of epic proportions, resulting in an extremely limited series of restomod reworkings of things that did not exist, but should have in Gunderson’s world.
The basis is a ’72 or ’73 911 which is stripped raw and remade. So this is no cheap ’n’ cheerful pseudomod, given the prices of early Seventies Porsche 911s. And it’s no Airfix kit of plastic add-ons either – everything on the Rebel cars is metal, from the generously widened steel arches to the aluminium ducktail, bumpers and hood. Everything else is upgraded, or new. Not some fetishistic recreation or period-correct homage, just a simple aggregation of all that Gunderson regards as the good bits. So you get that super wide body in steel, Elephant Racing suspension
“THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE IS THE PAINTJOB. AND THIS IS A PAINTJOB, NOT A SLICK-BUT-EASY VINYL WRAP”