Cars that shaped my world

[JackStand]

Hey Pelicans,

I’ve been hanging around the Pelican Forums a very long time now. Mostly lurking, reading, learning, occasionally searching old threads at strange hours of the night when some air-cooled mystery needed solving. I’m 65 and based in Durban, South Africa. I’ve spent most of my life around cars, racetracks, workshops, track days, magazine tests, endurance events, and the wonderfully strange world of Porsche enthusiasts.

Recently, someone suggested I should make a list of all the memorable cars I’ve owned, driven, raced, tested, modified, coached in, or simply experienced over the years.

So I did.

Honestly, it blew me away a little.

Not because the list is full of exotic machinery, but because every car instantly unlocked a memory. A person. A road trip. A workshop disaster. A late-night drive. A race weekend. A lesson. What started as a simple list has slowly turned into something much bigger — an ongoing anthology of motoring stories and memories gathered over several decades.

CARS THAT SHAPED MY LIFE

It’s still very much a work in progress, and there are many more cars and stories still to add, but I thought some of you here might enjoy the journey, especially the Porsche content and the old-school analogue era machines.

Some stories will be funny.
Some mildly terrifying.
Some nostalgic.
Some technical.
Some probably slightly politically incorrect.
Most will simply be honest.

So here's my contribution...

I’ll start posting some of the entries and photos as I go along, and I’d genuinely enjoy hearing some of your own stories too. After all, many of us measure parts of our lives through the cars that passed through our hands.

Thanks for having me.

Pierre

ps - I'll post a list first, and the stories later.



Fat Bully – My Porsche 928 Race Car
Take a heavyweight GT cruiser, gut it, add good brakes & suspension and bully whoever I found in the corners…



250 Superkarts (Various)
Still the most mental thing I’ve ever driven.
Zero to 100km/h in under 3 seconds.
Zero to 200km/h in under 6 seconds.
Top speed north of 250km/h.
No cage.
No belts.
​No brains.



The Brown Cow – Dirk’s ’83 Porsche 911 Targa
I introduced Dirk to the 911 experience, then built this sweet little targa for him…



The Yellow Bird V-I – Dave’s ’74 Porsche 911-RSR in IROC spec
Started life as an ’83-SC. Dave turned it into a concourse condition race car…



The Yellow Bird V-II – Dave’s 911-RSR in Grp-4 spec
Then it evolved into a serious piece of kit. No expense spared…

[JackStand]

Allan’s Porsche 930 Turbo
Dropping my backside into my friend Allan’s 930 Turbo for some hot-laps at an open track day at Zwartkops Raceway felt like I was stepping back into a time capsule from 1981…



Albert’s Porsche 993 Carrera 4
I spent 4 days doing an inch-by-inch paint-correction buff and polish on this car, entered it into the local Porsche Club Show & Shine competition and won a 1st Place trophy…



Albert’s Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2 (G50)
The thing about old air-cooled 911s is that you can do a road trip to a faraway track, do hot-laps all day long, and then drive it back home without a hassle. Not many cars from the seventies and eighties could do that…



917 Track Test
When I was a kid, I had a poster on my wall of Jo Siffert’s number 24 Porsche 917 in the iconic Gulf livery…



Arshad’s McLaren 720-S
What a car!!! If you ever see me roll up in one of these and I tell it’s really mine, you won’t have to guess whether I’ve hit the Powerball Jackpot. You’ll know…

[JackStand]

The Bread Bin – My Ugly Duck Subaru Forester
At the time I modified this thing, you could build horsepower to match 911’s for a fraction of the cost of building a 911 performance engine…



Charles' Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7
Porsche raided their parts bin and built a few of these…



Christo’s Porsche 718 Boxster GTS
This “hairdresser’s Porsche" alerted me to how ridiculously quick these things become with the right modifications…



Gerald's Ferrari F12
Life gives you a test ever so often, but driving a 720hp front-engined Ferrari first thing in the morning on a race track with a hangovar the size of Texas is not really what I would consider fair play, considering the fact that I've never driven something like this before...



