The Story of Tangerina Jolie

[Mr9146]

Affectionately dubbed "Tangerina Jolie" by the owner, this rig started life as a bone stock 1972T. The back story on where this car came from is pretty awesome, but the story we're currently writing is going to be even better.

First, some photos to set the hook...

[Mr9146]

The current owner of Tangerina Jolie (from here on referred to as TJ) acquired her from his friend in a long deal that involved TJ, a stonking 2.7L twin-plug engine, and a pretty righteously equipped 964. As the story was told to me, the owner offered to trade his 964 for TJ and the fresh 2.7 twin-plug installed and the car prepped for a trip to Switzerland.

And that's where my part of the story begins ... I met the car a few years ago at my parents' house for a New Years' Day BBQ, and it was there that I found out the owner was moving to Switzerland for a few years for work and was going to take TJ with him.

Now I'm not sure how many of you know, but importing a car to Switzerland and having it legally road registered is no small task. In fact, if you're ever going to buy a used car, buy it from someone in Switzerland because that place is NO JOKE. But I digress ...

Fast forward to the summer of 2011. I was about to embark on the first vacation of my life, and I decided that I was going to go to Europe and basically go walkabout for 6 weeks. England, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, then back to Germany, and then back to Italy. Somehow I managed to get in touch with TJ's owner before my trip and he said, "Dude, if you're going to be in Germany I'll come pick you up in TJ and you can spend some time with me in Switzerland. We can drive around Germany and check things out."

Wait...

What?

HELL YES!! Sign me up!

We made a plan to meet at Mercedes Benz and take a tour of one of their assembly lines. Unfortunately he got stuck in traffic in a really big tunnel or something so I ended up taking the tour by myself - it was really cool and I highly recommend it - but afterward while I was standing around the factory showroom I see a little, orange, early 911 with 7X15" Fuchs pull up in the parking lot. We have lunch in the factory showroom dining lounge and then pack up the car and head out ... it's absolutely surreal ... I'm riding shotgun in a 2.7L 1972 911T in Germany! It might as well have been a DeLorean at 88mph because it was a freakin' time warp.

We pull onto the Autobahn and head for ... well ...

That's where the story REALLY begins...

[Flunder]

OK Marco, you set the hook pretty well, bring it on and tell us the story!

[Reza]

Show us thelips

[gsjohnson]

Pics or it didn't happen.

[Bert]

Nice photos so far, but we need more.

[mohrgan]

Show us thelips

...and the ass.

[uai]

My favourite sign

[LongRanger]

. . . Ende aller Streckenverbote . . .

[Mr9146]

Somewhere on my home computer I have photos from my European Adventure but, as I'm sitting in the office at the shop, current photos of TJ will have to suffice. But first ... the story.

While sitting in the parking lot of the Mercedes factory we talked about where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. Basically we had 3-4 days to blast around the country and see all the cool car stuff we could before we had to get back to Switzerland, so we threw out a bunch of ideas and settled on four must-see places:

1)Mercedes Museum
2)BMW Museum
3)RUF
4) The Nurburgring

Both of us had already seen the Porsche Museum - me just a few days prior and him a month or so before - and since it was August we couldn't get a factory tour because it was shuttered for holiday.

So we plugged our first destination into the Porsche Classic GPS radio (yes, someone has one!) and headed toward the Benz Museum. As an aside, it's amazing how good the little Porsche Classic GPS radio was at getting us to where we needed to go. The screen was tiny but the directions were pretty awesome; that little bugger would prove indispensable on our travels.

Heading down the highway we found ourselves in standard German highway traffic for a lot of our journey. We were in and out of cities as we went to the various museums, and it was slightly disappointing to learn that the unregulated speed sections were so few and far between. BUT, when that glorious sign showed up it was off to the races!!

The right foot got heavy and TJ took off like a shot. Up through the gears ... 3rd ... redline ... shift. 4th ... redline ... shift. 5th ... 6000rpm ... 6500rpm ... still pulling ... 200kmh ... 220kmh ... then there's a "flash to pass" in the rear view mirror.

We pull to the right and a 7 Series Bimmer, S class Merc, and Audi A8 go RIPPING by like we're parked. The speed at which these three were traveling - nose to tail - was ridiculous. We were going an indicated 155mph and they literally knocked us into the next lane when they went by. But more impressive was the fact that TJ, with it's twin-plug 2.7L engine, was giving Hell to the modern cars on the Autobahn at 155mph and was still pulling towards redline when we had to move over. This was especially impressive for reasons I will explain later, but at the time I was happy to be riding shotgun. Additionally, that blast to 250kmh got the wheels turning in the owner's head; as we were tooling along a brainstorming session began that would continue through the rest of the trip and back to the United States...