Stories & Films

If you ever saw me wielding a spanner you’d know why this column is called The Driver and not The Mechanic...

Porsche is a broad church. One that spans everything from tractors to Grand Prix winners.

It’s six short years now since Lee Maxted-Page and I met Patrick Peter at the Paul Ricard circuit in France to discuss my concept for a one make series for early 911s.

So, what do we think of the 911 Dakar? Cool, or a bit crass? I must confess I’m conflicted.

Pretty much from the start of the motoring age, there’s been a Darwinian process at work.

“Give me Goodwood on a summer’s day, and you can keep the rest…”

Our family caught the historic racing bug after my father had the chance to drive a friend’s 1965 Alfa Romeo GTA around Paul Ricard in 2017.

Drivers and preparers are taking it much more seriously, running driver training programmes, extensive testing and fitness regimes. This is racing, and racing was ever thus.

The story is a romantic one. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, successful racer Raymond Mays conceived of a project ‘to create a British team to beat the world’.

What makes a great drive? I don’t think it’s just a matter of what you’re driving. It has to be a combination of right car, right place and right time.

Racing at Revival - The frankly bizarre blend of cars is something unique to the St Mary’s. It shouldn’t work, but does so brilliantly.

Are we losing something with the “have it delivered tomorrow” consumer experience?

Big changes to the composition of regular petrol have been rolling out across the UK this Summer.

What happens when you let one of the UK’s most respected motoring journalists drive your pride and joy...

So, in a change from our usual offerings, I thought it would be fun to list a few non-Porsche favourites. To add a bit of discipline to the process I’m restricting myself to road cars that I’ve driven.

How to drive someone else’s priceless car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

For as long as I can remember, I have wasted many happy hours thinking about how to specify my perfect 911. I remember pitching one Richard Tuthill on what we would now call a Singer style car long before they had done that pivotal first EVO test with Dickie Meaden...

Within the Porsche world, there has been a lot of buzz around more modern classics such as the 964 RS, 997 GT3 and Carrera GT. Less obvious perhaps has been a resurgence of interest in Porsche’s meisterwerk, the 1973 2.7 Carrera RS.

The Porsche 911 must surely have the strongest claim to being the most successful car in the history of motorsport. Its 58 years of continuous production have certainly helped, however the sheer breadth of its abilities has meant that it is hard to think of a field of competition in which it has failed to excel.

I suspect we all got a bit misty-eyed watching Top Gear’s ‘Dad’s Cars’ feature. And with good reason, for if anything is going to get us feeling nostalgic it’s the thought of childhood, family and the cars we grew up with.

Three clients of Sports Purpose separately asked us if we could recommend some good books about Porsche this Christmas.

After some great feedback on the first film, we have gone up a notch with a review of the quite epic 718 RSK Works chassis, a factory car at Le Mans 1958.

I think we can all agree 2020 has been a year we’d all like to erase from our memories. Likewise Covid and all that has come with it. The promise of an effective vaccine is currently offering us a glimmer of hope, but until then we need a means of escape. Fortunately, I have the answer: a time machine.

It is now 50 years since Herrmann and Richard Attwood recorded Porsche’s first, and long awaited victory the Sarthe, and it’s interesting to take another look at the logic Horsman applied to the 917.

We’ve made a film! For a long while, we have wondered about making the type of film that we would like to see – not sales films, but more films about the cars that we like and why we like them.

It’s often the case that you build a car up so much in your mind that when finally the opportunity comes to drive it the experience almost inevitably falls short. This could very easily have been the case with me and the Porsche 356.

Looking back there seems to have been a magical moment in Porsche history, between 1963 and 1967, when the most talented individuals from the company’s past and its future came together to create something of true genius.

My introduction to the 911 was quite a baptism. The year was 1993 and I was a 22 year-old, wet-behind-the-ears road tester dispatched to accompany seasoned motoring journo David Vivian on a twin-test for long defunct motoring title, Carweek...

The first sighting of Porsche’s new 908/03 race car half a century ago caused a sensation...

When contemplating the purchase of an everyday second hand car there are certain attributes that we all seem to focus on while sifting though the pile of possibilities.

Of all the events I have attended in the course of 50 years, my favourite must be the Targa Florio, the rugged road race in Sicily. And one of my all-time heroes is Vic Elford, the winner in 1968 despite an 18-minute delay with a wobbly wheel on his Porsche 907.

By my reckoning there’s one great automotive experience that possesses an appeal that never wanes. I’m talking about that most romanticised of automotive activities: the road trip...

Last year, a conversation about the Paul Smith art car led me to a chance meeting with Roland Heiler, longstanding boss of Porsche’s ultra-exclusive and high-end design agency, Studio F.A. Porsche. We talked over a cold beer at last year’s Luftgekühlt and agreed to work together...

I have done events for enough years now to know that they always come towards you like a train. Eleven months to go, six months to go, three weeks to go – until it is the week before and then the night before...

As the warmth of the early-morning light glows lazily across the stunning scenery of the frozen lake that is our playground for two days, it highlights the rooster tails of ice thrown up by the short-wheelbase 912 ahead of us...