LOST IN TRANSLATION

The 924S’s MOT test should have been just a formality – the car had covered only a few miles since the last one, a year earlier – but in the event occasioned much head-scratching, and even more bad language. Chris Horton attempts to summarise a rather per

It’s interesting to see how one’s views change as one becomes older. As a teenager or perhaps even 20-something, I used to regard my car’s annual MOT test with the traditional mixture of foreboding and sullen resentment. Today, in my 60s, I welcome it as a convenient and costeffective way of corroborating that my car (or now cars) is/are basically safe to drive. A professional second opinion, if you like.

At least, I usually welcome it. This year, though, the due date for the 924S’s inspection crept up on me, and while it wouldn’t have been disastrous to let it lapse – the car was stored off-road at Auto Umbau in Bedfordshire, and I had neither plans nor need to use it in the near future – I felt that any hiatus in its road-legality might become the thin end of a dangerously thick wedge. (I do have what you might call ‘previous’ in that context.) And since it had covered probably only 300 miles since the 2016 test – and none at all according to the still defunct odometer – the process would surely be little more than a formality.

Wrong. Setting aside a morning – which ought to be more than enough, I decided, with both a magazine deadline and a holiday in Scotland on the near horizon – in mid-september I drove over to Silsoe to give the car a quick run to clean up the brake discs, and to check that the lights and the mercifully few other electrical systems worked. The engine started on the button, as usual, and my test-drive showed no obvious problems – apart from a frayed wiper blade, which I replaced with one temporarily borrowed from the 944. Back at base, though, it soon became apparent that both headlights had in the interim died a quiet and lonely death.

There followed much inspection of fuses, much laborious removal and replacement of relays (it was unlikely that both bulbs had failed simultaneously), and a great deal of very bad language – and I did eventually manage to get the lights working again. Even now, though, having spent a further afternoon with my head jammed beneath the left-hand end of the fascia, trying to decipher the awkward and frankly mad layout of relays and wiring – and the equally barmy Driver’s Handbook; see the separate item in last month’s Technical Topics pages – I still don’t know for sure what the problem was, or how I fixed it. Just one or more poor connections, I guess.

Unfortunately, however, my travails were far from over, because even after all that the 924S decisively failed the MOT test. Foolishly, but perhaps understandably in light of the minimal mileage since the last one (at the same centre, just a few doors away from Auto Umbau), I had somehow ignored the fact that the handbrake lever pulled up through nearly a dozen clicks, rather than the normally required three or four, and with a corresponding lack of effort at the rear wheels. I had also overlooked the fact, perhaps a little more forgivably, that the brake lights didn’t work. Seriously? Oh, for goodness’ sake. Or words to that effect, anyway…

Fortunately, the garage concerned (Morrison MOT Centre; 01525 861467) offers free retests, if carried out within 10 working days, so I gave it up as a bad job

equipment was as follows: electric and heated door mirrors; headlamp washers; cassette tape and coin holder (but no radio; back in those far-off days you had to have the dealer or an after-market supplier install that); rear window wiper; leather-trimmed steering wheel; electric windows and sunroof; and not least power-assisted steering.

Something and nothing? Perhaps. And, left to my own devices, I doubt that I would ever have bought one of these certificates. Although having come this far with the car I probably ought to splash out on one for the 944 that I have now owned for nearly 18 years; it would be interesting to see where in Italy it might have spent the first part of its life. But it is nice to have, a worthwhile addition to any history file, and I appreciated the gesture. And there is no doubt that such knowledge can be hugely empowering when it comes to finding the right parts for your car, new or second-hand.

I was going to end this panel – and this is how it would have appeared in the magazine, had not my Our cars report suddenly been held over from the December issue – by telling you how you could obtain a Certificate of Authenticity for your own car(s). But Porsche Cars GB has for the time being suspended the service, prior to reintroducing it in January 2018 in a slightly different format.

The new offering will most likely be marketed as a Certificate of Production, or something similar. Either way, for information e-mail customer.assistance@porsche.co.uk, or alternatively call 0118 919 1744. Note, incidentally, that Porsche Club GB members could obtain a Certificate of Authenticity for each of their cars, completely free of charge, and the Club has confirmed to me that this valuable benefit will continue. For more details about joining go to porscheclubgb.com/membership, or call 01608 652911.

the contacts with a paperclip, so there was nothing for it but to remove and dismantle the famously corrosion-prone rear light units, and methodically check for the required voltage with a meter.

Anyway, one way or another I got the wretched things working again and, having quickly adjusted both the handbrake cable at the lever and then the mechanism inside