Total 911

James Mcgrath

- Minneapoli­s, MN @auto.amateur Auto Amateur autoamateu­r. buzzsprout.com

It’s a month of mods and mayhem for me here in my Autoamateu­r garage. ‘Mods’ in that I’m in the process of adding a few modificati­ons (I like to think of them as ‘refinement­s’) to my 911 at the moment, ‘mayhem’ in that nothing is ever simple, is it?!

If you follow me here in Total 911 or on my Youtube channel, you probably know that I like to modify my cars. I’m not one to go all ‘Fast and Furious’ if you will, with neon floor lights, fluffy dice around my rear view mirror or spinning rims… but I do like to put my own mark on the cars I own. As far as my Porsches are concerned, I have always bought used Porsches but I’m hyperaware of the huge range of options that are available to the buyer when they are purchased new from the factory. Maybe I feel like I’m missing out on that part of the Porsche ownership experience, so I continue the configurat­ion postdelive­ry, once the car has passed through the hands of at least one prior owner.

The range of options available on Porsche.com, even the free ones (not all of them are costed add-ons, although admittedly most are) are just astounding. Naturally you’re able to choose basic attributes like the exterior colour or general interior colour, even a choice of a few different types of wheel – like most if not all car manufactur­ers today – but the choices go on and on.

For example, not only can you choose from several different wheel options, you can then choose each wheel in a few different colours. Same for the interior fabric – leather, Alcantara, etc, then choices of where the leather goes, or deviated stitching colours… sports exhaust options, standard or sportier seats, or bucket seats… regular bumpers, sportier bumpers… the choices go on and on.

I have spent an extraordin­ary amount of time configurin­g my ‘dream cars’ on Porsche.com – my dream Turbo, my dream GT3, my dream base Carrera… This brings me to another point, before you get to adding in dozens of over a hundred different options available to you, you have almost a dozen different 911 variants to choose from! Base, S, 4, 4S, Targa, Turbo, Turbo S, Coupe or Cabrio.

If I had bought my 911 new, as the first owner I would have enjoyed spending hours and hours on the configurat­ion tool picking out all of the different options I wanted, like the proverbial kid in the candy store. I would have added deviated stitching around the cabin, I would have chosen the sportier version of the bumper, added the back-up camera, chosen a special colour.

This brings me to my recent set of mods that I’m in the process of implementi­ng. The one I’m most excited about is the ‘new’ front bumper I obtained from a well-known salvage yard in Los Angeles CA, LA Dismantler. For $500 I picked up an original sports front bumper from the factory Aerokit, taken from a wrecked 991.1. Structural­ly it’s in great condition and it fits my 991 perfectly. The only thing I have to do is bring the part back to life. The surface needs restoring, the kit itself needs to be painted to match my Agate grey car and I need to obtain a handful of trim pieces to finish it off – the vents, the centre grille, the condenser housings… a few other smaller pieces. So while I have my hands on the bumper, it’s going to take more research, sourcing of parts and trips to the body shop to bring everything together. Someone recently asked me why I didn’t just buy the factory part new, from Porsche or other online retailers. Where is the fun in that?!

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