Gas platform worker, David Hamilton, has amassed quite a collection of Porsches – 924s mainly, with a daily driver, a spares car, a US market Weissach Commemorative Edition and a Turbo. However, today he’s keen to show of his 996 Turbo and we’re keen to see it!
It’s dreary – and incredibly windy – the day that we meet up with David Hamilton and his 2003vintage 996 Turbo at Suffolk-based PIE Performance. Dave seems a jolly chap, but he’s lamenting the gloom in the sky. ‘You should really see this car when the sun catches it,’ he enthuses. ‘The blue absolutely zings out at you, makes it look like a completely different car; it’s quite a transformation. Today, with all this cloud cover, it looks a bit…urgh!’
Hate to disagree with you so early in the interview, Dave, but your Turbo looks anything but urgh. Sure, in these overcast conditions the dark blue seems to be absorbing light rather than reflecting much of it, but give it more than a cursory glance and you’ll notice that what brightness there is falls like a luminous sheet across patches of the bodywork, highlighting its curves, lending a richness to the paintwork. It’s subtle stuff and makes the Turbo look more suave than menacing, and yet if your eye catches the car from head on or view it from the rear three-quarter, then you can’t doubt you’re in the presence of a car with incredible potential.
Dave, an electrical technician who works on the gas platforms in the sea off the north Norfolk coast, confesses that he initially had doubts about another feature of his Turbo that we’re rather fond of: the HRE Performance multi-spoke, multi-piece alloy wheels. ‘I came to own them through chance and through another guy’s misfortune,’ he admits. ‘This bloke around the corner also owned a 996 Turbo, and one day when he was giving it the beans a cam chain snapped. Obviously it was game over for the engine: the aforementioned misfortune was that he couldn’t afford a rebuild so had to sell the car.
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