CARRERA PAR EXCELLENCE
Robb Pritchard tracks down a much enjoyed 356B Carrera
With over a decade and a half of development since its inception in 1948, the 356 reached what was for many its zenith in the Carrera 2. With its 130bhp four-cam engine and 125mph top speed, it was the most powerful iteration of the 356. The performance and refinement came at a premium, though, and during its three-year production run starting in 1962, only 360 examples were made.
On 5th July 1962, one of the earliest models to leave the factory, chassis number 120915, passed through Sonauto, the famous Parisian Porsche dealer, to a local buyer. The first owners must have liked the car a lot as they put a serious number of miles on the clock. By the time it was just five years old it had covered an impressive 100,000 miles. From 1967, though,subsequent owners drove it a lot less and it’s covered a little under 1000 miles a year in the last half a century.
Some Porsches are also well known for having famous owners. This 356 can tick that box as well. It seems only fitting that this artistically designed mechanical masterpiece should have been appreciated by somebody like Jeanclaude Biver, the CEO of TAG Heuer, one of the world’s premium watch makers.
It’s also incredibly original as the only major work documented in its history file is a visit to Roger Bray, where it was repainted in its original Smryna Green (it was silver) and a few rubbers, seals and a bit of interior trim, replaced to bring it back to perfect condition. Around the same time the complex four-cam engine was also refurbished, but not by just anyone: it was crated and sent to Stuttgart to be worked on by Porsche themselves.
In this immaculate condition it was sold through RM Sotherby’s auctions in 2015 to prominent classic South American car collector Alejandro Oxenford for a cool £386,400. It wasn’t destined to be shipped over the Atlantic for a life in Argentina, though, and is stored and maintained by well known and highly respected Porsche restorers Prill Porsche Classics in Essex to be enjoyed when Alejandro is in Europe. Or for his friends… In 2017, Alejandro invited his good friend Gabriel Mocciola to drive it on the Tour Auto.
Andy Prill gave it a thorough safety check, which it passed without issue, but at first Gabriel couldn’t believe he’d be driving this car on such an event because it looked like it had just come off the production line. ‘It was so perfect in every way that I felt it should be in a museum somewhere with some ropes to keep people away from it…’
The Tour Auto, or the Tour de France as it was known before the popularity of the cycle race surpassed it, might not have quite the prestige of legendary events such as Le
Mans, Targa Fioro or the Mille Miglia but with the first running in 1899 it pre-dates them all! With a combination of rally stages and racing circuits it was an important competition for manufacturers as to win here a car had to perform well in all conditions. But with such a unique format it wouldn’t fit in any
championship and so it stopped in the mid-’80s…but only for a few years as in 1992 it was re-established as a classic event. Still run as a combination of long road trip, circuit racing and several rally stages every day, it is an amazingly popular event, as well as a seriously gruelling one. Perfect, in fact, for a Porsche.
For a special event in a special car it was perhaps fitting that the first place Gabriel pushed it was out on the Le Mans circuit. ‘Really, that was an amazing experience,’ he says with a big smile. ‘We lined up at the back behind the pits so we didn’t see much and the pit wall is high, so again you can’t see much. But then you come out on the long right hand corner and suddenly see the Dunlop Bridge ahead… That was quite emotional, actually. So many motor racing legends have competed at the same place… and there we were.’
Gabrielle owns a Mini and a Jaguar, both nice cars to drive and iconic classics in their own right, but nothing about them could have prepared him for the experience of the 356. ‘It’s such a special car,’ he smiles. ‘Just everything about it always made me smile the whole time. The power is just nice for a car like this but the handling is so much better than I was expecting, especially out of the corners.’
The 250-strong car field was split into two classes, the ‘competition’ class where fastest times count and the ‘regularity’ class where the co-driver has a roadbook to follow, which has average speeds for different distances. The winner is the crew which gets the least amount of penalty time. It sounds a lot easier than it is.
Sections held on racing circuits had slightly different average speeds to maintain, so you couldn’t just follow the car in front around. ‘It was really hard to work out,’ Gabriel says. ‘So from the beginning we decided that we’d try as best as we could without getting too stressed about it, and would have a week of fun rather than trying to be competitive. A co-driver in our class was Michel Perin, who has won the Dakar three times before. He was Mikko Hirvonen’s co-driver in an X-raid Mini – and he only managed to finish sixth!
“EVERYTHING ABOUT IT MADE ME SMILE THE WHOLE TIME”
Another element of the event is the way crews are taken through the countryside on B-roads that wind through ancient villages and stunning landscapes. ‘Lunch was always somewhere nice like in a grand old château and was always of the highest quality, and the hotels were all five star ones in amazing castles. Really incredible places. But perhaps we would have enjoyed them more if we hadn’t been so tired every night, though. After something like 14 hours a day in the car all we wanted to do was sleep. If I go on holiday to France one day I would like to go back to some of those places and stay for a couple of days.’
The event was held in the spring and the cold spell meant that early in the mornings, often before the sun was fully up, the car was covered in a layer of ice. ‘Our credit cards came in handy scraping the ice off the windows and there were always other people having problems getting their cars started. All I usually had to do was turn the key and it fired right up. Fortunately, the car was fitted with an Eberspächer auxiliary heater so it didn’t take too long to warm up inside!’
The special stages were all run blind and they had to keep an average speed over a set distance, but with corners, steep hills and other cars getting in the way the whole time, it was quite challenging. ‘We weren’t really trying to race,’ he shrugs, ‘but it’s still a special feeling sitting on the start line with your helmet on watching the timing marshals count you down, then accelerating off the line, as you need to get up to the average speed quickly.
‘The car is nice like that, so quick to accelerate and easy to control through all the tight corners. It was especially impressive when we got to the Pyrenees with their mountain passes driving in convoy with Ferraris, BMWS and Alfas around the hairpins. It was a really amazing experience.’
Over the whole week the car never missed a beat but while it was all smiles and handshakes at the finish near Biarritz on the south west coast of France, Gabriel was sad to be leaving the car behind. ‘I have always been a classic car lover and I have driven many Porsches before, but I never did such a long and hard event in one. Now I am a real Porsche fan. Really. And of course I would like to say thank you so much to Alejandro for inviting me to do this in his car!’
Once back in the UK it was given another full check by Prill, but even after 2500 km of some pretty spirited driving it needed nothing more than an oil change…