HIDDEN TREASURES

During the past few months spent in and out of lockdown, while we’ve obeying rules restricting movement and looking forward to a future when we can once again enjoy plenty of smiles to the mile, many restoration specialists and aftermarket automotive component manufacturers have been in the fortunate position of being able to go about the business of resurrecting air-cooled Porsches without too much in the way of disruption. This bodes well for show season, should it go ahead, because it means a raft of newly recommissioned aircooled Porsches will be on display. Not that any one of us would complain about seeing the ‘usual suspects’ at the shows we love to attend, especially with the recent drought of gatherings taken into consideration, but there’s nothing quite like coming across a previously unseen classic Porsche and learning about its history.

In the course of compiling magazines, it’s one of the things that makes my job so enjoyable. Moreover, as the proud pilot of various old cars, including one or two wearing the famous Porsche crest, I can completely appreciate the thrill an owner experiences when making a discovery shedding light on previously unknown aspects of their air-cooled classic’s time since rolling off the assembly line.

Among the cars displayed across the following pages, you’ll find two examples of 911s with extraordinary provenance: prototypes of the 911 Targa and the 911 S. Following exhaustive analysis of build records and consultation with some of the industry’s leading automotive forensic investigators, each car has revealed facts and figures hitherto unknown, especially in the case of the 911 S — a lucky find buried beneath a mountain of redundant domestic furniture in Johannesburg! Instead of scanning classifieds for an aircooled Porsche to call my own, maybe I should be checking down the back of the sofa instead?!