Our favourite restorations are those revealing
more detail the longer they’re stared at. The kind of build — at first
glance, anyway — appearing a beautifully presented Porsche with a hint of
personalisation, but demonstrating myriad unique touches as eyeballs gaze
from one panel to the next. The kind of restoration pictured on the cover of
this magazine, in fact. Yep, the longer you look at Paul Leyton’s beautiful
1959-built 356 B T5, the more details it yields. The pulled-in bumpers, the
lack of front indicators, the louvred decklid, the stitched ‘stripes’
spanning door card to engine bay. Nothing too outlandish, unless you count
contrasting Gold Metallic with a bright green interior, though as regular
readers will know, Paul has form in this department, as demonstrated by the
pairing of orange paintwork and purple leather on his 911, as featured in
these pages exactly two years ago. Has it really been that long?! Apparently
so.
The other kind of restoration bound to excite us is the resurrection of a
classic Porsche from circumstances making little sense to drag the car from,
whether because the project is likely to prove prohibitively expensive (well
beyond the financial worth of the finished build) or because conventional
wisdom suggests the car is too far gone. Perhaps the fact I rescued a 944
Turbo from the hedge it had been living in for more than half a decade — and
proceeded to commission restoration, despite a large amount of the car’s
metalwork being heavily corroded — colours my judgment?
Regardless, Paul’s 356 ticks this box, too, having been seriously damaged
by fire as a consequence of the new 911 GT3 RS it was parked next to going up
in smoke. To make matters worse, the four-cylinder Porsche was not long from
restoration in the USA and further work costing tens of thousands of pounds
at a UK-based marque specialist. Yeesh.
Fortunately, there’s little to dissuade a Porschephile on a mission from
seeing a fresh restoration through to completion once they get going. And for
this reason, we can be thankful for our star car’s continued survival. |
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