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Snapshot: Super GT slant-nose Porsche 911

29 October, 2015

Twilight sessions are back at Hampton Downs, a good opportunity to get in a few hours of testing, or simply smash out some some after-work laps. While there on assignment for an upcoming issue of NZ Performance Car, the unmistakable growl of a very raw, naturally aspirated boxer engine had me scouring the pits for the source. 

What I found was slant-nose Porsche 911 (RSR replica), owned and driven by Alastair Russell. It’s been a few years between laps for the 911 (close to 12, Alastair tells me), but with the Porsche festival coming up in January, Alastair has blown off the cobwebs and “given the old girl a birthday”, and was out for a few shakedown laps.

Originally run in Super GT during the early 2000s, the slant-nose was still wearing its livery from its racing days at the pointy end of the field. What the grossly underpowered, naturally aspirated machine lacked in straight-line speed against the 900hp turbo cars of the era, it made up for in off-the-mark grip and corner speed. 

Under the large-winged boot hatch lies a built 3000cc with a stack of modern technology making it howl. Although the distributor remains, it’s now not required thanks to the MoTeC engine management and coil conversion. EFI is also now taking charge of the fuelling. Compression was once well above 11.1, but as Alastair puts it, “it’s an old girl and they are just trying to make it last”, so the freshly built block’s compression is well below the 10s.

The cockpit is 100 per cent a GT racer, with Kevlar Racetech seats and that extensive roll cage. The wheels are period-correct three-piece Simmon FR17s wrapped in Bridgestone Potenza semi-slicks. 

A MoTeC dash also takes the place of the gauges he would have once kept an eye on when chasing down the likes of ‘Racing Ray’ Williams. 

Out on track is where the 911 really looked its best. That slant front is, to me, one of the coolest-looking fronts in racing. Especially the sprint version, which is devoid of the headlights that would occupy the lower corners of the bumper. 

Sadly things didn’t go to plan for Alistair, with a seal blowing out of one of the throttle bodies, which was throwing off the tune. After using a bit of old-school tuning technique to diagnose, out came the laptop to crack into the MoTeC. 

Although its competitive-racing career was left behind years ago, its great to see such a beautiful car returning to the track, complete with battles scars from its life as a door-to-door warrior. Good luck to Alistair for getting the car ready for January, it’s going to be great to see all these old girls going at it one more time. 

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”