The Porsche 911 is a sports-car icon; its basic shape has remained more or less unchanged since its unveiling at the Frankfurt IAA in 1963, even if a current 911 of the 992 series no longer shares a single detail with its 1963 ancestor. One great advantage of the old 911s, though, is that from the start of series production in mid-1964 until the arrival of the water-cooled 911 of the 996 type in 1995, they kept the same bodyshell and many parts that remain interchangeable across the model years.
That opens up undreamt-of possibilities for building a car entirely to one’s own wishes from original Porsche parts. One of the acknowledged specialists in Porsches of every vintage, Sportec of Höri near Bülach in the Zurich Unterland, has now delivered the Swiss answer to the Outlaw and restomod-Porsche trend: the Ferdinand.
Restored, ...
Restomod means nothing more than restoring and modifying. At Sportec, the restoring part means the base car is stripped down to the last screw. Naturally only after the car has been driven extensively on the road and run on the test bench. That way, nasty surprises are ruled out from the start. For the Ferdinand, Sportec chose a 1989 Porsche 911 of the 964 series. Its advantages are a chassis vastly improved over its predecessors and a newly designed gearbox with far greater shift precision. The narrow-bodied 964 is exactly the right choice for creating an Outlaw in the style of the early 911s from before 1974, when fat American bumpers had yet to disfigure the pure form of the car penned by Ferdinand Alexander “Butzi” Porsche.
The mechanical parts — the main components of the likewise dismantled engine and gearbox — were retained but freshly reworked by Sportec: the crank assembly, for instance, has been finely rebalanced, everything runs on new bearings or, in the case of the suspension, new bushes. The Ferdinand thus begins life on a virtually as-new foundation.
... then modified
Lighter, faster and more beautiful — the transformation from standard 964 to Ferdinand pursued several goals. To shed weight, Sportec replaced almost the entire sheet-steel outer skin with carbon-Kevlar panels; the wings gained wheel arches widened by 30 millimetres. The bulky plastic bumpers made way for delicate items in early-1970s style, while the front bonnet, in return, is slightly longer than the 964’s.
The Ferdinand’s visual leitmotif was the über-911 par excellence, the Carrera RS 2.7. That includes, for instance, the ducktail rear and the famous five-spoke Fuchs alloy wheels.
The Ferdinand’s interior was decluttered, plastic replaced with fine materials such as milled aluminium, leather and Alcantara, joined by lightweight racing bucket seats. Connoisseurs have little trouble spotting the differences between the thoroughly styled Ferdinand and the standard 964. The whole is rounded off with a new sound system and an up-to-date phone-charging station. Last but not least, the masters at Sportec treated the engine to larger cylinder liners, raising the displacement from 3.6 to 3.8 litres — comfortably within the 20 per cent margin tolerated by the authorities. The same goes for the output, up by exactly that amount: 300 instead of 250 hp.
The formula convinces: the Ferdinand caused quite a stir at Auto Zürich last November, for one. The first example sold long ago, and Sportec CEO Gregor Burkard promises that no Ferdinand will be like any other — entirely in the spirit of a true Outlaw Porsche.
This article appeared in MEN issue 1/23 (June 2023).
