THREE OF A KIND
Export 56 brings together not one, not two, but three orange 911Ss!
Orange was a defining colour of the early 1970s and some readers, perhaps then at the outset of their motoring careers, may have memories of lusting after orange cars – maybe even BMW’S 2002 Tii. Perhaps it was the association with ‘Gulf’ orange but, from the very beginning of that decade, this was a shade associated with the sporting cars you desired, but probably could never afford…
Another far rarer model than a Beemer to appear in orange was the much more exclusive Porsche 911: colour code 018 which Porsche called ‘tangerine’ was available for a couple of seasons, disappearing when the G series was launched. Today, an orange car might catch an enthusiast’s attention; an old 911 in this hue will certainly turn heads. Mick Pacey of Export 56 found (if he had not already anticipated it) that when he led a procession of three orange pre-impact bumper 911s, traffic virtually came to a halt.
‘These are rare cars,’ says Mick, whose company has worked on all three featured here. Indeed, of all the people capable of bringing together a trio of almost identical 2.4Ss (one car is LHD) you would put your money on this man. A Porsche enthusiast to the core, Pacey bought his first, a 914, at 17. A career in advertising enabled him to sustain his ever more demanding Porsche addiction and he set up Export 56 virtually as a hobby. He felt that in the 1990s there seemed to be very few people restoring old Porsches properly, and little interest existed in doing so.
After a few years he would leave the fleshpots of the
West End to work full time on old Porsches. Over twentyfive years he reckons he has restored scores – probably more than a hundred 356s and early 911s.
Nevertheless, to have three orange 2.4S coupés in one place at one time is quite an achievement although, says Mick, it was almost entirely coincidental. The first orange 2.4 to come into his possession was XBM 412K. This is one of the 77 RHD 2.4Ss that came to Britain and a 911 that he purchased in Grimsby as long ago as 2006.
‘I was hunting for restorable 911s. I saw this one advertised and it seemed a worthwhile project. The owner had taken it off the road in the late 1980s and attempted a restoration. But the years went by and he had finally given up. He asked £6.5k which was a fair price then and about what I expected to pay. Matching numbers 2.0-litre, 2.2 and 2.4Ss for restoration were going for about that, but there seemed to be few buyers. XBM was in a dismantled state but complete and came with a stack of replacement Porsche panels.’
He took the 2.4S back to Newport Pagnell and ‘stripped and dipped’ it, storing it in one of 15 or so 20ft containers in which he kept parts and complete RHD shells, ‘a box for
Carreras, a box for Ss, a box for 356s and so forth,’ he explains. ‘I didn’t know what to do with them as there was no demand back then.’
At the time, a fully restored 2.7RS fetched around £60,000. A matching numbers 2.4S in similar condition would sell for barely half that, and considerably less than the cost of full restoration. Mick sold on the exgrimsby 2.4S in 2008 only to come across it again in 2015 when he was searching for precisely that model for a client. ‘In the meantime, it had undergone a reasonable body restoration and engine rebuild, but lots of interior and trim parts were missing. The most difficult aspect was locating the tan upholstery: we could have replaced it in leather but that would not have conformed to the original. Eventually we found a very close match to the original leatherette ‘parchment’ in Italy and completed the restoration.’
XBM’S Kensington-domiciled owner already had a Singer and had purchased one of 12 RHD 356 Roadsters from
Export 56, and was after a tangerine 2.4S to complete his air-cooled Porsche collection. Export 56 finished off the restoration of XBM in 2018 and the 911 resides in Mick Pacey’s storage when its owner is not using it.
The second orange RHD 911, registered HMY 3K, is a late 1971-build model and belongs to a Manchester collector, another Export 56 client who also runs a brace of 356s – a Carrera GT and a Speedster, besides a pair of 2.4S Targas and, rarest of all, the ex-magnus Walker 901; his 2.4S coupé happened to be at Export 56 for remedial work. Originally in tangerine, this 2.4 which has a very thick history file, had been repainted black in 1998 and then returned to its native orange during a Gantspeed restoration costing over £100,000 which began in 2005. Export 56 has maintained it since 2018.
