Peter Wilson
Adelaide, Australia
As a long-time subscriber to
Total 911, I have always enjoyed reading the LTL columns and am chuffed that I will be able to share some stories with you from ‘Down Under’, including classic 911 DIY projects and repairs.
I live in Adelaide on the south coast of Australia and we have a very active Porsche community here. I only have a single Porsche: a 1980 930 that started its life in the UK and emigrated to Australia in about 1990 to escape the cold, rain and the salted roads. They
took their toll within those first ten years, but that’s another story…
Over the weekend I took the Porsche on my annual pilgrimage to the Phillip Island Classic, one of the biggest historic racing events in Australia. Phillip Island is the other side of Melbourne. I travelled in convoy with a couple of friends in Holden Toranas, which are a local sports sedan from the early 1970s based on the Vauxhall Viva, but with 3.3-litre, sixcylinder engines and triple carbs.
This is a long drive from Adelaide, and we take the scenic route via backroads, including the one-hour ferry crossing across Port Phillip Bay. We left at half five in the morning and carefully avoided roadworks and speed radars to arrive safely that evening after 950km of driving. The biggest problem is always stones being thrown up by trucks travelling in the other direction, as very few of our interstate roads are dual carriageways. On this journey I suffered a nasty chip and dent on the bonnet air vent and one of the Toranas cracked a windscreen.
The 930 is a very practical car for a long trip, with ample room up front for a couple of deckchairs, a camera bag and toolbox, with the folded-down rear seats easily
accommodating our luggage. The only shortcoming is the passenger legroom in a RHD 911 with air-con. Porsche, in its wisdom, located the evaporator and fan beneath the floorboards, losing at least six inches of legroom and leaving my six-foot-plus passenger with his knees around his ears!
The Phillip Island Classic had a great number of 911s competing in several classes. Group S for production sports cars saw Carrera 3.0s dicing at the front of the field with much larger cars, including Corvettes and De Tomasos. In Group N for touring cars under three litres, a couple of plucky shortwheelbase two-litre cars mixed it up with Escorts, Cortinas and Mazda rotaries. Fortunately the Porsche contingent went home basically unscathed, while many other cars suffered mechanical or accident damage.
The return trip was uneventful, the car returning an average of 12 litres per 100km, or 23 mpg, for the journey despite many zealous overtaking moves. Apart from the aforementioned stone ding, the many squashed insects and mud splattered down the sides were the only evidence of 2,000km of crosscountry touring. After 40 years, the 930 is still a great GT car!