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CARSPOTTING> Crashing A Vintage Porsche Event

Martini Racing, Porsche 911, Supercar Sunday

There really is nothing like a vintage Porsche 911. Ever since the first time I was able to actually see and hear an actual 1970s Porsche 911 race car running through Nurburgring Nordschleife on my first trip to Germany, I’ve been lusting after a 911 of my own. Shortly thereafter, I was given the opportunity to visit the Porsche test track in Leipzig, Germany, where I got the chance to get up close and personal with an authentic 1973 911 Carrera RS, which was wheeled out from the Porsche Museum so I could take it out on the track! I really need at least one of these in my life.

Needless to say, I was beyond excited when I attended this gathering of Porsches in Woodland Hills, CA. There were several gorgeous cars from different model years in attendance, but none of the cars truly captured my attention like these retro race-themed 911s.

Above, the Martini Racing stripes are always a welcome sight on a Porsche, whether you enjoy drinking their sparkling wine or not. This silver 911 with reddish orange bumpers looked cool as hell as it cruised slowly out the parking lot. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to shoot too many photos of this car. (Update – SIX years later, thanks to Instagram, I’ve now connected with Alex Koch, the owner of this 911!)

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

Luckily for me, there was another 911 with the Martini livery in attendance. This super clean white 911 from AutoKennel looked awesome with its yellow headlights and hood-mounted rally foglights.

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

The white AutoKennel car looked interesting with its aftermarket bumpers. This Porsche is newer than the one next to it, as you can clearly tell by the short hood and big bumpers. The front bumper looks low and aggressive, with air ducts and a lower lip spoiler. I’m assuming the air ducts in the front bumper lead to hoses for brake cooling.

The 1970s 911 on the right side is owned by a guy named Magnus Walker. I didn’t actually meet him in person, but he conveniently had flyers on the windshield, which indicated that he owned the car. I love the 911 RS bumpers on his multicolored 911!

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

Shortly thereafter, I met a super nice gentleman named Chuck Miller, who is an original member of the bad ass early 911 club named R Gruppe and the creative advisor for the Early 911S Registry, which is (obviously) all about early 911 Porsches. I was admiring the amazing authentic period stickers on Chuck’s 911.

Look at that bad ass 1978 Nurburgring sticker!!! Damnnnnnnnnnnn. That’s GOLD to people who collect vintage stickers from racetracks they’ve been to (like me).

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

Another cool sticker on Chuck’s car… a 1973 sticker from a Porsche Parade in Monterey CA! Bad ass. I like the design of the sticker too, with the Porsche front end and the tree. I don’t know what those trees are called, but they look cool, and they’re all over the Monterey peninsula.

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

On Chuck’s windshield was this R Gruppe commemorative sticker from the Rennsport Reunion, which honored the late Bob Snodgrass, former president of Brumos Racing. I’m not an expert, but I’ve heard that Mr Snodgrass was one of the main guys behind the formation of Grand Am road racing and was involved in Daytona prototype racing. As a team owner, he won the Rolex 24 at Daytona three times (Brumos Racing won eight times).

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

As we walked through the parking lot, Chuck pointed out this brown metallic Targa Porsche 911. I realize that many racing purists aren’t too fond of targa-topped cars, but this particular Porsche looked awesome, with its RSR style fender flares, and wide Fuchs wheels, which I was told were 9 inches wide up front, and 10 inches wide in the rear. Nice!

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

This brown metallic Targa looks awesome from the rear. Whoever did the bodywork should be commended for the way they flared the bumpers to match the wide rear fenders. The car looks really mean from the back! I also love the other subtle details, like the clean metal grille and emblems on the engine cover, and the look of the exhaust. Class act!

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

Come on. Who doesn’t like this early Carrera RS green machine?! I’m not sure if it’s real, or a clone, but either way, it’s bad ass.

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

Yet another early model narrow fender car… this silver 911 had a “McQueen” license plate on his front bumper, next to its 1960s period correct black-and-yellow California plates. I didn’t get to meet the owner of this car, but I’m curious as to what its story is!

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

Now, you’re all probably wondering about the title of this post – crashing a vintage Porsche meeting?! Well, I thought it was an apt title, because my friends and I attended the meeting, but we didn’t drive up in vintage Porsches (unfortunately). We drove up in our Japanese nostalgic cars – my red AE86 and my friend Yee’s Datsun (Nissan) 240Z.

I won’t bore you with too many details on my car, but I only recently began driving this car again – it has been in storage for something like SIX years. It has rare BLACK Japanese OEM Toyota zenki (early model) bumpers, with the expensive front lip spoiler. In the photo, you can see the car’s incredibly hard to find vintage Work Equip 01 one-piece monoblock wheels, which are an homage to the McLaren Can Am wheels from the late 1960s.

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

This clean black S30 240Z is owned by my friend Yee Chan of Japanese Nostalgic Car Magazine. Yee’s Z looks good with its clean, unmolested body lines and black paint. The front air dam is a classy addition to the front end, and I’m sure glad Yee is stylish enough to NOT install those newer style, super clear 7inch headlight housings with HID headlights. Those would completely ruin the Z’s classic look.

