Road to Rennsport
Total 911 mixes air and water for a special journey to Rennsport Reunion via Pacific Coast Highway in a 1979 Turbo
We embark on a special road trip up the West Coast of California to Rennsport Reunion in a 930 Turbo
It’s just before 3:30am in Escondido, a small city on the outskirts of San Diego, California. The streets are still shrouded in the darkness of the night sky, but the asphalt at Makellos Classics is illuminated by the headlights of five air-cooled Porsche, their flat sixes rumbling harmoniously as photographer Dan Pullen and I roll into the premises and hop out of our rental truck. There’s plenty of activity going on around the cars as Makellos proprietor Matt Kenyon and his team load a weekend’s worth of belongings into the front trunks and behind the front seats of the quintet of
911s set for today’s seven-hour journey north. The destination is Laguna Seca, the storied race track just off the Monterey peninsula; the event in question is Rennsport Reunion VI, arguably the greatest Porsche event of its kind on Earth.
“Everybody set? It’s time to go!” shouts Matt, his voice just about audible over the thrum of five air-cooled Porsche exhausts. I hurry my stuff into the lead car, a 1979 Turbo, its wide rear hips and tea tray wing wonderfully silhouetted against the dipped beam of the S/T replica behind. Belongings in place, I take my own position at the helm of the 930, sliding the seat forward on its runners and adjusting the car’s electric exterior mirrors. Matt takes his seat up front with me and, with a ‘clink’ from his closing door, gives me the nod to leave. Road to Rennsport is go!
There’s a crescendo of noise as the five Porsche increase their revs and file off the terra firma at Makellos, sloping onto the road one by one. We’re in front, with Matt reading out directions to Monterey from his smartphone.
Pulling away in the Turbo is easy, its biting point nice and low, though my early morning brain hasn’t quite computed the fact this car has a grand total of four forward gears to make use of, and I soon find myself reaching for the gear shifter and pulling it through the gate and towards me into second. We’re barely above 20mph. I look at Matt to see if my error’s been registered, the grin on his face suggesting it has. “Only two more ratios to go and we’re done!” I joke as we pull up to a set of traffic lights, their highlighted red signal allowing me a chance to bring the Turbo to a stop and reselect first.
That four-speed gearbox is a renowned if decisive quirk to Porsche’s 930. Although the early Turbo benefitted from 14 years of continuous development, gaining an intercooler, bigger displacement and numerous chassis revisions (as we covered extensively in issue 170), it wasn’t until the last of those years, 1989, when Zuffenhausen finally lavished the car with a five-speed gearbox. Those cars are thus the most desirable 930s now, the repute of these four-speed cars from 1975 to 1988 boiling down to a matter of taste. I myself quite like the four-speed 930, having warmed to its quirkiness over the years and enjoyed the somewhat Jekyll-and-hyde drive exacerbated by those longer gears – so long as it’s not at 4am on the west coast of an entirely different continent, of course.
The traffic light changes to green and I turn left to enter a long slip road down to the freeway ahead. Squeezing the accelerator, I watch the needle rise up and round the tacho with the sort of lethargy associated with a human at this time of the day. ‘Hang on to it,’ I tell myself, resisting the urge to change up at the point normally welcomed by a five-speed 915. My patience is rewarded: approaching 4,000rpm the VDO boost dial within the tacho awakens, shifting right from its left-side resting position. We shoot forward as the 911 blasts vehemently for the freeway, a machine gun-like rasp emitting from the Turbo’s tailpipes behind us. Enjoying the moment, I change up to second and
“Driving the world-famous Pacific Coast Highway in an aircooled 911 Turbo really is just about as good as it gets”
keep the throttle buried. The tacho needle returns briefly to 4,000rpm before beginning another clockwise assault, the car surging forward as the engine comes on boost. Joining the freeway, I lift off just before the redline, our Turbo already travelling faster than the majority of the early morning traffic. Changing up to third and short-shifting to fourth, we fall into line and make pace up the Interstate 5 towards Los Angeles, the road ahead embellished with a bright-white light courtesy of those innovative new 9Eleven headlights by dr design.
There are a few choice modifications on our steer up the coast to Rennsport Reunion. Mechanically it runs on SC cams and makes use of a bigger intercooler, K27 turbocharger and a dual Powerhaus exhaust, combining to give strong, linear punch in the top half of the rev range, with a throaty exhaust note to match. Matt and his team have also had some fun with the Turbo aesthetically speaking, too. Longtime admirers of the optional decals found on early 930 models, Makellos made up a custom blue and orange strip which mimics this, replacing the ‘Turbo’ script usually found aft of the rear arches with that of their own business. The Turbo sits on 52 Outlaw 001 wheels, the blue paint in between the lobes matching that decal running down the side of the car, and even those 9Eleven headlights have a blue ring to throw everything together. Needless to say, the car looks absolutely sensational, the lights, wheels and decals harmonising this 911 and giving it a fresh, modern twist while retaining its classic, factory appearance.
