Total 911 No. 201

Right now, it’s tough out there. National lockdowns are having a profound impact on our day-to-day wellbeing, and the restrictions on our freedoms have also thwarted businesses too. Then there’s the reality of consequences surrounding Brexit, with ensuing implications for both trade and casual travellers. I needn’t go on, as the whole point of a magazine (or any enthusiast media) is to provide a dose of escapism, but you get the picture… so what on earth are we doing presenting you with a dozen or so cars to buy?! Despite the hardships, there is opportunity – lots of it. Prices at the top end of the Porsche marketplace have receded, there’s no doubt about that, and a general readjustment of values across the board (apart from at the bottom, interestingly) has been…

Singer announces DLS production switch to Multimatic Production of Dynamics & Lightweighting Study to remain in UK Singer founder Rob Dickinson has revealed the company’s highly anticipated DLS cars will still be built in the United Kingdom, albeit with Multimatic rather than Formula One outfit Williams. As was reported in our 200th special issue, guest edited by Dickinson himself, the company was in the final build stages of the first five DLS cars. However, after Singer terminated the agreement with Williams to build the Dynamics & Lightweight Study reimagining in the autumn, Multimatic was hired to fulfil production of initial orders and then undertake the full process of subsequent orders thereon. Multimatic is a Canadian company providing what it says is “innovative automotive components, systems, complete vehicles and engineering services to OEM customers around…

Le Mans… it is painful and bothers me to this day to know that the 24 Hours of Le Mans is the only major world championship sports car race I never won. Talking about my 14 Le Mans attempts and writing about it in my book Daring Drivers and Deadly Tracks,still wounds my pride. Every Le Mans without a win was crushing, but there were five particularly heart-breaking times I led Le Mans overall. My first drive at Le Mans took place at the 1967 race. I was invited to drive a GT40 belonging to Viscount Downe (John Dawnay), but entered by John Wyer who, with John Willment, had just formed JW Automotive Engineering to take over Ford Advanced Vehicles (the ‘JW’ initials in the company name actually stood for John…

For the love of cars Dear Sir, This letter is dedicated to all people involved in the making, publishing or contributing to car magazines. It all started in 1986 with De AutoGids (BE). I was 12 at that time and bought my first copy with the little pocket money I had. I had to wait two weeks until the next edition, it seemed ages. I read it front to back. They contained the prices, specs and options of every car on the Belgian market. I spend hours and hours optioning cars and making different configurations. 35 years later I still do that – thank god for online car configurators! A few years later I discovered Autovisie (NL), featuring a very young Ton Roks, the experienced Nico De Jong, with photos by Henk van…

Scott Gardner Job title Workshop manager Place of work Porsche Centre Bournemouth, UK Time at Porsche 14 years I will receive in the upcoming weeks from the Lisbon Porsche dealer a 992 C4 (not the S as I feel I don’t really need the extra power) that is a great deal. It’s a service car from October with very few miles that they use for “dynamic drive tests” and I will take the opportunity to replace my 991.2 Carrera 4 with this new fantastic model. The thing is that I enjoy listening to music in the car and this one comes with the basic Sound Plus system and not the Bose. Is there any way I can upgrade this by installing a class D amplifier and replacing the six standard speakers with better ones? Can this be done…

MARKET ASSESSMENT 2 020. Who knew? Buoyed with positivity at the beginning of last year, a global pandemic and a sub-optimal Brexit has impacted on the car market, though as Paragon’s Mark Sumpter says: “The honest answer from any car dealer is we cannot read the market presently.” That’s not to say it’s not moving, Sumpter adding: “This week we’d want to buy 2015-year 991s, because we sold three last week.” Brexit might not have been the perfect resolution, but all the specialists we’ve spoken to admit that at least with it done there’s a bit less uncertainty out there, the possible difficulties ahead because of it presenting more of a short-term chicane than a roadblock. Indeed, all our specialists admit that now it’s passed, there’s something of a pent-up demand from…