TESTING TIMES
Discovering the 911 S prototype.
GREG ASSUMED HE MUST BE LOOKING AT A CHOP-SHOP REBUILD WITH A BESPOKE IDENTITY PLATE
An isn’t mind industrial the when first imagining estate place in that Johannesburg a comes mind-blowing to collection of classic Porsches, but step inside the workshop of Bailey Cars and the line of 917 replicas in various stages of construction — from jigged chassis to finished bodies read for paint — are like a window back to Zuffenhausen fifty years ago. It wasn’t these glorious and emotive beasts I’ve come to see, though. Peter Bailey and his son, Greg, have invited me to eyeball the dust cover being pulled from beautiful white 911 S. Don’t like every get me immaculate wrong, just Porsche I’m lucky enough to encounter doing this job, the car was nothing short of stunning, but in a room full of 917 replicas? I struggled to tear my gaze away from these sports-prototype facsimiles.
Sensing my distraction, Greg invited me to look at the 911’s VIN number. With the hood lifted, I read 3100015, indicating an early S. Very nice indeed, but not really something to get an Uber all the way across South Africa for. “When we found this car, we also thought the last digit was a five,” Peter says, “but look closer. It’s an S!” I take another look. And again. 310001S. Could this be the very first 911 S manufactured? The 917s were immediately forgotten. Greg’s original misreading of the number meant the car, abandoned in a garage for nearly thirty years, was very nearly cut up in order to supply parts for restoration projects. It was only a suspicious offer from a classic Porsche dealer that saved this historically significant 911.
Bailey Cars makes some of the highest regarded sportscar replicas in the world, but Greg also enjoys giving unappreciated street-spec 911s a new lease of life by converting them into RS and RSR replicas. If there’s a 911 going for a good price somewhere nearby, his network of contacts knows he’s the guy to call. It was one such tip-off that led him to learn of a longstored 911 possibly available for purchase. Contrary to this description, when Greg picked up the phone, the owner made it abundantly clear he wasn’t interested in selling and ended the call abruptly, but the guy’s wife, who wasn’t particularly precious about a Porsche left for three collecting decades, dust persuaded her other half there was a useful sum of money tied up in his automotive ornament. Consequently, a few days later, the Baileys were invited to take a look.
“The guy was a hoarder,” laughs Greg. “The 911 was completely buried under a mountain of junk.” Bailey the Younger attempted to squeeze past the obstacle course of redundant furniture, piles of decades-old newspapers and broken gym equipment in order to see the air-cooled Porsche, which was rumoured to be somewhere at the back of the cluttered garage. “I moved stuff about to make a walkway, while my dad kept shouting to make sure I hadn’t been swallowed into the void we were faced with. Suddenly, I sensed there something made of metal
under my feet. It was then I realised I was standing on the bonnet of a 911!”
The effort it was going to take to extract the car, not to mention the work in returning the owner’s garage to the state they found it, made the Baileys question whether the task was worthwhile. They need not have worried: the driver’s door window was cracked open, allowing Greg to squeeze an arm and his smartphone into the cabin. Blindly taking photos, he was amazed at what the resulting pictures revealed. For a start, the rev counter went up to 7,200rpm rather than 6,000rpm, the odometer registered just 8,000km and there was an S emblem attached to the glove box lid.
Unfortunately, the expedition looked as though it would count for nought when the owner scolded his wife for convincing him to let these automotive archaeologists into his life. “He abruptly changed his mind and returned to his original position of not wanting to sell,” Greg sighs. In a case of history repeating, however, he soon received a phone call from the long-suffering wife. Her husband’s Audi had developed an engine problem and, faced with a hefty repair bill, he was willing to sell the Porsche, if it meant he could cover the unexpected costs he was facing. Needless to say, with a tow truck and a fistful of cash, Greg spent a full day clearing and repacking the accumulated junk from around the 911, before affording it daylight for the first time in decades. It was no special occasion, though — Greg fully intended to cut the rediscovered Porsche into pieces, reassemble it as a track car and sell the low mileage mechanicals for profit. “I couldn’t be entirely sure what I was looking at until I got the car back to my workshop,” he shrugs.
Further investigation would have to wait thanks to a nasty chest infection brought about by inhalation of dust where the new arrival had been hibernating.
IDENTITY CRISIS
Chassis searching Perhaps looking plate The things specialist plan (not changed at number understandably, to an popped online a pull chop-shop uncommon this when 3100015 or into checking Porsche a the rebuild well-known occurrence Greg didn’t Bailey to Porsche’s assumed with pieces bring Cars a local in bespoke up workshop. remained, South build he Porsche any must records. hits Africa). identity be but Peter when noticed VIN plate. how Dramatically, the chap’s eyes on the bulged spot, the he when amount offered he read Greg ten the times had just “From paid the for sparkle the car. in his see eyes, he knew we could we were in possession of something special. We’ve since joked at how he needs to improve his poker face — we could see right through him!” Instead of making a tidy profit, the father and son duo decided to hold back and do more digging. What exactly had Greg bought?!
With a small amount of paint stripper used to clean the chassis stamp, Peter wondered if the five at the end of the chassis number might be an S. His suspicion was further aroused when his next round of search engine results brought back some very interesting information: there were thirteen known S prototypes. Twelve of them wore chassis numbers beginning with 320, but the first started with 310, ending with an S. “It was an absolutely incredible feeling,” Greg says. “This car was a pretty
PORSCHE CONFIRMED THE CAR WAS RETAINED BY ITS TEST DEPARTMENT AND LABELLED WITH PROTOTYPE STATUS
good find anyway, but to discover it was possibly a 911 S prototype was nothing short of fantastic.”
