On one hand, it's a 964; on the other, it's one man's obsessive pursuit of the ultimate 911...
Theon design. Your archetypal small-scale car builder, operating out of a unit somewhere deep in Oxfordshire. It's run by Adam Hawley and his – and I hope he won't mind me saying this – long-suffering wife, Lucinda Argy. I say that because Hawley’s in charge of the creating, and his creative passion strays almost to OCD levels of attention to detail.
He thought his C4 was pretty mint, but once it was stripped down it turned out to be quite tired – the gear linkage, for example, was held together with a rubber boot. That pleased Hawley. As a die-hard Porsche lover he understands the need to keep the best cars original. The last thing he wants to do is strip down a 5,000-mile jewel. “The ideal car,” he says, “would be something that’s done 187k miles and is falling apart, because then you’re rejuvenating something”.
If you know what you’re looking for that level of detail is everywhere. Take the rear parcel shelf and bulkhead. On the 964 there's an indent for the rear wiper on the left-hand side. That spoiled the symmetry of the engine bay, so had to go, which involved creating new metalwork.
And finally, the engine. CH001 uses an air-cooled flat-six enlarged to 4.0-litres. Turbocharging and supercharging are available, but this one is naturally aspirated. It’s still churning out a whopping 400hp and 350lb ft, with a lightweight, single-mass flywheel and those individual throttle bodies to help it rev. The bespoke exhaust system has two noise modes, and the engine is mated to a 993 six-speed G50 gearbox with a Wavetrac limited-slip diff.
The car is fast, of course. It has 400hp pushing little more than a tonne. But it wasn’t the straight-line speed that struck me, more the immediacy of the throttle response. It picks up so urgently, like it's running on something more potent than petrol, and just doesn’t give up. Hawley said the engine’s rev limit is set to 8,500rpm, but recommends running it to 7,500rpm to be sensible. I was happy sticking with that but the car wasn't, with its will to spin seemingly hardwired.
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