Hammond & May
Discussion
Just read interview of Hammond & May in this month Posche Post. May surprisingly owns a 3.2 Carrera and a new Boxster, whereas Hammond onwns a 997C2.
Being BBC employees, they say they cannot take advantage of any discounts offered. Hammond revealed that although he favoured a white 997, he didn't want to announce 'the bloke off the telly' whenever he arrived anywhere.
Interesting article that shows that when two, diverse personality, car journos spent their own money, they went to the same shop.
Being BBC employees, they say they cannot take advantage of any discounts offered. Hammond revealed that although he favoured a white 997, he didn't want to announce 'the bloke off the telly' whenever he arrived anywhere.
Interesting article that shows that when two, diverse personality, car journos spent their own money, they went to the same shop.
Colin Goodwin of GT Purely Porsche was selling James May's Carrera 3.2 on his behalf about 8 to 9 months ago. I came very close to purchasing it about 6 to 7 months ago, but didn't in the end. It was a very tidy 3.2 (915 box)....I think it was non-sport...no spoiler which made it look attractive in my opinion, but I decided to hang on and purchased a 993 in the end.
wetwipe said:
surely you pointed out to him that he needed a hair cut?
I agree.
Hamster looked a bit emaciated, with good reason.
May looked like he could do with a hair cut and was a little paunchy. JC looked as if he'd put on a stone, his hair has receded somewhat since the summer, and desparately needed a trim.
Shirt outside the trousers, hmm, not good.
Edited by stuttgartmetal on Thursday 1st February 13:22
stuttgartmetal said:
wetwipe said:
surely you pointed out to him that he needed a hair cut?
I agree.
Hamster looked a bit emaciated, with good reason.
May looked like he could do with a hair cut and was a little paunchy. JC looked as if he'd put on a stone, his hair has receded somewhat since the summer, and desparately needed a trim.
Shirt outside the trousers, hmm, not good.
Edited by stuttgartmetal on Thursday 1st February 13:22
i am not surprised after spending 3 months last summer with Oz Clarke touring France and drinking wine. To me it looked like May was blotto for the entire trip - and his feat must be congratualted as anyone who can looked more pissed than Oz Clarke has got to have downed some.
James May, one of the presenters, has just bought an eighties 911.
So that's 2 out of 3 (Hammond has one as well). Maybe they can change Clarkson's mind?
James May is also a motoring columnist for the Daily Telegraph and here's his story about buying it:
Conventional wisdom says you should never by the first car that you see, writes James May. And yet...
In my life so far I have owned three homes, and in each case I bought the first one I looked at. This might seem a pretty blasé approach to the most onerous financial and administrative commitment a chap can ever undertake, but to me it makes complete sense. All homes these days have internal lavatories and electric light, so why waste time and effort looking at several when they are going to be essentially the same?
Providing everything works, the roof isn't falling off and it doesn't back on to a railway marshalling yard, you may as well move straight in and save yourself the misery of tramping around the neighbourhood with a witless estate agent.
People tell me that buying a house is life's most stressful event, but I have to say I've always found it incredibly easy. It's not really that different from buying a pair of trousers. If they fit, you have them, thereby freeing up your mind for something far more important, such as buying a sports car. This, obviously, is much harder.
I've been thinking for a while now that it's about time I had something a bit more fruity than the Bentley and the old Range Rover. These two remain utterly peerless - the Bentley peerlessly pompous and the Range Rover peerlessly practical - and I'm keeping them. But I'm now 42, and if I didn't want a sports car I wouldn't be a proper middle-aged bloke.
And I mean a proper, powerful and slightly hairy sports car, not a "sporty" saloon or hatchback, that is something else altogether, namely a normal saloon or hatchback with horrid trim and a terrible ride.
But anything new that I fancied - Porsche Boxster, BMW Z4, Honda S2000 - was too expensive, so I found myself driven once again into the fateful embrace of Classic Cars magazine with a budget of £16,000. And after a while, I discovered a problem.