‘That restoration was completed in 2008 and we have
“I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THEM… THERE WAS NO DEMAND”
done some detail work subsequently to tidy things up and service it,’ explains Mick. This 911 is an example of how the 2.4S has climbed the value tree: sold in 2005 for £20,000, increasing market interest as 2.7RS prices moved beyond reach together with a comprehensive refurbishment meant it exchanged hands for ten times that sum when its present owner acquired it in 2018. Admittedly Gantspeed had bored the cylinders from the 2.4’s 84mm to the 90mm of the 2.7RS, but as this was carried out on the original engine, it was still a matching numbers 911, so the value was unaffected. Mick Pacey observes that the extra 20 horses and torque are barely noticeable in comparison with the two standard 911s here.
‘When a third 2.4S coupé arrived, also during early summer 2019, it was as if a new orange 911 was turning up every week,’ he recalls. This 2.4, registered TGF 460L, the third of the trio is not only a LHD, ex-italy 911, but as a 1973 model it marked the shift among all manufacturers to reduce the amount of chrome trim: BMW radiator grilles, for example, went from chrome to black. Porsche was characteristically more conservative: while the two RHD cars have chrome grilles beside the front indicators, TGF’S are painted matt black. Unlike the UK models, which tended to be more highly specified, the Italian car does not have a rear wiper. It also has no side oil filler flap, a characteristic of MY ’72 cars which caused so much confusion at petrol stations. ‘It still does,’ smiles Mick Pacey. ‘We have already had to rescue two 2.4s where petrol had inadvertently been poured down the oil filler. Sadly, one had to have a complete engine rebuild.’
This third 2.4S was a 911 that Mick had sought out for a client who also fancied a 2.4S and who’d found a possible candidate at Ferrari specialist DK Engineering. Pacey was duly engaged to inspect the 2.4 which had been subject to an earlier restoration. In his view this 911 justified its asking price and a trailer duly delivered it to Export 56 at Cranfield.
Like the other two, this is a Porsche with an extensive
“INADVERTENTLY POURED PETROL DOWN THE OIL FILLER…”
history file which goes on to reveal that TGF moved from
Italy to the Netherlands in 1998 where a main dealer carried out much detail restoration. The car then came to the UK and the service record indicates significant work carried out by both JAZ and Autofarm, and included respraying in the original tangerine.
TGF is perhaps the most original of the trio. The cabin has the factory fitted leatherette/houndstooth seats, radio and toolkit and has undergone the least bodywork intervention with evidence of new metal only in the floor pan. Export 56 subsequently rebuilt the area around the torsion bar mounts where the bushes had collapsed, otherwise, as Mick puts it, ‘this was a nicely restored car which had had the right people working on it.’ As the new owner intended to use the car in all weathers, the underside was cleaned and treated with
Waxoyl and other corrosion inhibitors, a coating which should offer at least four to five years’ protection.
‘Imagine: three tangerine 911s at once, all 2.4S coupés! The opportunity was simply too good to miss,’ exclaims Mick Pacey who invited the owners to his premises for a 30-mile drive to Silverstone, where he had booked the track at the Porsche Experience. The intention was lunch followed by half an hour or so on the track with Porsche’s instructors.
‘But the Porsche chaps were so taken with these 2.4s we couldn’t prise them out of the drivers’ seats and we ended up spending the whole afternoon there. None had any real experience of vintage 911s and they all marvelled how the behaviour of these almost fifty year old cars was recognisably Porsche. These are guys who spend their professional lives driving the modern cars and they were fascinated by the way Porsche has managed to transmit that distinct 911 feel through the generations.’
The drive back to Cranfield on a summer evening was one of those rides no one ever forgets: ‘We had brought a couple of 2.2 coupés as well and people really were stopping and watching as a procession of five old 911s drove through villages. When we lined them all up in a pub car park, we really brought the place to a standstill, the regulars full of a mixture of admiration and curiosity. One chap wanted to know whether we were making a film!’