Lawrence’s Porsche 991-Mk1 GT3
The kind of car that pays dividends exponentially when you start throwing money at the right upgrades…

[JackStand]

My Audi RS4 Avant
I’ve always had a thing for performance station wagons. They make excellent tow vehicles and packhorses, plus you can double-duty them as track taxis when demonstrating racing lines…



The Green Tea – Marino’s Pre-73 Porsche 911-T
The official Porsche colour is called “Irish Green”, when clearly, it looks more like British Racing Green. You gotta wonder if there was any German sarcasm in naming the colour?



Half Pint – Our Pre-‘73 Porsche 911-R
My buddy Chris and I decided to turn a butt-ugly ’83 SC into a brutal little lightweight longhood track car…



The Jug-Shaker – My Porsche Cayman 718 GT4-MkI
I’m no pervert, but a sportscar with stiff suspension on a slightly bumpy road does have its advantages if your female companion is nicely shaped and you have good peripheral vision…



The White Puppy – Keith’s Pre-’73 Porsche 911-RSR
A cheeky little ankle-biter and troublemaker. The kind of car that demanded mischief from the driver…

[JackStand]

Mark’s Porsche 924 Race Car
"I guess you could always mount a small BBQ in the passenger footwell and turn the sausages on the back straight"…



Less – My Subaru Forester SG
A car I named “Less”. Because there aint no such thing as a pretty Subaru – Only less ugly ones…



Naughty Tires – My Alfa GT Junior Race Car
A friend had this car standing under a carport and insisted I take it off hands for free. Gratis. So, I did what I always do when I didn’t know what to do with a car – Gut it and turn it into a track car…



My Speed Yellow Porsche 996 GT3-MkII
Even ordinary guys like me get lucky sometimes. I bought this car before the Porsche price boom…



Speads Sports Prototype Track Test
A stroked 1400cc 220hp Hayabusa motor in a car that only weighs 380kg. You don’t even have to do the math. You just know it’s going to be quick…

[JackStand]

Speads Single Seater Track Test
What we have here is a car at 92% the scale of the 2007 Ferrari F1 car. It weighs 360kg with a 110hp Gixxer 1000cc power plant strapped to the back, chain driven with the rear sprocket ingeniously crafted onto a custom Quaife limited slip diff…



Neerajh’s Porsche 996 GT3-MkII
I guess not many people can say "I did endurance racing with my attorney in his GT3"…



My Ferrari 458 Italia
I couldn’t afford a Ferrari in my wildest dreams, but one thing leads to another, and I won an auction bid on a 458 with mild front-end cosmetic damage…



Yasis – Adrian’s Toyota Yaris GR
When you drive it normally it’s just a Yaris. When you tackle the corners in anger it quickly becomes “YASIS !”…



Gerald’s Lamborghini Huracan
When you cruise out of pitlane and the owner’s son tells you “My dad said you must take it to the limit” you just know it’s time to pay attention and take control of the situation…

[wdfifteen]

Interesting. You've had quite a life!

If I had to list the cars that influenced my life I'd have to start with a 1953 Henry J.

[JackStand]

The Bue Rocket – VW Golf 7.5-R
A project. Taking a bone stock Golf 7.5-R and throwing a grocery list of aftermarket mods at it, and investing the kind of manhours you could never recover…



The Donkey – My BMW540i 6-Speed
People asked me - This is not a slow car. Why do you call it The Donkey? – It did all my donkey work. Hands down the best car I ever owned…



Chery QQ – 48-Hour Endurance Record
I got roped into this event way before Chinese cars became a thing…



"Black" – Hugh’s Porsche Cayman 718 GT4-MkI
I’ve probably done more miles and hot-laps in this car than my late friend Hugh did…



Tabasco – GT40 Track Test
Getting out of bed at sparrow’s fart on a cold winter’s morning is really not my thing, but on this particular day I was heading to Kyalami to drive a very hot GT40 replica…

[JackStand]

Formula GTi
When I look at photos of this car, the tune Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas comes to mind. That’s how it was with this car. I just wanted to drive…



Gabor’s 944 Turbo
I remember this car. It was rough around the edges. Really rough. The windscreen was cracked. The carbon fibre doors, fender flares and hood were all warped and none of the panels lined up properly…



Customer Porsche 991-Mk1 GT3
A customer was galavanting somewhere in the Mediterranean on the Queen Mary and asked me to take delivery and test his new 991 GT3. It was the first time I've experienced taking delivery of a brand new Porsche. Quite special…



