911 HEAVEN

Prefer your reborn coupes German? Then if your pockets are deep enough, LA-based Workshop 5001 could be the outfit to make your dreams come true. We drive its latest creation: a sublime resto modded 1972 911

- JETHRO BOVINGDON

IT PAYS TO FORGET REALITY SOMETIMES, AND today is one of those days. The surroundings make it easy enough. We’re meeting at Trancas Country Market in western Malibu, the sun has a bleached-out movieset quality and the aroma of the Pacific Ocean hangs in the air. Trancas is nothing more than a little shopping centre with barn-style buildings dotted around a central car park, but it became renowned for its Cars and Coffee events where you’d find 959s and F40s parked up next to Gullwings and Stratoses. Real life doesn’t really apply around these parts, but fantasy car culture is everywhere.

Why Malibu? Well, if you’re going to drive a hotrodded, air-cooled 911 anywhere then the famous ‘canyon roads’ that climb the Santa Monica mountains are probably the location, conjuring up images of Hollywood icons howling around without a care in the world back in the ’60s and ’70s. Oh, and because the owner of this particular 911, based on a ’72 and created by Los Angeles-based Workshop 5001, lives nearby. Of course.

Workshop 5001 is a small operation a world away from Singer, the behemoth of this obsessive, cultish and (is this OK to say?) slightly self-reverential air-cooled world. Workshop 5001’s owner, Marlon Goldberg, is a fascinating character who tells it like it is, has impossibly high standards and believes that each car should be bespoke, its character defined and developed as a cooperation between owner and his team. So there’s no such thing as a ‘Workshop 5001 911’ that can be easily recognised and understood. Bespoke builds have included a narrow-bodied ’72, a 356 B Cabriolet, a barely disguised racer based on a ’74 fitted with a seriously rude 3.8-litre engine, and there are two short-wheelbase cars in build alongside a 930 Turbo.