World’s first Porsche Classic Centre

29 November, 2015

More than 70 per cent of the vehicles ever produced by Porsche are still running today. Following the lead set by organizations such as Ferrari Classiche, Porsche intends to establish an international dealer and service network to provide optimum support for all classic Porsche sports cars.

While the establishment of an international dealer and service network comprising some 100 centres is expected to reach completion by 2018, on November 26, 2015 the Porsche Classic Centre Gelderland, just outside of Arnhem/Netherlands, opened to offer services for classic cars of all ages from Zuffenhausen. This is the first time that service, workshop, and sales exclusively for Porsche’s classic sports cars have been brought together under one roof. 

Porsche customers, and potential customers, can expect the complete range of Porsche classic services — these will not only include the supply of some 52,000 original spare parts, complete and partial overhauls but also repair and maintenance work and the sale of classic cars. 

At present, Porsche’s classic-focused network comprises 24 Porsche Classic Partners around the world — ten of them are in Germany, the others in Estonia, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Hungary, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. Locations where new centres are being developed include Australia, Belgium, Canada, and the USA. 

Performance art

Shelby’s targets were Superformance — a South African company that wanted to sell its versions of these cars in the US — and the US-based Factory Five. Their defence was that the name and shape of the Cobra car were abandoned when Shelby American ceased production of these particular models back in the 1960s.
Shelby countered with: “We spent millions of dollars creating the name and the car and winning the world championship. These knock-off-car guys don’t deserve the credit or the profit for what my team and Ford accomplished in the ’60s.”
Superformance painted an even bigger target on its back by also producing a version of Shelby’s Daytona coupé. Other cars in its production stable were Mk1 GT40 and 1962 Corvette Grand Sport replicas, but we’ll focus here on the Daytona.

Design accord

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.