YOU AND YOURS
Toby Barlow races a 986 Boxster S in the Porsche Club Championship, and his personal Porsche is a much cherished 911SC – finished in exotic Tobacco Brown
Toby Barlow and his lovely 911SC and Boxster racer
Race a Boxster in the Official Porsche Club Championship, and you’d think it doesn’t get much better. It does for Toby Barlow, though: his road car is a 911SC. Acquired from his father who bought it new in 1979, it’s Toby’s pride and joy.
‘Yep, my father bought it from Porsche Hamburg when he lived in Dusseldorf, and it’s a distinctly period colour scheme. It’s called Tobacco Metallic, and I’ve never seen another one like it. He didn’t actually order that colour; I think it was a cancelled order, but he fell in love with it anyway. It’s a lefthooker, obviously, and it’s quite a rare and desirable spec, in that there’s no Sport pack, no sunroof and no rear wing or front splitter, though it does have Fuchs wheels. It’s completely standard; there’s nothing on it that’s not original, apart from two breather pipes which we changed.’
A full-time landscape artist specialising in oil paintings, Toby’s father spent five years living in Germany, and brought the 911 with him when he came back to England in 1983. ‘He used it every day,’ says Toby, ‘and it was never driven gently on the Autobahn. When we came back to the UK it was used a bit, but driving around the Norfolk lanes you need something else that’s a bit higher up and four-wheel drive, so it fell into disuse, and just sat at the bottom of the garden, until ’93-’94 when he handed it over to our local Porsche specialist, Brian Daniels at Blakeney Garage. Brian did the restoration on it, which included re-bushing all the suspension, rebuilding the engine and gearbox, along with some paintwork and a few other bits and bobs, and after that it was used sparingly, clocking about 2000kms over 10 years.’
When Toby took over ownership, the odometer read 191,000km, or 118,000 miles. He has raised that by 10,000kms over the last couple of years, and it’s now undergoing a bit of TLC. ‘It’s currently up at SMC Automotive in Chester with the guys that own my Boxster race car, as it’s going to have a bit of paintwork and the kidney bowls done. It’s 25 years since it was rebuilt, and, bearing in mind where we live, which is right by the sea, I think that’s pretty good going. I’m conscious that it is an old car, but at the same time I do drive it properly. I don’t have a lot of time for people that buy cars and don’t use them: cars are for driving, watches are for wearing: what’s the point in parking something up and not using it?’
Toby grew up surrounded by his father’s collection of vehicles: ‘At one point he had 11 cars, which is both ever so slightly frivolous but excellent if you like cars, which I did. In 1995 he bought a Grand Prix White 993 Carrera 4 from AFN Chiswick, and that car had a drilled airbox, and it sounded like Armageddon approaching, it was insane how noisy it was. We always went to Friday practice at Silverstone for the British Grand
Prix, every year from 1994 to 2002, and I remember sitting in the passenger seat of that 993 with the window open, and it was always freezing, with the seat heater on maximum, and this noise went right through you. He drove fairly quickly, and you’d got this flat-six howl and that noise is forever etched in there, even now. When I drive the Boxster racecar, it gets those juices flowing, too, and anyone that’s got a Porsche will know it’s that moment when it goes from a gruff reverberation to a yowl, and that’s the moment where the adrenaline goes all the way up to 11! One morning, he went out in the white 993, and came back in the evening in a different car, a black 993 Turbo, and
I was really pissed off because I loved that noisy 993, and this one was so quiet in comparison. The 993 Turbo does feel quite safe, even when you start to push, thanks to the four-wheel drive system, which I personally don’t like; I like a car that makes me work, and that’s why I’ve got an older 911, as it always keeps you on your toes at the limit.’
The most monumental trip he’s done in the SC is to Classic Le Mans in 2018. I went that year, too, in my 986 with photographer Sarah Hall, and it was the hottest summer on record. But while we went via Plymouth to Roscoff, Toby and his pal went Dover-calais. He recalls the journey: ‘It was extremely warm, about 20 degrees at 5 o’clock in the morning, and driving the empty streets of
London it was just fabulous. We were in the queue for the Shuttle, and there was all sorts of gear going to Le Mans, and suddenly we heard this raucous noise, deafeningly loud, and it was two factory Jaguar racecars: one was a baby-blue C-type, and the green one was a D-type, and they were driving both cars down to the Classic to race them. I remember thinking, “that’s cool, I’ll try and stay with them,” and with the way the French autoroutes are policed you have to be a little bit careful, but we weren’t going straight to Le Mans, we turned off and went for lunch at Honfleur, and after that we had a very entertaining two- or three-hour sprint with a Ford GT. I saw 150mph twice, and this dark blue GT driver was obviously having a whale of a time, as we were, too, passing everything, and this guy was obviously on a mission to get down there and we just tagged on behind him, mile after mile. I’d go past him, pull in, and he’d come past me, and we’d both go for it, foot to the boards, full revs, and my 911 didn’t miss a beat all the way down there – and all the way back. I think it used half a litre of oil the whole way, flat out. And can you guess how many police we saw in the five hours it took us to get to
“I saw 150mph twice, and this dark blue Ford GT driver was obviously having a whale of a time
Le Mans? Well, zero! Apparently, according to a local, they have lowered the maximum speed limit on the Routes National from 100kph to 90kph, and the French are up in arms about it, but the effect is that the police don’t monitor the Autoroutes quite as keenly.’
