Another hot rod

[LongRanger]

Time for a bumpdate . . .


I really-really wanted this car to show up at the Werks Re-union, too

[luftgekuehlt]

Hi Tom,

Just a shot in the dark here, but you make mention of a 1956 Speedster of yours that was serviced by Seferian Escadrille in the '70's in your post. I have a 1956 Speedster that also spent some time there and I am wondering if it is the same one! I am beginning to assemble it's history which I don't have prior to 1978. VIN is 82588, and it was originally delivered in aquamarine blue metallic with red leatherette. After some time in Cambridge, it went to Massachusetts and Rhode Island, then over to me in Germany.

Love your hot rod project!

Grant

[Flunder]

I had an early start this morning in Salzburg. I had hoped for one of those crisp, clear late October days so to best enjoy the city but instead the weather disappointed with cloudy skies and high humidity. I walked a couple of blocks through the city before I found the office not far from the birthplace of Mozart on the Getriedegasse. My destination was in one of those grand baroque buildings in the oldest part of town and my appointment had been set for eight o’clock. I arrived about 10 minutes early. But as I was anxious to get what I came for I decided to head up straight away rather than hang around the ground floor lobby.

I took the lift to the third floor and then stepped out directly into a vast reception area. A sleek young woman sat behind a glass and chrome desk that stood alone in the center of the room beneath a vaulted ceiling. Soft overhead lighting bathed her in a slightly eery light. A glance at the polished brass letters that gleamed on the raised panel wall behind her desk confirmed my arrival at the intended destination. Those glittering brass letters shone only slightly less intensely than the waxed parquet on the floor.

I knew from my old designer friend CB Ames that such displays were all for effect but this one nevertheless worked its subliminal message on me. As the ambassadress of first impressions, the elegant woman attired in a chic Parisian dress alone in the magnificent room made so powerful a statement of money and power. I felt suitably cowed and intimidated. If anything was off, it did seem unusually cold.

I needn’t have glanced back up at the polished brass letters on the wall to confirm that I had arrived at my intended destination. They read simply, “Stiftung Augenthaler.”

The young woman managed my disappointment smoothly when proceeding to explain that unexpected circumstances made it necessary to cancel my appointment without providing further explanation. This was yet another dead-end in my quest to obtain a large collection of Porsche engineering papers including the original Porsche AG shop drawings and blueprints for the 2,3L flares that has been homologated back in 1970. I had been the under bidder on the collection some years ago at a Stuttgart auction house. But now a long search had led me here to the Augenthaler offices in Salzburg, only now to reach yet another dead end. The woman held hope out to me in the form of a note, written on buff velum in violet ink in a strikingly elegant hand. It set the flame of my quest burning anew. The note directed me to a certain man named Peter, described as the old barman at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, to obtain what I was looking for.

The next flight to Berlin was not until just after four this afternoon so I had some time to kill in Salzburg before heading out to the airport. In leaving behind my brief escape into the baroque Mozartean dreamland of Salzburg I set out past the Kollegianbirche by foot crossing the old bridge across the river and wandered along to the Restaurant Katzhof up the Hohn Salzburg to enjoy a coffee and the view. At noon I went up the Monchs Berg and climbed along the ridge. For lunch I stopped for a glass of beer and a plate of sausages in a beer garden run by tonsured brothers in monks robes, their bloated faces fat from good beer. The lunchtime guzzlers sat at long wooden tables and tossed back foaming steins of brew and emptied their plates of the steaming heaps of glistening sausages. At the end of the room a depiction of Christ on the cross looked down mournfully on all those gathered, guzzlers and gluttons alike, while the good brothers hurried about the tables serving their fare. I heard a repellant, snake like little man next to me mention something about an appointment in Berlin before I hurried away from him. I then wandered a bit, only to happen upon the unhappy place where the town gibbet used to stand, exhibiting the corpses of the condemned.

