article in full - Tuthill Porsche

We all have a dream of what our perfect Porsche would be, and in this 

latest creation from Tuthill Porsche one lucky owner’s imagination has 

been turned into a reality. Story: Andrew Frankel Photography: James Lipman 

46 WWW.GTPURELYPORSCHE.COM 

MARCH 2009 47

Passing your driving test is the most 

symbolic rite of passage young adults 

are afforded. There’s no guarantee 

you’ll lose your virginity in your late 

teens, and the one thing you can say 

about anyone who walked into a pub for the 

first time on their 18th birthday is they couldn’t 

have been that bothered about going to the pub. 

True, attaining your majority does earn you the 

right to help choose who will be the next selfserving, 

narcissistic incompetent to wreck the 

country, but that’s hardly something to look 

forward to; but the moment I ripped up my Lplates 

was the first time in my life I felt free of 

the shackles of childhood, free to go where I 

wanted and with whom I chose. 

In theory at least. Like almost all teenagers 

lucky enough to achieve independent mobility, 

my liberation was curtailed somewhat by the 

motley assortment of loosely assembled 

wreckage I was forced to drive. Love to ride off 

into the sunset though I would, a rusty Fiat 126 

acquired free of charge and rendered almost 

uninhabitable because its former owner had 

upset a pint of cream over the upholstery, was 

not a suitable conveyance. In theory it was my 

ticket to ride and my fast track to girls; in 

practice it should have been condemned. 

Desperate to find something to take my mind 

off the thought and smell of several billion subdividing 

lactobacillae colonising my back seat, 

and with a radio that had long ago given up the 

struggle to broadcast anything other than white 

noise, I used to idle away the hours dreaming 

up my ideal car. Assiduously I’d calculate its 

weight and power, its torque characteristics, its 

engine location and exterior dimensions before 

realising that, yet again and without conscious 

effort, I’d designed a 911. 

The proposition seemed unarguable. The 

sheer sense of placing a flat formation engine in 

the boot made me wonder why all cars weren’t 

built that way. You got the interior space you 

needed, massive traction, a low centre of 

gravity, light and unadulterated steering and 

huge savings in weight and mechanical 

complexity by obviating the need to direct the 

power from where it was usually created in the 

front of the car, to where it was needed in the 

back. The one and only thing that Fiat had 

going for it was that it, too, was a rear-engined, 

rear driver and nothing, not even when that 

configuration joined forces with my ineptness 

and contrived to spin us both into a tractor 

(with fatal consequences for the Fiat but, 

happily, not me) could dissuade me from the 

efficacy of the layout. 

Ever since I have kept the vision of my perfect 

car, my perfect 911 as it turns out, in my head. 

Porsche has come close to it on many occasions 

but the early cars lack the low down grunt to 

fit the picture as neatly as I would like, while 

later models are too wide, too bling and 

insufficiently attractive to truly realise my vision. 

What was needed was a discreet, narrow-bodied 


‘Only’ 300bhp, huh? In a car 

weighing about the same as 

a water biscuit. It is safe to 

say my interest was captured 

Tuthill 911 

MARCH 2009 49

The roll-cage is the result of 40 hours in 

the fabrication department. Leather-lined 

interior puts modern Porsches to shame 


911 that looks like butter wouldn’t melt that 

would, on the right road, frighten the life out of 

a GT3. I thought the car didn’t exist. But it does 

and it’s on this page now. 

It’s here quite by chance. My pretend 2.7RS 

was at Francis Tuthill’s being serviced and, as I 

always do, I asked Richard Tuthill to show me 

anything interesting he might have lying 

around. He gestured in the direction of a rather 

sober looking blood orange 911 with what 

appeared to be Carrera rear arches, a 2.7RS front 

air dam but, notably, no whale-tail, duck-tail or 

door decals to be seen. ‘We’ve just done this for 

a customer and we’re quite proud of it…’ 

True, the restoration of the bodyshell made it 

look like a new car, but I suspected that was not 

what he was driving at. ‘Take a look at this,’ he 

said, flipping up the engine cover. If I wasn’t 

quite so tall, I’d have taken the skin off my chin. 