It is this. If you decide you want, or need, to live in Lower Chodford, you look for a house in Lower Chodford. They're all going to be pretty close together. But if you decide, as I did, that a 1970s BMW 3·0 CSL would be an interesting car, you might have to travel hundreds of miles to look at one.
Travelling five miles to look at a house with an avocado bathroom suite is merely annoying, but driving 200 miles to look at a BMW that turns out to be an absolute snotter is infuriating. After a few such trips, I decided that I just couldn't be bothered to find a good CSL.
It's the same with old Alfa Giuliettas and Triumph Stags. What misty-eyed classic car enthusiasts describe as "totally original" is what estate agents describe as "benefiting from many period features", ie knackered.
I realised I would have to apply my house-buying technique to sports cars, and that meant buying an old Porsche 911. The 911 has always been well made, there are plenty of them around and there are independent dealerships specialising in them.
In fact, there was one not 15 miles from me, called 911 Virgin. You could look it up on the interweb at www.911virgin.com, but for God's sake don't add an "s" to "virgin" or you will end up on a deviant site featuring nudity and skateboards but no cars.
I fancied a 1980s 3·2-litre Carrera without any body kit or big spoilers. 911 Virgin had one of those in a discreet silver colour with blue leather seats, in super condition and with a rock-solid service history. So I went to look at it. It was good, so I decided to have it.
Obviously, there was some unseemly talk of money. This dealership offers two prices on each car. One is a trade price, at which you buy the car "as seen" with no comeback. This was £14,995. The other is the retail price, which includes a full service, rectification of any faults and a three-month warranty covering everything including normal wear and tear to clutch, gearbox and what have you. Then the price was £16,995.
Although I'm not strictly a 911 virgin, since I've driven dozens, I've never gone all the way and lived with one, so in the end I lost my bottle and went for the second option. But after the usual, arms-folded, forecourt stand-off I'd negotiated some new inner rear wheel arches and knocked the price down by £1,250.
Essentially, then, I'd walked in to a 911 shop and bought the first 911 I saw. It was easy. A few weeks ago I had to buy the ingredients for a Thai stir-fry. It took a lot longer.
• James May co-presents BBC Top Gear, which returns, like house price inflation, in the spring
So that's 2 out of 3 (Hammond has one as well). Maybe they can change Clarkson's mind?
James May is also a motoring columnist for the Daily Telegraph and here's his story about buying it:
Conventional wisdom says you should never by the first car that you see, writes James May. And yet...
In my life so far I have owned three homes, and in each case I bought the first one I looked at. This might seem a pretty blasé approach to the most onerous financial and administrative commitment a chap can ever undertake, but to me it makes complete sense. All homes these days have internal lavatories and electric light, so why waste time and effort looking at several when they are going to be essentially the same?
Providing everything works, the roof isn't falling off and it doesn't back on to a railway marshalling yard, you may as well move straight in and save yourself the misery of tramping around the neighbourhood with a witless estate agent.
People tell me that buying a house is life's most stressful event, but I have to say I've always found it incredibly easy. It's not really that different from buying a pair of trousers. If they fit, you have them, thereby freeing up your mind for something far more important, such as buying a sports car. This, obviously, is much harder.
I've been thinking for a while now that it's about time I had something a bit more fruity than the Bentley and the old Range Rover. These two remain utterly peerless - the Bentley peerlessly pompous and the Range Rover peerlessly practical - and I'm keeping them. But I'm now 42, and if I didn't want a sports car I wouldn't be a proper middle-aged bloke.
And I mean a proper, powerful and slightly hairy sports car, not a "sporty" saloon or hatchback, that is something else altogether, namely a normal saloon or hatchback with horrid trim and a terrible ride.
But anything new that I fancied - Porsche Boxster, BMW Z4, Honda S2000 - was too expensive, so I found myself driven once again into the fateful embrace of Classic Cars magazine with a budget of £16,000. And after a while, I discovered a problem.
It is this. If you decide you want, or need, to live in Lower Chodford, you look for a house in Lower Chodford. They're all going to be pretty close together. But if you decide, as I did, that a 1970s BMW 3·0 CSL would be an interesting car, you might have to travel hundreds of miles to look at one.