After the one hour flight to Berlin, I was still feeling somehow uneasy and decided to take a cab into the city. Although cool with cloudy skies the humidity felt oppressive in the taxi. Something told me to stop the cab at the Tiergarten with the thought of walking east through the park before intersecting with the Brandenburg and then proceed through Potsdamer Platz to the Hotel Adlon just beyond. At first the colorful old capital looked good to me but as I opened the cab door I had the distinct feeling of a shadow passing before me through the open door.

I lost by bearings almost immediately in the Tiergarten. After 10 minutes I stumbled upon a small bridge that led me over a gully and then along a bumpy road full of potholes toward what appeared to be a ramshackle Bavarian-style country house. The house itself stood in ruins but a small wing had been roofed and patched up. I felt my journey coming to an end.

Darkening cumulus towered in the western sky as the sun sank beneath the horizon and provided only an eery glow as I entered the roofed wing. A blast of icy air within greeted me at the door. At first I tried to regain by bearings but my thoughts were interrupted by odd scratching noises in the walls and ceilings. Then came three loud knocks on the door and the snake like little man appeared before me. He held his right hand high, holding a roll of engineering drawings while his left pointed downwards towards a plate of cakes on a rickety table standing in the center of the room. At first he spoke in German and engaged me in philosophical debate but then ranted in a foreign tongue, one full of glottal consonants and nasal trillings, as if from the ancient regions of Aram, from Aleppo to Samarra and Anatolia.

I grabbed the papers from his right hand, held them close to my breast and broke from the room. As I passed from the door the drawings literally dissolved in my hands as confetti passed through my fingers and fluttered to the earth. I did not linger any further at the cold ruins in the Tiergarten and stopped no more until I arrived at the Hotel Adlon as the vellum note instructed me, the intensity of my quest still burning brightly. It had grown late and the barman at the Adlon was closing for the night when I approached and asked about the papers that old Peter might have for me. The barman looked me over carefully before whispering that old Peter had been dead some 40 years on. As he spoke I saw a scratch open and redden on his cheek. When he reached out to touch my skin I saw his fingers run with blood.

I ran again; this time to take cover across the street beneath the stacked tables outside the coffee shop on Potsdamer, shaking still but cured forever of my quest.

So fellows heed this. If on All Hallows Eve you listen closely and think you hear the scratching noises in the walls and ceilings, feel a sudden blast of icy air or hear three loud knocks upon your door, think twice as you unlatch. Watch carefully then for the Ancient One, that snake like little man among the guising goblins that wander the roads this night.

[letsrollbabe]

Tom:

Thanks for this very entertaining tale...your mastery of the language is inspiring. I love how you wove your pursuit of rare factory ST documentation into a good halloween spoof. I was breathlessly following every word in the belief that you had really stumbled onto some of those rare documents...like you actually did with so many parts on the 'Tart'. Stephen King might be hearing some footsteps.

[Jim Garfield]

That was a fun to read tale Tom. Who's coat of arms is that?

[Flunder]

That was a fun to read tale Tom. Who's coat of arms is that?

Jim:

Those are the City of Berlin Civic Arms for the Tiergarten district.

Gib;

Very happy you enjoyed the tale.

And;

Merry Christmas to all from Another Hot Rod!

[Fubawu]

Great thread. I am only 23 pages in, so informative I really want to absorb all of it. Do you know when the 2.5 was first used and in what chassis?

[Flunder]

Fubawu: It is entirely my pleasure that you enjoyed going through the first 23 pages of this thread. Perhaps by now time has allowed you to complete the (onerous?) task of reading through the rest of it. The answers to your question are of course provided in the thread, and I am wondering now if you intentionally posed a trick question. As there are two correct responses, I wonder if you would now be so kind as to reveal the answers! Tom

[Fubawu]

Well Tom, I wish I could intentionally take credit for the trick question. Truth be told I am only up to page 37 and from what I can gather 71 was the first year the 2.5 was used in competition. Was the 2.5 introduced late in 71?

Any record of factory "ST" later running larger displacement to stay competitive? Or was it only done for private teams?

Cheers
John

[LongRanger]

. . . Any record of factory "ST" later running larger displacement to stay competitive? . . .

Another threade . . .
http://www.early911sregistry.org/for...11ST-2-7-litre