There, in the back of this sober-suited 911, sat 

the promised land. In an instant I clocked 

twelve leads coming off twin coil packs, the 

massive intake trumpets and a surgical standard 

I’ve driven luxury cars 

that can’t match this 

level of comfort along 

a typical British B-road 

of finish. ‘Go on,’ I stammered. ‘It’s based on a 

3.2 Carrera engine, but it’s got some rather 

special bits in it.’ I could see that. ‘The brief 

from the customer was to make a tractable and 

civilised road car that can be used every day, so 

it’s tuned to have a good spread of torque rather 

than outright power and runs deliberately on a 

very quiet exhaust. Because of this it’s only 

giving about 300bhp, but you could knock that 

up to 320-340bhp just by changing the exhaust.’ 

‘Only’ 300bhp, huh? In a car weighing about 

the same as a water biscuit. It is safe to say my 

interest was captured. 

‘The engine’s bored out to 3.5-litres, has twinplug 

ignition and runs Jenvey throttle bodies and 

a fully mappable Omex ECU running through 

new SSI heat exchangers and a stainless steel 

exhaust. It has different cams, 993 head studs, 

race valve springs, new valve guides and piston 

rings. Power goes from there to a standard G50 

gearbox with a limited-slip diff incorporated. 

‘On the chassis side we’re using EXE-TC 

dampers, developed by our competitions 

department and made for us by the same people 

who do the dampers for Citroen’s World Rally 

cars and these are complemented by different 

roll bars front and rear and different rear torsion 

bars. It’s also got our full-house braking system 

on it with six-pot front and four-pot rear 

aluminium callipers, and we’re running it on 

Dunlop Formula R tyres, which are road legal 

and work surprisingly well when it’s damp.’ 

All very impressive but Richard is not done 

yet. ‘We’ve equipped this car with our own 

pedal box complete with two master cylinders 

and a balance bar mounted in place of the 

standard servo. It gives a much better, more 

progressive feel to the brakes and allows the 

driver to wind the bias back to the rear when it 

gets wet.’ And then there’s all the stuff you can’t 

see, such as the 40 hours spent strengthening 

the shell and a similar period of time spent 

working on the roll-cage. 

Cosmetically the car comes with Recaro 

Sportster CS seats which both slide and recline, 

plus lightweight carpets and leather door panels. 


‘But,’ says Richard, ‘the real money goes on the 

conversion of the body and interior back to 

1970s spec. Depending on how far you want to 

go, the costs can be considerable.’ How much? 

Well Richard reckons there’s £25,000 in the 

engine alone and the car’s insured for £100,000. 

The final question was the most obvious of 

all. ‘Can I have a go?’ A week later and with the 

very kind permission of its owner, I duly took 

my place behind its Momo wheel. 

I spent my first few minutes without even 

switching on the engine, but cooing over the 

quality of the interior instead. It’s got a full cage 

in it (and a brace bar between the front struts), 

but most of it has been swaddled in hand 

stitched black leather so you don’t notice at all. 

There are seats in the back for your kids that I’d 

not necessarily expected, while the Recaros for 

yourself and preferred co-pilot are exceptionally 

comfortable. Even before you set off, this is 

clearly a car designed not just to be used, but to 

be usable. 

The key turns on the ignition, but it’s a 

MARCH 2009 51

What I love even more is its sensationally 

split personality, allowing it to play the 

quiet and civilised cruiser one moment, 

and the no-prisoners road warrior the next 



button that sends twelve electrical pulses down 

the plug leads. I’d been expecting a riot of 

scarcely silenced, race-spec flat-six to invade all 

the space in the cabin and rattle my fillings, but 

in fact it idles more quietly than my near 

standard 3.0-litre SC motor. It’s a more complex 

and layered sound than typical flat-sixes of the 

era, but it’s entirely civilised. 

The clutch is perhaps a little heavier than that 

of a standard road car, but no less progressive 

and anyone used to wrestling with a 915 gearbox 

will likely welcome the slick action of the sweet 

shifting G50 though, strange as I am, I’ve always 

preferred the challenge of the earlier ‘box. 

In those first few miles, I even wondered if it 

might have been too good. All the best 911s, 

from an early 911S to the latest GT3 RS have 

always asked questions of their drivers, refusing 

to dole out the rewards until the requisite level 

of effort and application have been invested. But 

this one was easy: smooth, quiet and with the 

best ride quality of any 911 I’ve driven, from the 

newest to the oldest. It retains torsion bar 

springing but those dampers appear to recontour 

the road as you approach, eliminating 

heave and pitch, maintaining a perfect ride 

height over the worst humps and dips. I’ve 

driven luxury cars that can’t match this level of 

comfort along a typical British B-road. 

