GROUP THERAPY
Rather than build another backdate, how about a Group 4-style Carrera 3.2?
As unforgiving and unpredictable as it is irresistible to car enthusiasts, a track day at the Nürburgring is no small undertaking for most visitors. Punishing topography and limited run-off are a baptism of fire for new chassis and engine setups, with the added complication that any fault or misjudged manoeuvre could leave you stranded with an undriveable car, several border crossings away from home.
That’s unnerving enough if you’re familiar with what you’re driving, but it’s borderline terrifying if the machine that’s getting you there is only hours out of the workshop. Not that this was ever going to dissuade Jase Eaton from giving his newly-built 911 project a thorough running-in session on a Circuitdays event at the Nürburgring.
‘I had booked the event months ago, and wanted to take this car all along, but I wasn’t sure it would be ready in time,’ he tells us. ‘It came down to the wire; the car was mostly done but the decklid wasn’t painted until the morning before I left. I picked it up fresh out of the booth, fitted it that afternoon and left for Germany early the next day. But the car performed perfectly, and there were no issues at all.’
That laid-back confidence comes from a deep familiarity with what makes the car tick. Jase is one half of Porsche specialist
Stuttgart Classica and, with business partner Will Chappell, he’s spent the last five years co-developing high-end tuning and styling parts for air-cooled 911s and shipping them globally. The idea is straightforward; it’s the bits they wanted for their own projects, undertaken and completed almost in unison, built to exacting quality and backed up by the hands-on knowledge of the company’s co-founders. And what better way to show they work as intended, than to point that freshly-painted set of spotlights at one of the world’s most notorious circuits?
The base car had always been open to interpretation. Having grown up helping his dad build a 964 Turbo, Jase started tracking down his own project once he’d finished university. This ’84 Carrera turned up on a Porsche forum as a part-finished restoration, the previous owner had got as far as having it stripped into a carefully bagged and boxed build-your-own 911 kit, complete with a newly-restored bodyshell. Unfortunately they had also hesitated while deciding what to do with it next, and storage hadn’t been kind to it.
‘It’s no fun cutting and grinding rust out of a shell, so I don’t feel that I missed out by not having to do that,’ says Jase. ‘It was a complete 110,000-mile car, but most of it was in boxes, the wiring needed to be redone and some of the parts had gone rusty. I showed it to Will and he said he’d buy it if I didn’t, so I
bought it and picked it up on a trailer few days later.’
Restoration took priority, focused at first on fast-road use. Jase is a qualified motorsport engineer and, at the time, was working on engine development at Jaguar Land Rover – a good basis for bringing that early-spec 3.2 back to life out of hours. It’s mechanically standard, though blueprinted and balanced before reassembly, and fitted with an SSI exhaust, Wevo shifter for the 915 ’box and an uprated 44-row Mocal oil cooler tucked into the offside front wheel arch.
‘The original idea was to build it as a standard, narrow-bodied road car,’ he says. ‘It had a set of BBS RS wheels originally, sevens and eights, and I swapped out the H4 headlights for our full LED units as they give much better illumination. But then you start spending more money on parts, you realise it’s good fun taking it out on track, and you get carried away.’
Most of this is barely visible. As the build progressed, Jase found new ways to shed kilos from what was already a relatively lightweight car by modern standards, fitting fibreglass bumpers, lightweight Rs-style carpets, the thinner 964 RS rear glass at the back and a wire-heated windscreen up front, which allowed the cabin heater to be stripped out. The aluminium decklid tips the scales at just 2.2kg, while the Cobra RSR bucket seats – subtly paired with colourmatched belts – offer extra cornering support and further lessen the load on the engine. In turn, Bilstein coil-overs and Swayaway adjustable swing spring plates enabled a bespoke alignment setup tuned to local roads and regular track use.
‘I did the last two track days at Rockingham Motor Speedway before it closed last year. The first was in our Cayman Clubsport project car, and the week after I came back and did it in this. I preferred the 911 as you can move it around in the corner and explore its limits. You would need to be going dangerously fast to get the Cayman to move around like that,’ he explains.
‘That second session was a great day out – there were no noise restrictions, so I put the megaphones on and this was the loudest car there. I drove home with a headache, but it sounded great.’
If a ground-up rebuild didn’t breed familiarity with the car, Jase’s usage certainly did. Hooked on a driving experience which had become closely tuned to his own tastes, the 911 shrugged off 20,000 miles in two years of use, including its first journey to the Nürburgring and the North Coast 500 – a 500mile tour encompassing Scotland’s most exhilarating and most scenic coastal roads. The only casualty was transmission-related, with the 915 shedding teeth from first and second gear, and losing its synchromesh – a cheap fix, he says.
Of course, there’s always room to go a step further. As
Jase’s work time became increasingly biased towards classic Porsches, and Stuttgart Classica’s product line-up expanded, ideas started forming for a way to indulge not only his affection for the 911 but for 1980s rallying, too.
“THE 911 SHRUGGED OFF 20,000 MILES IN TWO YEARS…”
When this car left the showroom in 1984, Porsche had become as much of a force off Tarmac as it was on it. Having dominated endurance and GT racing, FIA Group 4 regulations, set in 1978, paved the way for the 911 to prove it could be just as competitive on loose surfaces, most notably in the hands of the Almeras brothers – a workshop in Southern France which lured some of motorsport’s biggest names into the driver’s seat of its rally-tuned, flared-arch Porsches. It’s a reputation that still brings projects through its doors today.
These Group 4 cars were based on the narrow SC body, rather than the wider Turbo. So Jase had the right foundations in place and could get his hands on the parts to make it happen. Painted by Big Bear Kustoms, the flares add three inches a side to each front corner, and three and a half at the back, and come paired with the distinctive spotlight pods – but it took some reinterpretation to make it all work. Even with the steel arches cut back, tucking the eight and ten-inch wide Compomotive CX500S under the 911 required some free thinking.
‘I found the wheels on ebay – they had pink centres and white lips when I bought them,’ says Jase, ‘so I had the centres painted gold, the barrels powder-coated black and fitted new, wider lips. But the offsets at the rear meant they wouldn’t fit under the Group 4 arches. It’s using 934-style flares at the back, which look pretty much the same but are another inch wider. That solved the problem.’
In turn, they’ve allowed some extra freedom with the tyre choice. The 911 runs super-soft Michelin TB 15 classic rallyspec tyres at each corner, which are period-correct, but functional with it. Jase admits these had been the biggest unknown within the new setup. The Nürburgring had witnessed a heavy snowfall the weekend before he visited, but was forecast dry weather as his departure date loomed closer – conditions which can scrub the tread out of soft compounds within a few laps.
‘The tyres made the biggest difference. The amount of grip, and the feel – because they are a lot softer and taller profile – means it moves around a lot more, which is fun. The brakes are a lot better, too, as I’ve got ducting with the Group 4 bumper to keep them cool and it’s also running a Turbo brake master cylinder. There’s no issues with fade, whereas before I’d get a long pedal if it was dry,’ he says.
It’s an enviable position to be in. The 911 is already booked onto another Circuitdays Nürburgring event, taking place in October, and Jase’s preparation plans stretch as far as slightly stiffer front springs and a service before it heads for the Channel. This time, it’s a familiar, tried and tested tool for the job ahead.
‘I’ve built the car from a bare shell, so I know it inside and out and it feels special every time I get in it,’ he tells us. Though there’s room for some box-fresh engineering, too: ‘I just sort of hope the values come down so I can buy another one and turn it into a full race car.’