Daily Slideshow: A 964 Obsession of the Best Sort
Once you've been bitten by a 911 it's more often than not the start of a love affair that lasts years upon years. This owner just can't get enough of the joy that comes with owning a 964.
Hardly a newcomer
Greg Howell, the owner of this 911 wasn't new to the world of Porsche by any means when he took possession of this 964. “I was looking to get rid of my second 964, a black one, when a friend of mine bought this red one and tore it down ready for a full engine rebuild,” Greg explains. “It was a good car, but in getting the engine to how he wanted it, the rebuild costs quickly spiraled out of control, so I told him I’d buy it off him. I sold the black one, we did a deal and I left the engine with the engine builder while the shell came back with me so I could start work on it.”
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Ummmm is he coming back?
A good reason for this 911's stop-you-in-your-tracks appearance is due to Greg owning one of the UK's top body and paint specialists. Having the sort of knowledge in your pocket makes you a shrewd customer when it comes to picking out blemishes and defects from roughly a hundred yards away on a paint job. “I wanted to do some work on the body, including getting rid of the sunroof; I didn’t want to put a roof skin on it so we stripped it to the trim and took the mechanism out, made a plate for the hole and TIG-welded it before finishing it,” he told SpeedHunters. Greg remarked that the sunroof delete alone would take about seven days to complete but you can't even tell it was ever there to begin with.
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Under the hatch
After the sunroof was taken care of, the project had hit a pothole of sorts when the engine builder unceremoniously dropped out and left Greg with a box full of parts. The engine at that point had been stripped down beyond recognition in addition to being damaged and still needed a ton of work to it. “I went to my friend Richard Payne, who works for Porsche GB and runs Milestone71. He came and collected the engine and agreed to rebuild it for me. He wanted to start from scratch with it, rather than finish a half-done rebuild and put his name on it. In the end, he managed to work it so that the head work was all done through the motorsport department at Porsche.”
The engine received bolstering by helicoiling the casings, APR fixings and balancing throughout. Mild head work and tweaked timing throughout followed to give the 964 peak power around 280 horsepower.
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Why is it sitting so low?
Greg shortened the license plate recess on the front as well as the rear to match the length of his vanity plates, shaved the stock side repeaters, and then left the rest just as Porsche would have intended. The paintwork is Guards Red and is immaculate, to say the least. The stance of the 911 is from the KW Suspensions Clubsport V3s with a Hydraulic Lift System in the front and rear. At the push of a button, the 964 can easily maneuver over speed bumps and traverse ever troublesome sloped driveways.
The wheels are BBS E88s that Greg had stripped down and rebuilt with another set of lips and barrels to first 18-inches and then up to 19-inches.
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On the interior
Once inside the first thing to notice is hard to find Recaro fabric that was crafted into a pair of Sport 964 front seats, OEM rear bench and door cards along with some fresh supple black leather. A Momo steering wheel sits right up front while the rest of the cabin remains largely unchanged albeit restored to factory level.
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Will this be the norm for classic owners?
To illustrate how far the market has come in classic 911 valuations when he bought his first 964 it was for just £12k, and the red one you've been looking at was just £17k. After the two-years-long process that the restomod project took, the car was valued and insured at over £70k!
Greg still uses the car and takes it to shows on a pretty regular basis. Sadly, the steep value keeps him from enjoying it as much as he'd like to.
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