WEWERE THERE FIRST!

Kieron Fennelly may well be right about Autocar writer Steve Sutcliffe getting his hands on a 997 Carrera in September 2004 (Tried & Tested, November 2018 issue, page 124), but I feel I ought to remind him, and everyone else, that we – 911 & Porsche World, that is – had our first drive in one the previous April, roughly five months before it went on sale in the UK.

It’s not often during my career that I have been able to say this, but the fact is that I was one of a tiny handful of journalists flown by Porsche AG to Puglia in southern Italy for a first drive in brand-new cars that, while out on the public road, were still ‘disguised’ with bits of gaffer tape. As I suggested in my story on the trip in the July issue that year, though, what else could they possibly be but the hotly anticipated new 911s?

It was a predictably fascinating experience, even way down on the ‘heel’ of Italy involving the dodging of potential automotive paparazzi in a 3-series BMW, and clandestine communications among the Porsche minders – of which there were many – on two-way radios. More surreal still was ending up at the otherwise deserted Nardo test-track at about 7pm on a Sunday evening and, after some car-to-car photography in the pouring rain, being invited to rack up some solo laps of the famous high-speed banked bowl.

‘That finally done,’ I wrote in my report, ‘I was able to put in a few laps on my own, gradually easing (myself rather than the car) up to around 230km/h (142mph) and suddenly, given the complete absence of landmarks in the conventional sense, feeling not unlike the tiny blob of luminous paint on the second hand of a wristwatch. It really is the most extraordinary place.’

And, as we discovered, the 997 itself was to mark yet another milestone chapter in one of the most extraordinary automotive dynasties there will surely ever be. Happy days! Chris Horton, Thame, Oxfordshire