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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 48 WWW.GTPURELYPORSCHE.COM ‘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 50 WWW.GTPURELYPORSCHE.COM 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. Tuthill 911 ‘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
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