Porsche 911 turbo Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

The 240Z has a very subtle, yet stylish ducktail spoiler, and I’m thinking those four spoke 15×8 Enkei Apache II wheels might look pretty good on one of my cars. They’re not at all expensive either, compared to my other sets of wheels. I might have to get a set for street driving.

AE86 Lotus Esprit V8 Woodland Hills Supercar Sunday Westfield Promenade Mall

Back to the AE86, I was super happy to see this red 1997 Lotus Esprit V8 in the parking lot. I parked my red AE86 right next to it to see if the owner would notice any similarities in our taillights. (He didn’t.)

Lotus Esprits use Toyota OEM taillights from the 1984-1985 Corolla GT-S hatchback. Yup, these tail lights were the exact same ones that came on my AE86 in its stock (US version) form. In fact, I was gonna ask the owner of the Lotus if he wanted to buy some extra taillights from me (I have some super clean OEM Corolla tail lights in my garage), or if he even wanted to confuse other Lotus owners and install Japanese OEM AE86 “Sprinter” tail lights on his Lotus. (The dark tinted Sprinter tails can be seen in the background of the photo, on my AE86). I wonder how Lotus owners feel about the fact that their British supercars use tail lights from Japanese sporty econobox cars like AE86s? I think I’m going to have to buy a red Lotus someday and park it in the garage next to my red AE86s. AWESOME IDEA.

:: Antonio Alvendia

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17 Responses

  1. kevin t

    Nice coverage antonio! Those porsches are bad ass. And both yees z and ur 86 is freakin awesome!

  2. @Duck : Well unfortunately, I can’t drink beer because of a food allergy, BUT I’m good with whiskey, so if you like Gentleman Jack, then we should definitely enjoy a beverage or four while talking about cars!

  3. @hechtspeed: Haha YUP! Dude we should find out what OTHER cars use parts from other manufacturers as OEM pieces…! That would be interesting!

    @Kevin T: thanks man for the compliments on the cars and the pics! i do love those porsches…

    @Avon: haha exactly!

  4. One these days, I will own a Vintage Porsche. Nice pictures as usually Antonio. It’s so hard to find Vintage import shows in New England. Every body’s a tech nerd and has the money and interest in only new cars.

  5. @Drew: Thanks Drew! I’m glad you have an interest in vintage import cars… anyone with money can go to a dealer and buy a brand new 911, but building/owning a classic Porsche is something that shows the owner’s EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, TASTE, and RESOURCEFULNESS. Especially because many times, parts are rare and you can only obtain them if you know the right people!

    @Duck: Then we’ll break out the Gentleman Jack and have a drink while staring at the Porsches in your shop!

  6. Where was this at ? pretty awesome. Saw a couple 914’s on instragram. What happened to those?

    My dad actually has two 914s right now. Built from the ground up, one with a subaru 4 banger the other a 6 banger ..! Vintage Porsche’s are coming up big.

  7. Big Mike Muniz

    Hey Antonio it’s me Big Mike Muniz the guy with the right hand drive mango. It was nice meeting you at SCS and your crew. Great turnout that day. I tried to get more Japanese cars to represent, but seems like a lot of them just take their cars to organized car shows. Plus you gotta get up real early for this one and the C&C in Irvine. Hope to see you there again.

  8. @Jaylifeee: The event was at the Westfield Promenade in Woodland Hills. Glad you liked our photos from Supercar Sunday! Check out their website: http://www.supercarsunday.com

    The photos with the 914s were actually from a vintage Porsche get together in Reno NV. One of my friends up there has a bad ass vintage 911, and he texted me the photo! We’d love to see your crazy 914s…. maybe post some pics of them on our community? http://www.MOTORMAVENS.net

    @Big Mike Muniz: Whatup Mike Muscle! Great to finally meet you, man! I think maybe for the old schoolers, we should hold our own get together. What do you guys think?

  9. Big Mike Muniz

    Antonio, I agree 100%! We do need an old schooler get together… I don’t know if JD ever mentioned to you that I also built a Jet Turbine car. I was going to bring it that day but could not secure a trailer so I could get it there. I think it would have been the rarest Porsche that day!Hahaha! I installed the turbine in a 1981 Porsche 928. The interior is not done yet so I really hesitate taking it to any shows till it is complete. It runs on Jet-A fuel that I purchase from Burbank airport, But I have also run the engine with diesel and I’ve even used 50% filtered used motor oil plus 50% bio diesel to run the engine! The engine would pretty much run using any kind of combustible fluid, even vodka or channel #5! Here is a link to a couple of videos of my “Jet Car”.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6wdxlIYizk
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCvtEKUFSV0&feature=fvwrel
    -Big Mike Muniz (AKA Mike Muscle)

  10. NuggetG60YorkshireUK

    loving the Brown Metallic Targa, now that a car i would like to drive & own, although the Yee owned 240Z comes a very close second choice.. pity its not an option. I never knew that detail of the Lotus/Toyota tail-lights, you learn something new everyday! great coverage & excellent photos – Thanks

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