Welcome to the forum, nice to have you here.

 

Okay...I'll come clean. Through no fault of my own, many years ago I was fortunate enough to meet Jochen Mass at a Formula 1 race in France. He and I became good friends, mainly because of our shared love of boats.

Through that connection and my own history of buying Porsches over the years, this car was set up by the factory people and is a very special car.

It has the European ride height and carries everything in a stock form, from wheels to options etc. In a word it is nothing too special, it is just stock, but everything was done very right.

Here is a couple of shots of me and Jochen at Watkins Glen when he was drivng for McLaren in the 70's. And at Sebring when he teamed with Bobby Rahal and won the 12 hour event in Bruce Levin's 962. That's me with the sunglasses in front of the car, lending moral support.

Later on, I was one of four people invited to Willow Springs by Andial to test the prototype Carrera Cup car in '92....just before they decided to dump the whole program of Carrera Cup in America. One of my co-drivers in IMSA and I, had decided that we would do the Cup series and sold off all of the old race equipment only to be told by the factory...no series. They let us buy car #2 when they converted them back to street cars. Brumos got car # 1.

 

Great pics and stories Top Banana, welcome to the team.

 

Damn, are you sure you can't adopt me? Better start posting more of the cool pics I know you're holding back on, too.

 

hey welcome to the site!

 

dont forget to order your TS chain from Felix (Porsche Fanatic)

 

Welcome aboard. Nice to have another boater on the board!

 

Thanks man.....it's just that love of speed that carries over from land to water.

I have really had a lot of great opportunities in life and had a great time enjoying them all.

Here is one of the best of all time. I was in the last Cannonball Run...not the rally, but the race that they made the movie with Burt Reynolds in back in '79.

I had a new 928 Porsche that I was setting up and a friend of mine heard that I had an invitation. (It was invitation only from Brock Yates) So my friend offers up his new turbo diesel Mercedes for use, if he can go with me.

I accept his offer and turn the car over to Bill Mitchell of Special Vehicles Development in Connecticut. Bill turns the trunk of the car into a fuel cell and adds new XWX tires, halogen lights, radar detectors front and rear and even a car phone as well as the mighty CB.

Long story short.....range of the car between stops was over 600 miles. Finished 6th at a time of 36 hours from Connecticut to California. Memories of a lifetime.

Funniest part of the trip was in California. We ended up out there just in time for the Long Beach Formula 1 race. So they tell us they are going to introduce us (the Cannonball competitors )to the crowd and they want us to just take a few laps around the track and then come in. Think about that....we just broke every law in the country and they really expected us to come right in.....after about 10 minutes beyond what they thought reasonable, they finally blocked the track and forced us off to the great delight of the crowd.

 

fantastic stories! welcome to TS! I think you will fit in just fine around here

 

Okay...where do I order one?

I was looking for some photos of my car, but the best I could find on short notice, is the back of it at Lime Rock race track.

My Turbo is the black car in the background, the white car is the Carrera Cup car serial # 2, that I was speaking about earlier. The guy in the photo is Tom McCabe, he was one of the four that was invited to Willow Springs to test also. Another driver was Alan Freed, a Camel Lights driver.

Guess I might as well name the fourth driver at this point......Andial didn't trust our feedback on the car 100%, so they had some guy show up late in the day to test also. He gets in the car and in two laps, is now under the best time that the three of us had posted all day ......Some Californian by the name of George Follmer....seems he had some relationship with Porsache going back to winning the Can Am championship for them with Penske's car after Donohue was injured. Life is so great at keeping you humble...you just have to wait and your next opportuniity is coming right over the hill.

Autoweek did a story on the Willow Springs test and the decision of Porsche to cancel the series in the USA.