James May: My Thatchermobile
In the 1980s, the Porsche 911 was a symbol of City excess and ludicrous bonuses. But is that such a bad thing?
I've never had much patience with people who want to live in the past, and especially not those who want to live in the past of Porsche
.
Yuppiemobile: Posche 911 (with body kit - the automotive equivalent of big hair and shoulder pads)
You may know the type I mean; I know several of them very well, since they number among my mates. It's not just that they lament the passing of air cooling and heater controls down by the handbrake. It's that they feel Porsche has betrayed itself, and its real customers.
They liked Porsche as a cult that ordinary people were not admitted to, when its motives, like Wernher von Braun's, were widely misunderstood.
Apparently, the rot started in the early 1980s, when Britain's financial institutions were rampant and anyone with a pair of braces went straight out and bought a 3.2 Carrera. The 911 stopped being a connoisseur's sports car and became a badge of new-money office"¦ yuppie"¦ stripey jacket"¦ delicatessen"¦ etc etc.
I've been making a radio programme that touches upon this subject, and apparently nothing has changed in the City. It's just that the bonuses are now so big that they're being spent on second homes in France, but since no one was ever carved up on a roundabout by a bright red des-res in the Burgundy region, we're no longer so indignant about it.
Anyway. A typical 1980s Porsche would often come to grief on a back road, when its new owner overdid it and was surprised to find his car reorienting itself to be more like his former Golf GTI, with the engine at the front.
When the bigger crash came on Black Monday, hundreds of the things came up for sale from the estates of people who had thrown themselves from the top of the NatWest tower. Probably. Values plummeted and, in the new age of caring and sharing, the 911 became as poignant a symbol of shattered idealism as a toppled statue of Lenin. Porsche had to reinvent itself.
Since then, the informal Old Porsche Club, which meets on a Friday night in pubs everywhere, has been griping about what went wrong with their favourite marque. Yawn. These are the very people who dismiss my Boxster as being "a bit gay".
This is defeatist nonsense. For a start, there's nothing gay about not wanting to go backwards through a hedge every 10 minutes or not wanting the windscreen to steam up every time you drive through a puddle. And for another thing, I think the Boxster is now what the 911 was before it became such a designer handbag, only better - honest, relatively straightforward, powerful enough yet decently light and nimble.
This week, after two years of ownership, the Boxster came up for its first service. This would be a pleasant experience. The reception area of my local Porsche garage is staffed by beautiful women who ply me with tea and biscuits and bring me ironed newspapers to read. And so, in preparation, I finally removed the owner's handbook from its wrapper, looking for that page they'd forget to stamp up.
"Congratulations on deciding on a new Boxster," it said, rather predictably.
This continued as blank verse:
"It embodies sportiness.
In every line.
In every curve.
In every way.
We are sure you will feel it.
Every hour, every day, every year.
Starting now."
Clearly, this was some cobblers that had accidentally made its way into the handbook from the libretto of a failed musical. So I turned to the service book, hoping to find something more concrete and comprehensible about oil capacities and tyre pressures.
"Please present this booklet to your Porsche Partner," it instructed.
Partner? Surely this is the most timid and patronising euphemism in the new lexicon of politically correct English, appearing on invitations from those who don't want to be seen to presume which end you're batting from. A small point, admittedly, but a 12-inch shell in the armoury of the Old Porsche Bores.
What if this were to get out? I'd never be able to show my face down the Up In Arms again.
Compare this with a Porsche I saw on a specialist's forecourt while making the radio programme.
It was a mint 1984 3.2 Carrera in full Thatcher's Children specification: Guards red paint, red carpets, pinstripe seats, whale-tail spoiler and front air-dam.
It was as evocative of its era as a pair of white court shoes, and I wouldn't be surprised if the opening line of its handbook read: "Congratulations on your recent bonus." That's how I think of Porsches in the olden days - unspeakably vulgar.