It took a long time for what I call ‘the 

moment’ to arrive. Every day of my normal 

working life is spent assessing modern road cars 

and because time is always tight, one of the 

skills it requires is an ability to adapt and 

acclimatise to each new machine as swiftly as 

possible, so that the moment when you feel 

confident and comfortable enough to start really 

driving arrives as soon as possible. But in the 

911 I was in no hurry at all. Maybe it was the 

conditions – damp with an air temperature 

hovering around zero – combined with 

thoughts of near-race rubber providing the only 

barrier between me and making a neat 911shaped 

hole in the nearest hedge that explained 

my reticence. Perhaps it was thoughts of its 

value or simply that it felt so good being driven 

slowly that I didn’t want to discover it felt less 

good being driven fast. 

But eventually I could delay it no longer, and 

mindful of the fact that just the engine in this 

car is worth not much less than my entire 911, I 

chose a nice, conservative 2500rpm, and opened 

the throttles wide. I’m not sure what I expected 

but it was not this. Not even an SC, the most 

torquey of all old 911s, is on song at such 

modest revs; but this one is. The engine note 

deepened as it took a deep breath and then with 

a growl and a snarl, it threw me up the road. By 

4000rpm it was still gathering intensity and at 

around 5500rpm it went again. Richard had 

told me the engine is safe to 7300rpm but 

mindful that this was someone else’s hundred 

grand car and not being exactly disappointed 

with the level of available performance, I 

reached for the next ratio fully 1000rpm short of 

MARCH 2009 53

the mark, only for an encore of the whole crazy 

show to play out at even higher speeds. 

How fast? Nearer four than five seconds to 

60mph and a 0-100mph time barely into double 

figures is my reasonably educated guess. Bearing 

in mind that this is car deliberately tuned for 

comfort and torque, not light weight and power, 

this is an astonishing result. And as for the 

sound, there are many 911s that are much louder 

than this, a few that are more exciting but none 

in my experience that are quite so cultured. 

But it’s just the start of what this car can do, 

and it’s only when you begin to stretch its legs 

properly that you realise its real magic is how 

beautifully matched all its different 

modifications are. One of the most difficult 

tasks when undertaking such a comprehensive 

upgrade is ensuring that the result feels neither 

over- nor under-specified in either the chassis or 

engine department. A car without the ability to 

exploit its power is, at best, frustrating and, at 

worst, downright dangerous while one without 


the power to make the most of its chassis 

commits the worst crime of all: it’s just plain 

boring. But with this 911, all its various areas of 

endeavour work together as harmoniously as if 

it were a bog-standard, factory fresh 911 – just on 

a different plane. 

The chassis, for instance, thrives on its 

increased workload. The car feels so precise, the 

steering so full of feel and the suspension so 

fluent and reassuring that you can drive this old 

911 on its track tyres down quite narrow roads in 

very marginal conditions with total confidence. 

And I can’t leave without a word for those 

Formula R Dunlops: despite being clearly 

designed as a road legal circuit tyre, they coped 

beautifully with the damp roads and wet leaves, 

didn’t destroy the ride quality and offered up 

copious levels of grip. Looking at their tread 

pattern I expect they’d be far from optimal on 

properly wet roads where water actually needed 

moving, but if you’re going to spend £100,000 

on such a car, you’ll be able to afford a spare 

set of standard tyres for such eventualities. 

So it seems the 911 of my teenage daydreams 

does exist after all, even if it did not at the time. 

A car with all the punch (and more) of a modern 

911, with the beauty and compact dimensions of 

an original plus, critically, the comfort and ease 

of use to make it a perfectly practical everyday 

proposition. I love the innocence of its appearance 

and were this my car I’d choose a very sober 

colour, lose the front airdam and put a 2.4 badge 

on the engine cover. But what I love even more is 

its sensationally split personality, allowing it to 

play the quiet and civilised cruiser one moment, 

and the no-prisoners road warrior the next. This 

is for someone who wants their 911 to do 

everything – look good but go hard, be sensible 

yet endlessly thrilling. If it has an equal within 

the realm of 911 road cars, I’ve not driven it ● 

Thank you to Richard Tuthill and all at Francis 

Tuthill for their help with this feature. 

+44 (0) 1295 750514; www.francistuthill.co.uk 

There are many 911s that are much louder than 

this, a few that are more exciting but none in 

my experience that are quite so cultured

article in full - Tuthill Porsche

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