So much rested on the VIN plate’s last character being an S that the Baileys commissioned Mark Waring at Uk-based classic Porsche sales and restoration specialist, Rennsport Classics, to fly out to South Africa and conduct spectrum analysis tests to confirm the stamp was original and hadn’t been tampered with. And when Porsche supplied a copy of the original Kardex, the Baileys were astounded to discover the car’s first owner is recorded as none other than Hans Herrmann, the works racing driver who scored Porsche’s first overall win at Le Mans in 1970.
Information covering how and when the car landed in South Africa is absent, but Greg — now dead set on stripping the car for restoration, as opposed to butchering it for track work — noted peculiar features when he looked at his new Porsche with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. For a start, he was in the presence of a 911 built in 1966, but carrying long-wheelbase trailing arms and odd short-wheelbase spring plates extended by twenty-five centimetres. There were no production date stamps. Additionally, the torque tube had been reworked and its mounting brackets — which are different for the long versus short-wheelbase cars — had been cut out and refabricated. “What really confused me was that the quality of the workmanship on display didn’t seem to be at the level I would have expected from Porsche engineers, even in the 1960s,” Greg tells us. “Then again, if this was a test mule for long-wheelbase 911s, which were first put into production in 1969, then maybe they didn’t care if the suspension looked a bit rough. It could be they simply wanted to build a working mock-up of the eventual production model’s suspension and geometry. It’s perfectly plausible Porsche was testing long-wheelbase components any time between 1967 and 1968 and, based on the information we have been able to gather, we consider it highly likely this car was used as a chassis test bed.”
Their wondering was laid to rest when Porsche confirmed the car was retained by its test department and labelled with prototype status until 1969, leading to two separate Kardex records held at the factory — one at the point of manufacture, another created when the car passed to Herrmann. This ‘split personality’ goes some way toward explaining the many unusual parts
present. The Koni struts, for example wear a 1968 date stamp, while the brake calipers are marked with a V (for versuch, the German word for prototype). Because of the larger bolt holes, they wouldn’t have fitted on earlier non-castor adjusting 1967 struts (the1969 suspension was a simpler design, with both caster and camber angle adjustments a huge improvement over what came before). The instrument gauges, featuring white lettering on a black background, weren’t fitted as standard until 1969, and other interior elements, such as the ‘elephant leather’ door panels and rear-view mirror with different mountings also highlight the fact this was an experimental car.
POWER STRUGGLE
Strangely, swapped the little time sense the with the to second me,” S-specification a far Greg less Kardex frowns. potent was flat-six T-specification “The created. was T-badged “This taken unit makes classic out by and 911 was the lowest output production 911 ever built, yet the car remained badged as an S.” The 911’s two-litre flat-six was released in 1967, but was upgraded to 2.2 litres of displacement for a revised model range in time for the 1970 production year. The Baileys are presently in the process of trying to establish if the engine switch is proof their car was used for development work beyond the suspension and related chassis experiments they’re already aware of. It would certainly explain why there’s a Bosch CDI ignition system (the same type used in the 908 and 911 R) installed and unmoved since the late 1960s. Also, the oil tank also shows evidence of being cut open and welded back up again, as if to suggest internal baffling was being tested. The plot thickens!
“That’s the joy of owning a prototype,” reasons Greg. “Obviously, the altered direction of the project is to now restore and preserve the car, but at the same time, we’re trying to connect the pieces of its history and pull together a comprehensive overview of its life from the point of manufacture. Searching for information and making a discovery is, to my mind, as rewarding as finding a selection of rare parts.”
Through owners club contacts, this determination to seek the truth enabled him to learn his peculiar Porsche’s original engine is presently powering a classic 911 around the mountains of Switzerland. The current owner has put a lot of money into it his car and isn’t currently interested in Greg’s offer to buy its beating heart. Meanwhile, the numbers stamped into the prototype’s gearbox prove it was an five-speed originally destined for a 1968 912. Reasoning the unit wasn’t original to the
car, the Baileys have replaced it with a rebuilt 901 cog swapper lifted from a 1967 911 S.
Once the car’s bare shell was fully exposed, they realised the enormity of what the restoration would entail. With so much metal lost to the elements, the only viable solution was to sacrifice a 1969 911 Targa Peter was keeping in storage. Greg, as well as running the technical side of Bailey Cars, designed and built a fully functional LMP2 racing machine, meaning the restoration of a historically important 911 was well within his capabilities. Even so, as much work as the bodyshell took, it seemed almost as much time was spent online trying to source parts — the sheer popularity early Porsches enjoy these days means that well priced spares can be difficult to find, not least thanks to many sellers demanding an extraordinary premium for what they’ve got stashed away. Nevertheless, Greg sourced driveshafts from the UK and short-wheelbase trailing arms (he wanted to rid the car of long-wheelbase components) from North America, yet the hardest parts to find were replacement early non-flared rear wheel arches — none were available close to home. After a lengthy wait, one side came from the USA, while the other arrived from
Belgium. Recently, Greg upped sticks and moved from Johannesburg to Melbourne, Australia, where the finishing touches to his globetrotting 911 restoration were taken care of. With the last trim parts installed, carpets fitted and the suspension fine-tuned to deliver perfect handling and the desired ride height, his number one car is now enjoying a new lease of life — he’s not afraid to drive it regularly, something unexpected in the current climate when talking about a Porsche of this provenance. “It spent long enough not being used,” he laughs. “I fully intend to enjoy seat time in this special 911 now it’s back on the road.” Considering what it is, its unusual history and the stories it has yet to tell, who can blame him?