A successful baptism in kart racing as a kid, and Van Diemen Formula Fords in his teens, gave Toby the confidence he needed to take up the challenge, and he’s about to embark on his second season driving the PC Chester-sponsored 986 Boxster S in Class 2 of the Porsche Club Championship. In fact, two 986 Boxster Ss are run under the auspices of PC Chester in class 2, one for Toby and the other for PC Chester Centre Principal, Carl Hazelton. ‘Andy Dickens from SMC Automotive owns my car, and the other one is owned by Porsche Chester,’ Toby clarifies, ‘so they run in PC livery and last season we used their technicians and their equipment, and they looked after the car. We found that that was a little bit difficult, because they were running cars in two different classes; Carl was running in the Classic Restoracing Championship at the time against 16 other PC Boxsters, so this coming year SMC Automotive are going to run my car, and PC Chester will run Carl’s car. We will obviously still pool resources as I get on with Carl very well, and it’s good to
share data and compare handling. SMC’S technicians are first rate, and Craig who’s their workshop manager is a really good mate, too. When you’re strapped in the car and you’re belted in and bolted down, you want to have somebody you can trust next to you before the race to calm your nerves.’
And how did he get into Porsche Boxster racing? ‘I went through a period of renovating and tuning Land Rover Defenders, and along the way I advised Andy at SMC where to buy stuff from, what worked and what didn’t, and eventually SMC Overland became synonymous with modified Defender products. I went there in 2015 and was general manager for two and a half years. Then the Porsche thing kicked off when he persuaded me to get a white 987 gen 2 Boxster S with PDK. And that’s the most fun Porsche I’ve owned to date, and it’s also the one I most regret selling.’ After that, it was a short step into the Porsche Club Championship with the SMC 986 Boxster S.
‘The differences between the Boxster racecars is that Class 2 run on slicks and you’re allowed a limited slip diff, but the Class 3 cars that Carl ran in last year have an open diff as standard and they don’t run too highly modified suspension. We can run whatever we like re-dampers as the slicks we run demand so much more from the chassis than any road or track-day tyre as used by Carl last year in Class 3. In comparison, the loadings and the way the cars behave on the limit are quite different, and very interesting to learn about. Certainly, the operating temperature window is different: on road tyres you can go out and within three corners they are up to temperature, whereas slicks are a different ball game, and on a set of cold slicks you have no grip for the first lap or so.’ With several wins and podium places in a short season last year, Toby is already gearing up for 2020. And we plan to follow his progress –
so watch this space.
A man of many parts, Toby also runs a Sunday morning drivers’ club once a month, from April to September, called East Coast Drivers. ‘We get a dozen or so sports and GT cars showing up, mostly Porsches, and we do a run around the North Norfolk Coast, which is loads of fun. Last year I used my Caterham, which is the most fun you can have in a car on the road when no-one’s looking; it’s an ex-racecar and I’m going to race it again this year – the plan is to do some 750 Motor Club events, all being well.’
Another string to his bow is setting up Land Rovers for optimum road performance, which means lowered suspension, a full external cage, full geo set up and more, if his personal Defender 90 is anything to go by, this is one formidable vehicle. Think Lara Croft meets Mad Max! ‘After my initial bout of racing Formula Fords, a guy who owned a company tuning Defenders needed me to drive one at an event at Bruntingthorpe in Leicestershire, with the makings of quite a feisty project, which was a track-day based, super-quick Defender – and that’s an oxymoron in itself, but, God, it ended up being rapid. I got my current Defender when I was 18; I’ve still got it, and I’ll never get rid of it. It’s the most anti-social, horrible thing to drive, but it taught me everything about driving fast, on the road anyway, because if you put into practice what you would learn in a Porsche at the limit you shouldn’t be anywhere near a road. When you’re in a Defender, however, you learn so much about weight transfer and being smooth when pushing on, but well within the legal limit. A lumbering Defender teaches you to carry speed through corners in the smoothest way possible, so I suppose I’m the person that learned to drive fast in a Defender. Driving a Porsche is child’s play by comparison!’ Smoking – though tyres, and not tobacco, in this case.