Automotive Archeology...

[Paul-HB]

...Peeling back the layers of an old 911’s past:

Below are bits and pieces of some of my ramblings on our 1967 911 S:

Nearly three years ago, a 1967 911 vintage racecar showed up at the AutoKennel. The owner, Len Scott, asked us to help him sell his VARA prepared Porsche. As he unloaded the car from the flatbed, his wife (as if she had done this hundreds of times before) whipped out the quick detail and a microfiber rag and started detailing the car. I was shocked at this performance as no one had ever done this before let alone do it to a racecar. Most racecars I get to sell look as if they just came off the trailer from the last event. I usually spend hours scrubbing the gumball marks off of the body from errant flying race rubber. On the other hand, this car looked like it just got back from the PCA concours circuit. My dad and I were perplexed by the immaculate condition. It turned out that the car had been recently restored.

[Paul-HB]

When Len called me a month earlier, he neglected to tell me that his Porsche was a factory 911 S. In his typical humble manner, he said he had an older Porsche racecar that he was thinking about selling. I soon came to find out that he took a beautiful 1967 Porsche 911 S and turned it into a championship winning VARA racecar. Then again, these cars weren’t as collectible nearly 20 years ago. Today, that would be sacrilege.

Whenever someone wants to sell their Porsche, one of the first questions I ask is why? Unlike other cars out there, Porsches tend to create a unique bond between the car and the owner. In many cases, they don’t just become another member of the family but literally an extension of the owner. It is like your pinky toe…yes, you can survive without it, but life is much better with it. Len has a very unique way of understating everything. He simply said that he doesn’t drive it anymore. It took nearly a dozen phone conversations to just get a small part of the story. Finally, with the help of John Dilger, I found an older Early Esses article about the car.

[Chuck Miller]

As a note,

When Len's car was racing it was one of the fastest vintage 911's on the west coast, and always beautifully turned out.



Good luck on this very worthwhile project......

Cheers

[Paul-HB]

Turns out that in the mid 90’s, Len and his son got bit by the racing bug and wanted to race vintage Porsches together. They each found one, prepared it for racing, and had nearly a decade of fun racing together. By the mid 2000’s, Len’s son got busy with life and Len had some health challenges. While he was recovering, he took a couple years off from racing and had Galen Bieker of Werks II do a freshening of the car. This also included a fresh paint job in its original factory blood orange. Alan Faragallah (well respected engine builder at Aase Motors) did a top end rebuild to the engine at this time. Finally, in 2007, he entered one of his first events back after the work. The event took place in July at California Speedway. Before one of his sessions, the hood pins were left undone and the hood flipped open in the pit lane. He was pitted just in front of the late Patrick Paternie who told me he was startled to see an orange 911 hood come undone. That ended not only Len’s race weekend, but also his racing career. Since his son was no longer racing with him, his heart just wasn’t in it anymore. The car went back to the paint booth and then to his garage. After two years of collecting dust and the occasional starting of the engine, he picked up the phone and gave me a call.

[Paul-HB]

Little did I know that Len’s phone call was really a passing of the baton. He was ending a journey and I was beginning my Zuffenhausen vision quest. As I began to familiarize myself with this early S, I had countless phone conversations with Len. We spent nearly a year trying to sell his car, but we soon found that his car was either too overbuilt for HMSA or HSR events and would require a significant amount of cost to “detune” it back to a 2-liter challenge car. Or, it was simply to pretty and valuable to continue racing at local VARA events. During this sale process, Len and I discussed the idea of turning the car back to a street car/R Gruppe type car. But, he just wasn’t up to the process. He wanted to simply move on. So, my dad (Ed) and I decided to make an offer to buy the car from Len. I told Len that we were interested in buying the car depending on how many original parts he had and what Tony and Marco Gerace of TLG Auto thought it would take to accomplish our goal.

