An increase in the hours of daylight and reported sightings of sunshine could only mean one thing. Time to don the de-rigueur Fifty-Textures-of-Tweed country casual combo and put my best brown-brogue’d foot forward to attend the Goodwood 77th MM.
Just to flat-cap it all – mustn’t forget the tweed titfer-tat!
Continue reading Goodwood 77th Members Meeting – Sun 7th April 2019The 70th Anniversary of the first Porsche production car had the highly beneficial side-effect of reviving the Brands Hatch Festival of Porsche.
Brands is a lovely compact circuit that’s easily and quickly accessible from London and unlike some of the airfield based circuits (e.g. Silverstone and Goodwood) it offers excellent viewing opportunities over large parts of the circuit without having to walk too far.
Continue reading Brands Hatch Festival Of Porsche – Sun 2nd Sep 2018
I’d not visited the Goodwood Festival of Speed for some time but the promise of rare and interesting Porsche cars – there to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the company was too difficult to resist.
To be more accurate – the 70th anniversary relates to the first Porsche badged car being built in 1948 as Porsche GmbH, Konstruktionsbüro für Motoren und Fahrzeugbau was actually founded in 1931!
A visit to Le Mans Classic has long eluded me but this year all barriers and sensible-head reasons-not-to-go seemed to disappear.
The Yellow Peril was running well (bar a last minute clutch change) and the problem of abandoning the Mrs for a long weekend to go off on a car related jolly was resolved by taking her along .
A two year wait since the last Hedingham Porsche bash and the limited availability of my old 911 this year (due to further improvement work) left me with a major sense of anticipation for this year’s Classics At the Castle event.
An early, sunny Sunday morning start and a thankfully absent intermittent misfire were positive omens for a good day out but this didn’t stop my usual jitters about whether I had the right day, whether any mechanical gremlins would thwart the trip etc. etc.
My fears were calmed when just beyond Stansted airport I swung my ’71 2.2E behind a lovely tangerine 2.7RS for a joyous two-car-convoy blast towards Hedingham! The start of a perfect day.
Continue reading Hedingham Classics At The Castle – Sun 3rd Sep 2017
The signs are unmistakeable – Spring has definitely sprung! :-
Rejoice – the 2016 racing reason is upon us!!!
Continue reading Goodwood 74th Members Meeting – Sun 20th Mar 2016 Part 1
My trip to Hedingham 2015 started well as I drove passed Stansted Airport to find myself accidentally sandwiched between two 2.4 911s. We managed to pick up another 2.2E along the way to match mine and to bring our noisy convoy of early 911s up to 4, much to the delight (or possible consternation) of other road users!
This year’s Hedingham Porsche gathering delivered an enormous and varied turn-out of classic Porsches which confirmed the burgeoning popularity of the event, further enhanced this year by the inclusion of a Classic Porsche Auction run by Coys of Kensington.
The Porsche Museum, Porsche Cars GB and some very trusting private owners enhanced the already great turn-out with some extra-special cars including beautiful and rare 356 Carreras, 550 Spyders, a 904 and an iconic Gulf liveried John Wyer 917 (as used by Steve McQueen in his film Le Mans).
Continue reading Classics At The Castle – Hedingham Pre ’73 Porsche Event – Sun 6th Sep 2015
The 2014 event was meant to feature the 1970 Le Mans winning Porsche 917K plus it’s two drivers but sadly only Richard Attwood was able to attend as Hans Hermann wasn’t well enough to travel to the UK.
To make up for this however – Jurgen Barth turned up to delight the crowds with a raucous blast up the driveway in the 917 after it was eventually cajoled into running on all 12 cylinders. I’ve jump started a few cars in my time but seeing a 917 being jump started was a first. It was great that perseverance won out as the sight and sound of this car was a visual and aural delight.
Continue reading Classics At The Castle – Hedingham Pre ’73 Porsche Event 7th Sep 2014
A-Z of Car Stuff
This is one in a series of posts on cars, drivers, designers etc. that have interested me over the years. I’ve bored my family and friends with this stuff for years – now it’s your turn!
See A-Z of Car Stuff page for more posts in this series.
To my mind – the things that make the Porsche 917 special are:-
1) Form and function working in harmony. A perfect combination of a lightweight but beautiful body/chassis with a brutally powerful air-cooled flat 12 engine to fling it round race circuits.
2) The 917 took outright speed to new levels at Le Mans and it took outright power to ludicrous extremes in the Can-Am series. It was designed to reach 250 mph and it achieved this on the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans in K (K=Kurz-heck or short tail) form pretty well straight well out of the box. In Can-Am racing – engine power reached 1100bhp in race mode and a crazy 1580bhp for qualifying!
3) The 917 finally secured Porsche’s 1st outright win at Le Mans in 1970 in the capable hands of Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann. A further outright win came the following year when a 917 driven by Gijs van Lennep and Helmut Marko crossed the line first.
I think there are many parallels between the development of the pre-war Auto Union race cars (Types A, B & C) and the Porsche 917. Both were bold and radical Porsche designs targeting domination of the new race formulae in which they were about to run. Both had well established and highly proficient competition in the form of Mercedes for Auto Union and Ferrari for the 917.
Both cars went through a phenomenally rapid design and construction phase and both attempted to mitigate risk as much as possible by utilising as many tried and tested concepts, technologies and components as was possible at the time.
