Techno Classica Essen/Germany

[67Porsche911S]

Went there today and enjoyed the massive amount of high class classic cars. Then I came across a slate grey 67S which was displayed by the Classic department of Porsche to show their restoration skills. The car was a real disapointment in terms of originality. It seems they didn't care much about it. The longer I looked the more I found wrong:




They mounted the headliner with creases and simply deleted the rear window vents, no black under the engine grill, engine bay and hinges in body colour, strange fuel pump layout, painted fan and housing, colour of leather of steering wheel doesn't match, put a shabby chrome ring back on the batwing, painted the dashboard in shiny semi gloss black, the sill with holes and an imprint looks strange.

Later I came across RUF and they displayed 901 No. 25, spot on in every aspect, although they painted the car on request of the owner in a non original colour. Asking price: 300.000 Euros
JP's sand beige 67S is in the Coys auction on Saturday, with an estimate of 45-55K Euros. Good luck!

And some eye candy:

[vipergruen]

Michael, that 67S restoration is really a bit of a disappointment IMO.

Please post more photos of the 901 and of the other 911s

Andrea

[Milou]

Very strange indeed.

I saw the 911S slate grey too and was amazed they didn't even bother finding an orange bar badge, they just put a brand new one. I mean this is a Porsche "factory" restoration in 2010! At least they are consistent as the 917 exhibited is also not the original car that won le Mans.

The early Ruff car (is it number 25? which is why it's so special?) seemed much better and more accurate, but so "new", not much soul left if any, but clearly better than the work done at the factory. If the car was restored to be sold, why didn't they paint it in its original color?

This year I was amazed by the number of 911 on display, at least several dozens for sales.

Most were over-restored and not very original but all shared amazing price tags, $ 80.000 plus for most cars regardless of model.....

I can't really remember seeing a car really worth buying, expect perhaps an unrestored 1972 gemini blue targa 2.4T at Euros 43.000, but mainly because it felt reasonable compared to the others....The same vendor had restored a 2.2E fairly accurately but was looking for 90.000 Euros (!)..

That said Edmond Harris had some great parts for sale as always and Benoist Couturier had recreated some neat VW Vasek Polak garage vans.

The scale of the event makes it a pretty amazing experiemce.

[67Porsche911S]

Sorry, I didn't take a picture of the 901. As Milou said, the amount of 911 for sale was quite impressive but I didn't take any of them because there were no really interesting ones among them.
My nicest find of the day was this picture:

I think it will look a bit different today, when you pick up a 911 at the factory...

[Milou]

I didn't have a camera either just a blackberry, not the best way to take pictures.

Here are some brochures I found:

[RODI]

Michael, that 67S restoration is really a bit of a disappointment IMO.

Please post more photos of the 901 and of the other 911s

Andrea

OK, here we go!

[RODI]

and some more:

[boba]

I just got home to Texas from Essen and will download my pics and post soon. This was my first Essen and it was more than I expected. We had a corner of the PS Automobile display to exibit our products. Sorry not to have meet more of you guys. We will be back next year so hope to meet then. It was a great show.

[Lorenzo]

I remember also a beautiful restored pastel blue targa in hall 3. And many nice and expensive RSR and ST replicas.

[fryardds]

Very strange indeed.

I saw the 911S slate grey too and was amazed they didn't even bother finding an orange bar badge, they just put a brand new one. I mean this is a Porsche "factory" restoration in 2010! At least they are consistent as the 917 exhibited is also not the original car that won le Mans.

The early Ruff car (is it number 25? which is why it's so special?) seemed much better and more accurate, but so "new", not much soul left if any, but clearly better than the work done at the factory. If the car was restored to be sold, why didn't they paint it in its original color?

This year I was amazed by the number of 911 on display, at least several dozens for sales.

Most were over-restored and not very original but all shared amazing price tags, $ 80.000 plus for most cars regardless of model.....

I can't really remember seeing a car really worth buying, expect perhaps an unrestored 1972 gemini blue targa 2.4T at Euros 43.000, but mainly because it felt reasonable compared to the others....The same vendor had restored a 2.2E fairly accurately but was looking for 90.000 Euros (!)..

That said Edmond Harris had some great parts for sale as always and Benoist Couturier had recreated some neat VW Vasek Polak garage vans.

The scale of the event makes it a pretty amazing experiemce.

Agree with your assesment Milou. I have never seen so many badly re-wrapped early 911 steering wheels in one place. The bulk of the restored cars were very uninspiring to say the least.

The show was really overwhelming though. I spent most of my time checking out the parts and lit sellers.

I was able to spend all of last week in Germany and the real highlight of the week for me was the Porsche Museum and Factory tour last Tuesday that was arranged by Arjen Bosman (thanks again Arjen).

Our Museum tour guide was fantastic. He is the director of the Archives at the museum and is extremely knowledgeble. Bob will attest to this but by far the coolest thing was the visit to the archive rooms. For a guy who is very passionate about the history of Porsche this place is really special.

Not only did we see the area where research can be done by appointment but Dieter took us back into several climate controlled rooms that contain thousands of important photos, docuements, movies and smaller artifacts.

At one point he removed a hard bound notebook with just the number "360" on the cover off one the shelves. He opened it up and showed us that it was the hand written record of every '73 Carrera RS. I was astonished. Each line has the VIN, engine, transmission and production # followed by the place of export. If the car was delivered in Germany it had the date stamped that it was registered. Naturally I asked if he would show me the page with my car and he willingly showed it to me. No photos unfortunately but so very cool.

He also showed us the storage cabinet that contains all the Kardexes for our cars. He opened up a draw and pulled one out and showed us what it looked like. I was really surprised to see an actual card was created for the cars through '73. I always thought they stopped using those in the late 60's. All in all the best car day I have had in many years.