A little, Blue Porsche before a Blue Monday
It’s not often I find myself in bed waiting for the alarm to go off with butterflies in my stomach before a shoot, however, this time it was not because of creative or technical challenges worrying me.
This time it was because I was shooting a car I really wanted to shoot since the first time I laid eyes on it, the Pastel Blue, 1971 Porsche 911T Coupe.
The left-hand drive example underwent a comprehensive restoration in the late 90’s while under the custodianship of the previous owner, even though it has been re-sprayed, it still retains the original colour as it left the factory in 1971. Since the current owner acquired the car back in 2012, he has made some minor cosmetic and mechanical modifications to his taste while keeping all the original parts.
Don’t let the mirror-finish paint fool you into thinking it is a garage queen though, while the owner takes great care in maintaining the vehicle, it is driven regularly, some months, even as a daily driver. Reliability is what you would expect from a nearly 50-year-old German car, a dead battery here or blocked fuel filter there, surprisingly nothing that will break the bank. According to the owner, standard services are quite affordable, even small parts are relatively cheap and will last a decade once replaced. It is once the larger parts start to wear out that one should get worried, usually only available from overseas at great cost, it is no wonder the owner and his friends share the sentiment “Don’t buy a Porsche until you can afford two”.
There is very little known about this, triple number-matching machine, with great effort the only information retained is that the vehicle was first bought at Porsche in Padova, Italy. Yes, Italy, even though it is nearly half a century later, Porsche is not giving away any information pertaining to the previous owners of the vehicle and sadly, the story of how it came to be in South Africa will remain unknown.
With the little time spent with the car and the owner, it became clear that this is not just a car to him but rather a member of the family, asked if he would buy the car again now having owned it, a confident and assured “definitely” is heard over the noise produced by the flat-six. With the recent increase in the value of air-cooled Porsche models, one can’t help but think, what is this car worth? After spending a cold winter morning in Johannesburg with the warm company of the car and its owner, it became clear that it is priceless.