Travelling five miles to look at a house with an avocado bathroom suite is merely annoying, but driving 200 miles to look at a BMW that turns out to be an absolute snotter is infuriating. After a few such trips, I decided that I just couldn't be bothered to find a good CSL.
It's the same with old Alfa Giuliettas and Triumph Stags. What misty-eyed classic car enthusiasts describe as "totally original" is what estate agents describe as "benefiting from many period features", ie knackered.
I realised I would have to apply my house-buying technique to sports cars, and that meant buying an old Porsche 911. The 911 has always been well made, there are plenty of them around and there are independent dealerships specialising in them.
In fact, there was one not 15 miles from me, called 911 Virgin. You could look it up on the interweb at www.911virgin.com, but for God's sake don't add an "s" to "virgin" or you will end up on a deviant site featuring nudity and skateboards but no cars.
I fancied a 1980s 3·2-litre Carrera without any body kit or big spoilers. 911 Virgin had one of those in a discreet silver colour with blue leather seats, in super condition and with a rock-solid service history. So I went to look at it. It was good, so I decided to have it.
Obviously, there was some unseemly talk of money. This dealership offers two prices on each car. One is a trade price, at which you buy the car "as seen" with no comeback. This was £14,995. The other is the retail price, which includes a full service, rectification of any faults and a three-month warranty covering everything including normal wear and tear to clutch, gearbox and what have you. Then the price was £16,995.
Although I'm not strictly a 911 virgin, since I've driven dozens, I've never gone all the way and lived with one, so in the end I lost my bottle and went for the second option. But after the usual, arms-folded, forecourt stand-off I'd negotiated some new inner rear wheel arches and knocked the price down by £1,250.
Essentially, then, I'd walked in to a 911 shop and bought the first 911 I saw. It was easy. A few weeks ago I had to buy the ingredients for a Thai stir-fry. It took a lot longer.
• James May co-presents BBC Top Gear, which returns, like house price inflation, in the spring
James May compares '85 & '05 Carreras
Welcome to the most eagerly anticipated comparative road test of the past 20 years, a definitive distillation of two decades of inconclusive ramblings by some of the most boring people on earth. This test liberates one of the greatest debates of our times from the stagnant arena of the local pub and addresses it anew in the fresh, balanced and beer-free environment of the East Sussex lanes. Yes, folks, it's Porsche 911 Carrera versus Porsche 911 Carrera.
Mine's the proper one: James May's 1985 Porsche 911 Carrera (right) sits in the dubious company of the 2005 model
Pictured below left, in red (the dark, bloated dinosaur of a car if you're viewing this page in black and white), is the base-model 911 for 2005, the Carrera. On the right, in silver, emerging from the early-morning fog just as the gleaming brand Excalibur was held aloft in the mists of Avalon by the mystic, wonderful, samite-cloaked hand of Nimue, is my own car, the base-model 3.2-litre Carrera for 1985 whose purchase I described last week. So, which is best?
Twenty years separate the two cars, and 23 years separate my car from the original. Pedants could even make a case for a direct link with the Volkswagen of the 1930s, since the guts of the Beetle were used to create the post-war Porsche 356, whose basic layout inspired the 911. But already we have arrived at the nub of what put me off buying a 911 for so long, namely that 911 owners can be annoyingly nerdy.
But anyway, the 1985 car is significant because in many ways it represents the last hoorah of the original 911 design, being essentially the same shape, mechanically improved and more powerful, yet still bereft of power steering or any of the other driver aids that later served to banish the 911's reputation as a widowmaker. Shame.
And here is another curious link I have just thought of. The VW Beetle, the true forefather of the 911, is credited to Ferdinand Porsche (acting on Hitler's orders) but its design was copied - by which I mean stolen - from an air-cooled, rear-engined prototype created by Hans Ledwinka, design genius of the renowned Czech company Tatra.