So I bought it.
In the 1980s, the Porsche 911 was a symbol of City excess and ludicrous bonuses. But is that such a bad thing?
I've never had much patience with people who want to live in the past, and especially not those who want to live in the past of Porsche
.
Yuppiemobile: Posche 911 (with body kit - the automotive equivalent of big hair and shoulder pads)
You may know the type I mean; I know several of them very well, since they number among my mates. It's not just that they lament the passing of air cooling and heater controls down by the handbrake. It's that they feel Porsche has betrayed itself, and its real customers.
They liked Porsche as a cult that ordinary people were not admitted to, when its motives, like Wernher von Braun's, were widely misunderstood.
Apparently, the rot started in the early 1980s, when Britain's financial institutions were rampant and anyone with a pair of braces went straight out and bought a 3.2 Carrera. The 911 stopped being a connoisseur's sports car and became a badge of new-money office"¦ yuppie"¦ stripey jacket"¦ delicatessen"¦ etc etc.
I've been making a radio programme that touches upon this subject, and apparently nothing has changed in the City. It's just that the bonuses are now so big that they're being spent on second homes in France, but since no one was ever carved up on a roundabout by a bright red des-res in the Burgundy region, we're no longer so indignant about it.
Anyway. A typical 1980s Porsche would often come to grief on a back road, when its new owner overdid it and was surprised to find his car reorienting itself to be more like his former Golf GTI, with the engine at the front.
When the bigger crash came on Black Monday, hundreds of the things came up for sale from the estates of people who had thrown themselves from the top of the NatWest tower. Probably. Values plummeted and, in the new age of caring and sharing, the 911 became as poignant a symbol of shattered idealism as a toppled statue of Lenin. Porsche had to reinvent itself.
Since then, the informal Old Porsche Club, which meets on a Friday night in pubs everywhere, has been griping about what went wrong with their favourite marque. Yawn. These are the very people who dismiss my Boxster as being "a bit gay".
This is defeatist nonsense. For a start, there's nothing gay about not wanting to go backwards through a hedge every 10 minutes or not wanting the windscreen to steam up every time you drive through a puddle. And for another thing, I think the Boxster is now what the 911 was before it became such a designer handbag, only better - honest, relatively straightforward, powerful enough yet decently light and nimble.
This week, after two years of ownership, the Boxster came up for its first service. This would be a pleasant experience. The reception area of my local Porsche garage is staffed by beautiful women who ply me with tea and biscuits and bring me ironed newspapers to read. And so, in preparation, I finally removed the owner's handbook from its wrapper, looking for that page they'd forget to stamp up.
"Congratulations on deciding on a new Boxster," it said, rather predictably.
This continued as blank verse:
"It embodies sportiness.
In every line.
In every curve.
In every way.
We are sure you will feel it.
Every hour, every day, every year.
Starting now."
Clearly, this was some cobblers that had accidentally made its way into the handbook from the libretto of a failed musical. So I turned to the service book, hoping to find something more concrete and comprehensible about oil capacities and tyre pressures.
"Please present this booklet to your Porsche Partner," it instructed.
Partner? Surely this is the most timid and patronising euphemism in the new lexicon of politically correct English, appearing on invitations from those who don't want to be seen to presume which end you're batting from. A small point, admittedly, but a 12-inch shell in the armoury of the Old Porsche Bores.
What if this were to get out? I'd never be able to show my face down the Up In Arms again.
Compare this with a Porsche I saw on a specialist's forecourt while making the radio programme.
It was a mint 1984 3.2 Carrera in full Thatcher's Children specification: Guards red paint, red carpets, pinstripe seats, whale-tail spoiler and front air-dam.
It was as evocative of its era as a pair of white court shoes, and I wouldn't be surprised if the opening line of its handbook read: "Congratulations on your recent bonus." That's how I think of Porsches in the olden days - unspeakably vulgar.
So I bought it.
]
