Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7: The first impact bumper 911
I could not believe my eyes! Only a few weeks before I drove it, I had not even known this 911 existed. It all started when I visited a collector, who showed me fantastic pictures of the car in question while she was visiting like-minded enthusiasts in Johannesburg, South Africa.
My initial thought was one of disdain – how could someone paint their 911 pink? However, it was explained to me that this was the car’s original colour, a small trinket that’s part of a very interesting history.
A few phone calls later and an appointment was made with the owner. It turned out to be one of the most interesting 911 stories I have ever come across.
“I was always a Ferrari fanatic. I really, really wanted a 246 Dino GTS,” explained our owner. After he graduated from university in South Africa, he and a friend went to London by boat. After arriving in London, they visited the Ferrari importer, but there was no Dino in sight.
Later, he asked the importer to try and source a second-hand Dino, but still no success. Soon after, Ferrari phoned him and invited him to drive the then new 308. “I didn’t like it,” he said. Subsequently, he had driven all of the other mid-engined Italian supercars: the Lamborghini Urraco, Maserati Merak and De Tomaso Pantera.
“I didn’t like any of them, and then a friend said I should try a Porsche. I told him that I was not really a Porsche fan. Eventually my friend convinced me to simply test drive one. It was a bright green 2.7 Carrera which had been featured in several UK publications at the time – and we could not believe a car could go like that!”
He continued, “I couldn’t quite afford it, but Porsche eventually came back to me saying they had found a car for me, and it cost only slightly more than I was prepared to pay for it.”
At the time, the owner was so glad that he had finally procured his hands on a 2.7 Carrera that he assumed the colour would be white, similar to the 911S he had been interested in a short while before, and so the Carrera deal was done.
After a phone call to the sales person, the owner was even more excited: “I was told that the car was on its way, and that it was actually in a ‘special colour’ called magenta. As a youngster I didn’t know what colour magenta was, so I asked the salesman. There was silence on the other side of the line… and then he said: ‘It’s a sort of pink!’”
To read our full test drive of the 1974 Earls Court Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7, pick up Total 911 issue 134 in store today. Alternatively, you can download it straight to your digital device now.
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