We reach LA for 5:30, but it’s too late. Despite our early start to avoid it, there’s plenty of traffic on the roads already, the City of Angels’ chronic congestion doing its best to thwart our progress. The Britishness in me is content with joining the queuing traffic, but Matt is quick to display his inherent American appetite for not hanging around, reaching for his smartphone before the Turbo’s UO52 wheels have even ground to a halt. Using Apple maps to monitor the live flow of traffic, he plots another route to limit the time we need to spend sitting in it, avoiding the scenario of our air-cooled car getting hot. “Turn off here,” he says, pointing to an exit not 100 yards ahead of us, and five lanes over to the right. “No problem,” I laugh, manoeuvring the Turbo impatiently through the slow-moving traffic.
We have to reroute another two times as LA’S early morning congestion swells almost exponentially with every passing minute. There are consequences, too: each diversion means we’ll leave LA at different points of the city, altering our journey henceforth to Monterey. Our original plan to follow the coast road past Malibu and Santa Barbara is the first to be abandoned, and a plan ‘B’ where we’d head inland on the 5 to Blackwell’s Corner, near Bakersfield where James Dean made his last stop at a gas station in his Porsche 550 Spyder, is also abandoned.
By sunrise the concrete metropolis of America’s second-largest city is behind us, leaving what we hope will be a clear run up to Laguna Seca. A 45-minute stop for coffee and pancakes allows the group to refuel for the rest of the journey north.
Back on the road, we make our way back over towards the coast, catching our first sighting of the vast Pacific Ocean near San Luis Obispo. Gently lapping against the golden coastline, the majesty of the deep-blue sea to our left is mesmerising, contrasting splendidly against the mountainous topography filling the view to our right. The road ahead cuts neatly between the two, and a glance in my driver’s side mirror shows our buddy Vince’s 993 Carrera in convoy behind the inflamed yet elegant hips of our 930 Turbo. I sigh under the romance of it all: driving the world-famous Pacific Coast Highway in an air-cooled 911 Turbo really is just about as good as it gets.
The Turbo itself is making a fine job of whittling away the miles in nothing less than supreme comfort. Its ride is supple and forgiving, sailing over each slab of concrete making up America’s sprawling highways as if it were on carpet. The Sports seats are comfortable and supportive, even if they lack the adjustability of today’s cars, and though the three-spoke steering wheel is fixed, its positioning is perfect, giving enough clearance to my knees while not impeding on my view of the car’s five dials or, indeed, the road ahead. It’s cruising marvellously,
exactly as a Turbo was designed to do, and nearly 40 years after it was first assembled at Zuffenhausen, Makellos’ example is still a glorious place to be.
My only gripe doesn’t become apparent until late morning when the mercury begins to soar. There’s no air conditioning fitted to this Turbo, keenly felt as the sun asserts itself in the clear, blue skies above us. Leaning forward, I can feel my back starting to sweat amid the sticky, ambient temperature. Really though, it’s no problem: Matt and I simply drop the windows as we zip north, bringing in a cool flow of air and, most welcoming of all, the added thrum of the Turbo’s exhaust note.
While cruising in the Turbo is no hard slog, it’s fun to drop down to second with a clear bit of road ahead and open the car up, kicking the gas pedal for a blip shift as I do so. Second gear engaged, I bury the pedal once more and let the turbocharger spool up before delivering its punch of boost. Engaging third, the car is off once more, its maximum torque band impressive and prolonged providing you’ve the patience – and the road – to reach it. That’s the thing with these air-cooled cars, even the 300hp Turbos: hitting just 80mph is a real event rather than a foregone conclusion, as per the sports cars of today. It all helps forge a real connection between car and driver: in a 1979 Turbo you feel the grip from the tyres – and in the Turbo, provided you’re not coming on boost mid corner, there are masses of it – you feel the progressiveness of the brakes as they clamber to bring the 911’s speed down, and you feel the weight transfer as you get back on the gas and the car leans back onto its hind axle. It’s a wonderful, visceral driving experience, the rawness of which has undoubtedly been muted gradually with the generations that have followed.
Another quick pitstop for car and driver leaves us with a clear, 90-minute run to Laguna Seca circuit, these days titled as the Weathertech Raceway. I kid myself I can almost hear the bellowing of a 917 on full chat down the home straight, taste the burnt fuel of the RSRS warming up in the pit lane, and see the tall, fixed wings on the back of the water-cooled GT3 Rs as they drop down through the Corkscrew. ‘Not long to go now’, I tell myself as we rejoin the freeway for the final time.
We’ve seen plenty of Porsche sharing the journey up so far, our warm smiles and appreciative nods met with enthusiastic waves from fellow enthusiasts ascending on Laguna Seca. However, nearing Monterey, Stuttgart’s cars gradually take over, the roads soon resembling a bona fide Mecca for Porsche. A road-legal 904 drives past as we turn off at Salinas, then a PTS 918 Spyder. Then two 959s, one after the other. This is crazy!
We spot the huge 935 ‘Moby Dick’ printed display on the hillside ahead before acknowledging the ‘Weathertech Raceway Laguna Seca’ welcome sign right in front of us. Turning off the public road and into the sun-drenched grounds of what will be our home for the weekend, Matt and I exchange a high five, pleased with our swift progress up California’s west coast. That 3:30am start seems like days ago, yet it was only nine hours; the 450 miles covered in that time, right by the ocean in a classic Turbo, really have been fun. Who knew, in Porsche circles at least, that air and water could work so well together?