It’s no secret that we’re ambivalent about the 911. Until we drove a couple, we were a little sneery ourselves. You just see so many of the things that contempt is bound to arise through so much familiarity.
On the one hand, it is of course the ultimate, usable supercar. Most people stumbling upon this blog will have at one point or another fanstasised about being a 911 owner.
They are incredible cars and the formula has been honed to a fine edge at Stuttgart all the way from 1963. And aficionados insist that each Evolution of the rear engined wunderkind is simply better than the previous.
In their stripped down GT and RS guises the 911 is a pure race-bred monsters. The Turbos have retained their hooligan chic amid the bug eyed ubiquity and even bog-standard spec-levels of the contemporary Carrera can be tweaked easily to create a unique, reliable, usable daily drive of style, speed and panache.
On the other, of course, the Porsche 911 is an over-refined evolution of the Beetle format, the impulse buy of the bonus jockey and mainstay of high-earning yummie mummies in the Waitrose carpark.
It’s testament to the brilliant longevity of the idea that is the 911 that each part of this broad spectrum holds more than a grain of truth.
We when we stumbled upon this set of amateur snaps from a factory tour some time, we reckon, in the early seventies, you realise that there was a raw artisan element to Porsche’s of that early period that laid the foundations of the brand and facilitated all those technical evolutions.
Nostalgia again — for a time we barely knew. We’d like a 1972 RS Coupé. In orange with blue rims. Please.
Photos via Cinelli Guy
