If you know the owner, Richard, you know his cars and his story. So let’s skip ahead to his latest project and 1st place win at the concours during this year’s Porsche Parade in French Lick, Indiana. The car has 45K miles and it looks better than new. It should. Richard is obsessed with cleaning and he loves doing it. You basically take a car and scrub for it weeks, months, however long it takes. Then you wax, buff and polish. Then you look at old nuts, bolts and brackets and get them re-plated so they shine better than new. Then you go it again.
Several years ago, I completed the Porsche Club concours judge training in Dayton, Ohio. Technically, I could apprentice as a judge in these events, so I get it a little more than some. And my guess is some of you might be thinking you said concours event. But aren’t those are after market wheels? Yup. He competed in the “Concours Prep” category which is all about prep and not about originality. You can make any modifications you want to the car but it better be clean.
They offer three different levels of gets your hands dirty in Prep: Street, Touring, Full. In the street class, they only judge interior and exterior. It’s a great place for someone to compete with a daily driver. Then they add everything but undercarriage for Touring and Full is, well, Full. Competing at any level is a great way to learn what it takes to win on the lawn. To judge it, it takes a lot of white gloves and a willingness to stick ’em where the sun don’t shine.
Congrats Richard, well earned. He also had a family member enter his ’71 911T (at least I think it was a ’71) and it won as well, presumably in one of the other classes.
