Today, Gareth Howells lives in Suffolk with his wife Vicki and their Doberman. Nearly 40 years ago, however, he was growing up in rural Herefordshire and having his first childhood adventures across the fields by motorcycle. Starting on motocross bikes before his age was even in double figures, he would move on to road bikes and develop an enduring interest in life on two wheels that would go on to include international tours around Europe, the Canadian Rockies and South Africa’s beautiful Garden Route.
But four-wheeled options held a great fascination for him as well. One day, he wrote to both Ferrari and Porsche asking if they could send him brochures. Ferrari ignored him – in fairness, that he was nine years old at the time might have had something to do with it – but Porsche sent a pack that included both the brochure he asked for and a poster of a black 911SC as well. For a lad growing up in a council house, that meant the world and instantly created a Porsche fan for life. “I was smitten and have been ever since,” he remembers.
Over the following decades, he has owned a number of hot hatches including a Golf GTI, Golf R and RS3, but this interest was always intertwined with the Porsches that caught his imagination as a schoolboy. His first Porsche was a Boxster 2.5, which was followed by an S and then his first 911 – a black 996 C4S that he fondly remembers as a “lovely car with a manual gearbox which we took on numerous trips to Europe, Wales and Scotland.” From there he moved on to a 997 GTS in Guards Red, then a 991.1 GTS in Sapphire Blue (“which had a stunning naturally aspirated 3.8-litre engine that made a great noise”).
Gareth exchanged this car through Porsche Sheffield for his current 991.2 GT3, which he says is very different to any Porsche he’s had before. “It’s so wonderfully engaging at any speed, but particularly when you have the opportunity to use it on the track where it really is something very special,“ he explains. “I’ve done a few driver training sessions at Millbrook with CAT Driver Training and with Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone which have bordered on spiritual. The 9000 rpm red line is something to behold, as is the handling.” He also has a black 2020 Macan GTS, which he bought from Romans International last year – “again, a fantastic car that’s so usable but also so well-engineered like all of the Porsche products.”
But the centrepiece of Gareth’s collection is something very special indeed. At long last, he has fulfilled his boyhood dream of buying the car from the poster some kind person at Porsche sent him all those years ago and he now has a black 1982 911SC with a “very 1980s” Turbo spoiler. In addition to being “just a beautiful piece of engineering but also uniquely Porsche”, as Gareth puts it, there’s a story behind it too.
He had been looking for an air-cooled 911 for a few years when this one came to his attention. It had been subject to an extensive renovation in 2014 courtesy of Porsche Centre Cambridge to celebrate 50 years of the 911 and then auctioned off in aid of Whizz-Kidz, a local children’s charity that provides disabled children with specialised equipment that can help with their mobility. When the man whose winning bid of £52,000 later decided it was time for a change (“I think he was buying a Ferrari 488 PISTA” Gareth notes, in an entertaining echo of his younger self’s taste in sports cars), he saw the car advertised through JZM, persuaded his “very understanding wife” that “this was a very different 911 to the GT3 and that they complemented each other” and seized the opportunity.
The renovation work undertaken by Porsche Centre Cambridge was of a high standard indeed and there was plenty of it too. The whole process was captured in more than 300 pictures – saved in a 911-shaped USB stick, a nice touch – and recorded for posterity in a folder setting out where the car was originally purchased from and a record of the work that had been done. It involved dismantling the SC and stripping it right down to bare metal, bead-blasting the engine, sorting out some “pretty awful” bodywork rust, repairing or replacing an extensive list of parts and patiently respraying the whole thing in solid black.
The end result was thoroughly impressive. The car itself and the accompanying documentation provide a real testament to just what can be achieved in more than 600 labour hours, 100 of which went on the painting alone, by a team of four skilled technicians. In fact, this SC was even entered into a nationwide competition to celebrate 50 years of the 911 and got featured in the Sunday Times in an article that called it “pristine” and asked: “Is this the perfect 911SC?”.
Gareth clearly appreciates what has been done with it too. “I think they have done a lovely job retaining the car’s patina while ensuring that it’s mechanically robust and presents really well,” he says. “It’s no concours car, but I wanted an example I could use, not sit in the garage.”
But, even with every possible advantage in the SC’s corner, would the reality of actually driving it be equal to all those schoolboy daydreams?
“I wanted to wait to drive an air-cooled 911 until it was one I owned and I have to admit I was a bit nervous because they say ‘don’t meet your heroes’,” Gareth says. “I needn’t have worried. The car drives beautifully. It’s full of character from the offset clutch to the sound of the doors as they shut with a clunk and the ever-so-close upright windscreen. In a world of bland and boring cars, the 911 is unique. The unassisted steering is a joy, a little heavy at parking speeds but really commutative at speed. The weight distribution is even more apparent than the modern 911’s, but it has that fantastic traction that fires you out of your favourite bend and responds so well to a bit of trail braking. It’s a very different car to the GT3, but one where you can feel the lineage of more than 40 years of engineering development.”
So, with this childhood aspiration definitely achieved, what’s next? “I have been pretty lucky,” Gareth says, “but I do have a hankering for a cabriolet or Targa 992 to do a bit of touring around Europe and the North Coast 500. Maybe a 992 Turbo Cab, Spyder Boxster or 4.0 GTS? They all look like lovely cars.”
It’s interesting to wonder what would have happened if things had gone a little differently all those years ago and it was Ferrari that replied to Gareth instead of Porsche. Would that have sent his life off down a different tangent or would everything have somehow worked out exactly the same? Your guess is as good as anyone’s, but Gareth is light-hearted about it. “Looking back, it was a pretty shrewd move by Porsche given the amount I’ve spent on their cars over the years!”