The Red Rocket – Porsche 718 Cayman GTS
These cars are the real sleepers of the Porsche world. I’ve done software & cat deletes on a few. This time I turned into a real giant killer…



Prevan’s Porsche 997 Turbo
Modified by RACE! – A beast of a thing at the time. Still is…

[JackStand]

The Yellow Banana - Lynda’s Porsche Boxster
Marino warned her, “If the car goes to Pierre for work, it’s gonna come back with a name…”



The White Goose – My Porsche 964 Carrera 2
The one and only car I ever regret selling…



The Red Lady – Marino’s ’83 Porsche 911-SC
Untold memories in this car. Road trips Track days. More road trips. More track days...



The Sperm Whale – My Cayenne GTS V8
I’ve always thought of the Cayenne as a good grocery-getter, tow vehicle, and last, but not least – A very unusual Track Taxi…



Shelby Can-Am Sports Prototype
I was asked to test one of these things for a magazine writeup. The test lead to an invitation to drive one race in a race, and the engine broke on my first practice lap…

[rfuerst911sc]

The brown cow targa I had the same year coupe in that color . Quite stunning when viewed outside . You have had a very interesting automotive life

[pwd72s]

AI anybody? Just a guess. (edit) In case not and by comparison with the above, nothing I've seen or owned is worth of mentioning.

[JackStand]

Originally Posted by rfuerst911sc

The brown cow targa I had the same year coupe in that color . Quite stunning when viewed outside . You have had a very interesting automotive life

Thank you sir. I've been very fortunate.

It is a stunning colour. This car lives in Hamburg, Germany now. I'll post pics and the story in time.

- Pierre.

[JackStand]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

AI anybody? Just a guess.

Yes, I've used AI to edit out background. AI in its wisdom changed some details of cars though.

I'll post the real photos when I follow up with stories of these cars.

- Pierre.

[JackStand]

I'll start posting stories next, and will add more cars as I go along...

- Pierre.

[JackStand]

Fat Bully's Story.

I was at Zwartkops Raceway one Wednesday afternoon way back when the new track just opened. My crazy German buddy, Olly was there in his tweaked black 911. I was in my 928-S on Bilstein shocks, HR coil-overs, new Porsche Cup2 wheels, Bridgestone Potenza tyres and the best setup we could dial into the otherwise stock suspension.

During one of the morning sessions I caught up to four older 911s with painfully obvious novice drivers behind the wheel - stiff arms, death grips, braking where braking wasn’t even an idea, eyes the size of saucers. So what was I to do? - Play axe-murderer, of course. Carved them up like I was late for a BBQ. One guy pointed me by on the straight like he was doing me a favour. Another missed an apex by a postcode and neatly parked it in the kitty litter.

When I came in, Olly was leaning against the pit wall, arms folded, shaking his head.

“You’re a bully.” He quipped.

I told him the car under-steered like a fat pig and he laughed and said,

“Then it’s settled – the car is Fat Bully.”
​
That was that. Once a car has a name, you’re done arguing.



Later that year I entered a few Porsche Club time-trial events and won hands down in the class I was running, which did absolutely nothing for my already questionable humility.

Then came a magic day at the Gerotech banked oval. A local legend – who shall remain anonymous for now - reputation bigger than his lap times – ego the size of Texas - was circulating in a very well-known, gazillion-horsepower twin-turbo 911. He could not get rid of me. He’d disappear down the straights like I’d hit reverse, but I’d reel him back in through the banked corners by doing something highly technical and advanced - keeping my right foot flat.

Every time we hit the main straight I was tucked right under his massive rear wing, lap after lap, like a bad rash. Eventually the entire pit area was in stitches. Mr Local Legend got so thoroughly cheesed off that he didn’t greet me for the next five years. Which, frankly, felt like a winning trophy I didn’t have to polish. But that’s another story.

I’m a firm believer that different cars put you in different headspaces as a driver.

Fat Bully as a road car, was a bad influence. A 928 is a proper GT - smooth, quiet, planted. The danger is that it doesn’t feel fast, which means you’re usually going far quicker than you think. Like the day my wife Danielle and I were heading back from a Sunday drive to Hartebeestpoort dam and I tripped an old-school speed trap at just over 200 km/h. I didn’t stop. My old man’s voice popped into my head, clear as day: “If a cop is going to pull you over for speeding, at least make the bastard work for his money”. Something primal kicked in. I floored it. Kept it pinned and smooth, let the big V8 do its quiet, relentless thing. No drama. No panic. Just distance.

