This Rusty Porsche 911 S Has Got Soul

There’s nothing better than seeing a perfectly polished classic taking pride of place in someone’s well curated collection… Or is there? You see, while a vintage car looking immaculate is very impressive, all that restoration and buffing also cleans it of its story — to some people patina is everything. Petrolicious tells the story of a rusty 911 Targa that its owner wouldn’t have any other way.

Alan Drayson runs Canford Classics, a UK-based restoration shop creating show-stopping examples of classic Porsches. His day consists of correcting imperfections and making what was once old, new again. However, when Alan crossed paths with this particular 911, he couldn’t bring himself to effectively erase the car’s past.

The car was found by chance while Alan was trying to source a 1973 911 RS in Japan for a client. While spending just a day in ‘the land of the rising sun’, he was crazy enough to go and look at a second car he had been told about. This ended up bing the Japanese market 1972 911 S he imported back to the UK.

This Japanese barn find was rusted and had been off the road for longer than it had ever been driven. Alan saved the car from its potential scrap yard fate, and has restored the required mechanicals to daily drive the Porsche — something he does with pride.

Alan says, "The sensations of owning a car, and driving a car like this in comparison to one of our restored cars is the fabric of a story. Whilst many of these cars have wonderful stories, this one seems to be unique." He continues "You don’t find old 911s, not old 911s that have been off the road, and old 911s that haven’t been touched. The same reasons that I fell in love with the car when I first saw it, are exactly the same reasons I think others might."

It might not please judges at prestigious concours events, but it gets our vote. This storied Japanese 911 is one of the coolest we’ve seen.

Source: YouTube