My 904 replica build thread ...

[super9064]

Rob , sorry but that's a different car...hat's off to Andy ! hell of a car and despite the price I doubt he was anxious to let her go... Bert

I guess my post was confusing, I was posting a link to an original car for sale that had lots of pictures for compairison to Andys fine job.

[mimimemegna]

Have lost this tread... incredible!!

[Varooom]

So Andy, you sold it at the end? After all that fine details you were done with it?

[andyjboy]

OK, so time to bring this thread up to date ...

I took the car on another great driving trip back at the end of August 2014 in the company of ~ 30 other early Porsches.

This allowed us to sample some of the UK's most beautiful roads/scenery whilst in the company of a great bunch of people/cars under the DDK banner.

We stayed in lovely luxuriously-equipped log cabins on the banks of Loch Tay in the Scottish Highlands & the thing that amazed me most was just how 'useable' the 904 was - it carried 2 people plus luggage, tools, spare parts, an alternative exhaust (megaphones), waterproof jackets, etc in relative comfort & we covered ~ 2000 miles.

14883828310_d3bedffae5_b.jpg

14860535920_0c102fe3e4_b.jpg

Group shot.jpg

[andyjboy]

By the end of the summer I'd covered approx 4500 miles since getting the car on the road & felt it was time to move on to a new project.

I'm one of those 'odd' people who gain the most satisfaction from the research, tracking down the correct parts & the whole build process in general - it's almost an anti-climax when the car is finished ...

Whilst contemplating how best to market the car, I was contacted by the editor of Classic & Sports Car magazine asking me if I would be interested in taking part in a feature for a forthcoming article comparing a selection of sports racing replicas.

The comparison took place at Goodwood race circuit in mid October on what must have been one of the wettest days of the year !

Four cars in total took part (2 others chickened out!) - GT40, aluminium-bodied Cobra, 250 swb Ferrari & my 904 & my first task was to drive the 150 miles to Goodwood in torrential rain !

Unfortunately due to a combination of the horrendous weather (leading to huge puddles on the circuit), limited track time & the need to get detailed static shots of the individual cars, there was a lot of hanging around & very little time actually spent out on the circuit.

The article is now out in print (C&SC Mar 2015 edition) but I'm not overly impressed ...


Goodwood photoshoot.jpg

[andyjboy]

Since there hadn't been another 904 replica for sale in the UK for some time & the fact that prices for any/all old cars seemed to be all over the place, determining a realistic asking price for the car was difficult to say the least.

Hence I decided to offer my car for sale via Silverstone Auctions - they had an auction scheduled for mid November at the Classic Car Show at the NEC in Birmingham which would effectively be the last major event of the year.

I think I must have been the only person who actually drove their car to the NEC - all of the others seemed to be delivered on trailers/covered transport.

I attended the preview day & was pleased to see that my car had been allocated a prime position right in the centre of the auction display area where it created quite a lot of interest.

What gave me great satisfaction was the number of well-known people in the Porsche world who were very complimentary about my car - Nick Faure for instance who told me that he was determined to buy it !

When my car's lot came up for auction there still seemed to be a lot of interest (including several overseas phone bidders) & the car sold very quickly to a bidder 'in the room'.

In short the car sold for way more than I was expecting - which was great news - but the 'icing on the cake' for me was that it had been bought by the owner of an original 904... he had purchased the original some months before but hadn't driven it yet - he had bought mine to practise in before risking his £1.5m original !

To bring the story to an end, here are some of the pictures I took for the auction catalogue


osf 3qtr.jpg

n side.jpg

Front 3.jpg

Rear.jpg

[andyjboy]

interior.jpg

engine 3.jpg

[914-6gt]

Holy Cow Andy! Congratulations on the sale! Your 904 project gives a new meaning, a revised definition to the word "reproduction". Dictionary.com should now have your 904 as a reference on when to appropriately use the word. Nothing short of remarkable in every sense of the word!

[rmakosaito]

Thanks for the thread Andy - I've followed it from the beginning with a sense of awe and envy. The current issue of CaSC is hitting mailboxes in the US as we speak (I just got mine 10 minutes ago), so it should be stores soon.

[john1180]

The big question is what's next?