Dannielle was completely oblivious.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.

“You’re driving like an idiot.”
“I’m enjoying the car.”

She squinted at the speedo and said,
“Enjoy it slower. Leave the speeding for the racetracks”

By the time she realised something was off, the cops were already someone else’s problem. I didn’t say another word. Neither did she. That silence lasted longer than the chase.

That reminds me of a saying - If your wife is cross, buy a Porsche. She will still be cross, but you'll have a Porsche.



Picture this...

A lone Honda CB400 Four stretched flat-out in top gear along a dead-straight country road.

The rider is plastered to the tank, chin hovering just above the clocks, elbows tucked in tight for whatever aerodynamic advantage he can steal. His black leather jacket is snapping itself to death in the turbulence. The little four is screaming its lungs out - speedo and rev-counter needles blurred, valves dancing on borrowed time - doing an optimistic 170 km/h with everything it has, and a bit it doesn’t.

Behind him sits Fat Bully. Long nose. Squat tail. V8 barely breaking a sweat. No drama, no noise - just that relentless, hydraulic-like surge that only Stuttgart physics can deliver. On our way to Sun City. Danielle, beside me, wrapped into the snug but genuinely comfortable Porsche Sports passenger seat. I wasn’t chasing the bike, per se. I was simply sitting on his tail, whether he liked it or not. Patiently. Quietly. Making him nervous.

The road was empty and sun-bleached, slicing through South African nowhere - corn fields on one side, thorn trees and hard red dirt on the other. No traffic. No fences. Just heat shimmer and the distant smell of nature. For a few mad minutes it was man and machine versus destiny - a high-strung, banzai Japanese four and a German GT calmly reminding him of his place in the motoring food chain.

Dannielle was starting to get nervous (again) and giving me the usual static from the passenger seat, so I backed off a fraction and let the bike open a fifty-metre gap.

We were looking forward to our weekend away. The last time I’d been to Sun City was October 1984, for the opening night of Queen’s The Works Tour - long before Dannielle and I had met. I figured everyone should do a Sun City weekend at least once in their life, if only for the experience. Relax a little. Eat well. Take in a show or two. Maybe gamble a bit - feed some coins into the greedy throats of the one-armed bandits. Not that I’m a gambler. My luck is such that if I ever fell into a barrel of boobs, I’d probably come up sucking my thumb.

We were still pegged at 170. I kept one eye on the road while fiddling with the cassette deck, trying to find a better song. The bike was still there, fifty metres ahead. That was clearly all the top end it had.

Then, without warning, the rider bolted upright - as if someone had rammed a red-hot iron rod up his arse - and promptly turned off the road straight into a freshly ploughed field, disappearing in a cloud of red dust. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Pulled over and ran across to see if I could help. He was sitting there, arse planted firmly in the dirt, wearing a look of pure bewilderment.

I asked if he was hurt.

“Nope. Don’t think so…”

There was no blood. Nothing obviously broken. I helped him to his feet and asked what the hell had happened. He said he’d been resting his chin on the top triple clamp, hit a bump and knocked himself out cold. Next thing he knew, he was tumbling through ploughed land at close to one-seventy. In the same breath, he said it was okay to laugh if I wanted to.

I did. It was hilarious - the funniest crash I’ve ever witnessed.

To come off at that speed and walk away unhurt is nothing short of a miracle. He was lucky. Even the bike was more-or-less fine. We picked it up and pushed it back to the road. I used the pump from the Porsche’s space-saver spare wheel to blow both rider and machine clean of red dust. After a few cranks the Honda fired up and he rode off, heading back the way he’d come. Whatever his original destination had been, he’d clearly lost the appetite for it.

I watched him disappear, wondering if he’d also been bound for Sun City. Perhaps he should have carried on - before his luck ran out. Some people mistake speed for winning. Others just live long enough to realise the difference...

(To be Continued)

[JackStand]

By then, the writing was already on the wall. I was gonna turn Fat Bully into a full race car. You know the sickness – reduce weight - strip it, cage it, stiffen it, put big brakes, slicks, fender flares, aero, obsess over it, ruin it financially. So I dropped the car off with Marino in the south of Joburg and told him what my plans were.