On October of last year, Tony and I met Len at his two car tandem garage wedged on a 10 degree sloped lot in the historical section of Silver Lake, California. When we walked into the garage, we were both stunned at the volume of parts carefully spread out on the garage floor. It looked like you could build an entire car. From original muffler to the correct VIN stamped doors, hood, and deck lid, 95% of all the original ’67 S parts were here…amazing! And, he had done a superb job of storing them. There was no rust or damage of any kind. I knew at that moment, I was embarking on my first Early S journey. I was excited and very nervous. Tony looked around the car for over an hour. He crawled underneath the front and rear as well as fired up the engine. His deadpan face gave me no clues on what he thought. He noticed a “Werks II” sticker on the rear quarter window and asked Len if Galen built the car. He nodded yes. Tony cracked his first smile of approval. Finally, Tony and I went outside the garage to discuss the possibility of returning the car back to its original street condition. Tony stated simply, “that’s a nice f*$k’n car.”

The following week, we came back with a cashier’s check, van, pickup truck, and enclosed trailer. Within the next few hours, we loaded the car and all the parts and moved the project to TLG’s shop in North Hollywood. I really had no idea of what it was going to take to see this endeavor complete. Initially, my dad and I discussed the idea of simply doing the minimum and make it more of a hotrod 911. We were going to cut out the door bars, leave the rest of the roll cage, and put the steel doors on leaving the rest of the fiberglass. Marco looked over the original parts and in one word convinced us otherwise. He said, “NO.” I must admit looking back, he was absolutely right. Of course, our budget began to balloon, but this car deserved more.

[Paul-HB]

John Esposito (one of SoCal’s top paint guys), wandered across the alley to take a look at the project. He said that everything looked very straight and should be no problem. Well, John is a perfectionist and he ended up stripping the car down to the metal to do it right. Doing this confirmed what Len told us from the beginning. Even though the car was a raced for 10 years, he never had an incident. The car ended up being very straight with no repairs, rust, or damage of any kind. This helped when John fitted all the original steel parts back on the car. They all ended up fitting great.

[Paul-HB]

The extended time the car was at paint and TLG, gave me plenty of opportunity to gather up missing parts and history. Eric Linden was invaluable here. He answered countless dumb questions I had and helped me source some great parts. The goal was to avoid reproduction parts as much as possible unless there was no other option and the quality was equal or better than original. There were several dilemmas we encountered during this process. For instance, we discovered that this S was a very late 1967 production (June 9th, 1967). As a result, the car was fitted with ’68 front fenders. We found photos of the car dating back to 1969 and sure enough, it had sugar scoop headlights and side reflectors. The side reflectors and been removed when it was converted to a racecar, but it still had its original U.S. ’68 headlights in remarkable unrestored condition. Personally, I’m not a fan of these headlights and I think they really detract from what the car is. So, we carefully packed them up and found a very nice set of unrestored ’67 headlights from a fellow Early S member. Also, the original 4.5x15 Fuchs were long gone (the owner before Len traded them for some 7’s in the early 90’s). Len had been racing the car on 7x15s wrapped in 205 and 225 Hoosier’s. The front brakes had been upgraded to ’73 S brakes and 4.5’s just wouldn’t fit. It was then that I noticed that the rear fenders had an ever so slight flare to them. Len said that he bought the car that way. It turns out that they were flared at the Porsche dealership before the first “titled” owner ever took delivery. We finally settled on a set of flat 6x15 wheels, which looked close to what was on the car when Bob Bondurant drove it.

[Paul-HB]

Here is where the history of this car began to come into focus. Len told me from the beginning that a guy by the name of Joe Vittone was the original owner and was a big VW parts guy. Turns out that Joe Vittone started EMPI (Engineered Motor Products, Inc.) as a result of getting frustrated that VW just threw away so many used parts. I did notice a discrete metal EMPI badge on the far right side of the dash. Joe owned one of the first VW dealerships in Southern California. It was called Economotors and was in Riverside, CA. Joe chose that location because he was a race junky and it was close to Riverside Raceway. By the mid 60’s Joe secured a Porsche franchise and started selling Porsches out of his Economotors dealership. Meanwhile, the EMPI business was exploding and Economotors was selling “EMPI” prepared VW’s new from their dealership with warranties as well as through other franchises.

(We found an original early "Economotors" license plate frame from a local VW enthusiast...it was the same license plate frame used on our '67 S)

[Cornpanzer]

As an avid EMPI collector, you now have my attention. Keep it coming Paul!

[Mr9146]

Wow, Paul, you've been a busy little bee.

It's exciting to see the story come into focus.