Marino looked at me and asked,

“You sure?”
“Yes.”

“You know this will get expensive.”
“Yes.”

“And stupid.”
“Yes, again.”

He nodded.
“Okay then.”

Back then, the problem with building a race 928 became obvious the moment we started shopping for upgrades. In 911 land, there were tons of aftermarket plug-and-play options. Want handling? – Order the parts. Want brakes? - Order parts. Want power? - Throw your money at Marino and let him do his thing. In the 928 world there were almost nothing available in terms of upgrades. Nothing to just bolt on. Most of what went onto Fat Bully had to be invented with a combination of brains and stubbornness - Designed and modified with lots of F-Bombs.

We stripped the car bare and sent it to his body shop to check it on a chassis jig. Marino and old slow Ted from Afrishox spent hours on the shock dyno developing a custom set of Bilstein with H&R coil-overs with spring rates suitable for something that weighed about as much as a guilty conscience. We started with a base weight of 1,550 kg and hoped to end up around 1,250 kg. The weight of the wiring loom alone was criminal. - there’s something like 13 kilometres of wiring in a stock 928. Thirteen freakin' kilometres of wiring. Who was this thing designed for, NASA?

The original ’83-S motor remained stock. 350hp. I opted for handling before horsepower. The gearbox, also stock, but got a shortened GTS shifter and a limited-slip diff from Transaxle Developments in Pinetown. Brakes were lifted from a Turbo 964 courtesy of a mate who was so anal he replaced all four callipers and discs because the callipers had a few stone chips. I paid him very little for the lot and kept my mouth shut.

For wheels we went with spacer adapters to run BMW PCD, so I had more choice and didn’t need to bond my house to buy genuine Porsche rims.

Then came the bodywork. I’d always wanted a wide-body 928 of my own design, so I sketched, collected reference photos, and handed the car to a fibreglass guy working from home. A three-month job took over a year. I got the car back eventually, mostly done but the quality of the bodywork sucked.

I lost interest and parked Fat Bully for three years while I went 250 Superkart racing. When I got my head straight, I took the car to a guy who built decent fibreglass street rods. He fixed the fibreglass sins and built a proper roll cage. Then, back to Marino’s for final setup, and a shakedown at Midvaal Raceway. The car worked okay, albeit down on power for its weight...

(To be continued)

[JackStand]

Instead of easing into it sensibly, I jumped straight into the local GT Challenge series.
That was educational. I was used to scratch racing, no handicaps and crap. We all started when the lights went off and raced as hard as we could to get to the front and hopefully stay there until the checkered flag dropped.

GT Challenge was bracket racing – different car classes with massive speed differences between the classes. That’s sports-car racing. Getting lapped by the big chequebook cars wasn’t all bad – traffic management was a new game. I quickly learned to use them to punch holes for me - allowing me to pull moves on the cars in the class I was racing against.

When I first arrived on the scene a GT Challenge Primadonna said to me –

“Welcome to the big leagues, bru.”

Idiot. He tied a ribbon to the rear wing of Fat Bully - a signal to the other drivers that I was new to the class, a rookie. I promptly ripped it off. Then he walked around the car twice, crouched down, peered into the wheel arches, looked at me, clearly trying to wind me up -

“This thing looks heavy.”
“It is.”

“In what class are you racing?”
“The one they put me in.”

“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“You know what you’re up against, hey?”
“Yes.”

“You’ll get lapped.”
“I hope so.”

He gave up and walked away. They say racing attracted kings and clowns. The idiot didn’t leave the impression of a king.

That year’s championship concluded with Fat Bully 1st in Class and Runner Up in the overall results. I raced hard, had a blast and bullied a few of the faster cars along the way. At the end of the season, I parked Fat Bully and that’s where it remained – In storage. Perhaps one day I’ll recommission it and continue the relationship. And that idiot assclown who tried to wind me up came over at prizegiving after the final race and said –

“You made history with that big car of yours. Well done!”
“Thank You.”

“Where did you learn to drive like that?”
“On back roads – I was Ten.”

I think he thought I was being sarcastic.

- Pierre.

[JackStand]

A few more Fat Bully pics -