Ledwinka also designed a rear-engined V8 monster called the T87, which was popular with German officers until the Führer forbade its use, such was the toll its fearsome handling traits exacted on his senior staff, and they had to make do with the Beetle-based Kubelwagen instead.
A generation later, as VW was ordered by the courts to pay a crippling amount of compensation to Tatra, the ghost of the betrayed Ledwinka emerged in Porsche's 911, and promptly started lobbing the owners into ditches again. Sorry.
Anyway, parking these two cars side-by-side demolishes any notion that the 911 is some sort of automotive immutable. Place any recent 911 next to its immediate predecessor and you will get a sense of its gentle evolution. But separate them by four generations, as we do here, and you can see that there is not a single component in common between the unadulterated 1980s thoroughbred and the lumpen approximation claiming to be its rightful heir in the 21st century.
Even the badge is different. The only constant in the equation is that the engine is still in the back, but at best that's just bloody-mindedness and at worst a pathetic attempt by Porsche to fake a spiritual relationship between the new 911 and the sort of car the company produced in its heyday (which, in case you hadn't yet realised, was 1985).
Toyota has attempted a similar stunt with the Corolla, claiming that the same car has been around for half a lifetime. No one is fooled there, and I'm not fooled here. Just because the new 911 feels, in essence, like the old one, and the engine makes the same sort of noise, and vibrates the viscera in the same way, and the front end still feels as lively as it ever did, doesn't mean there is any significant similarity between the peerless silver car and the tawdry appliance that is here spoiling your view of it.
Yes, they've mimicked the instrument design of the old car in the new one but, again, I'm not going to be swayed by mere tinsel. The heating and ventilation works perfectly in the 2005 car, which confirms that Porsche has no sense of its recent heritage.
Of course, the later car is (technically) faster and more stable, and has superior brakes, but these are hardly the attributes the connoisseur demands of a true sports car. We want the unalloyed pleasure of bowling along a B-road, seemingly propelled by just a handful of moving parts thumping away in the back somewhere, and at the mercy of wonky stoppers if it starts raining. We don't want to feel that we can climb into a Porsche and emerge unruffled in Monte Carlo. The best 911 ever, then, is the 1985 3.2 Carrera.
Curiously, I've just been reading C20th Cars by Hilton Holloway and Martin Buckley. It features a smattering of 911 variants, but not the one representing the apex of the model's development, which is the 3.2 Carrera of 1985. This book is therefore rubbish and not recommended.
• James May co-presents BBC Top Gear, which returns, like Porsche Cabrios, in the spring.
Welcome to the most eagerly anticipated comparative road test of the past 20 years, a definitive distillation of two decades of inconclusive ramblings by some of the most boring people on earth. This test liberates one of the greatest debates of our times from the stagnant arena of the local pub and addresses it anew in the fresh, balanced and beer-free environment of the East Sussex lanes. Yes, folks, it's Porsche 911 Carrera versus Porsche 911 Carrera.
Mine's the proper one: James May's 1985 Porsche 911 Carrera (right) sits in the dubious company of the 2005 model
Pictured below left, in red (the dark, bloated dinosaur of a car if you're viewing this page in black and white), is the base-model 911 for 2005, the Carrera. On the right, in silver, emerging from the early-morning fog just as the gleaming brand Excalibur was held aloft in the mists of Avalon by the mystic, wonderful, samite-cloaked hand of Nimue, is my own car, the base-model 3.2-litre Carrera for 1985 whose purchase I described last week. So, which is best?
Twenty years separate the two cars, and 23 years separate my car from the original. Pedants could even make a case for a direct link with the Volkswagen of the 1930s, since the guts of the Beetle were used to create the post-war Porsche 356, whose basic layout inspired the 911. But already we have arrived at the nub of what put me off buying a 911 for so long, namely that 911 owners can be annoyingly nerdy.
But anyway, the 1985 car is significant because in many ways it represents the last hoorah of the original 911 design, being essentially the same shape, mechanically improved and more powerful, yet still bereft of power steering or any of the other driver aids that later served to banish the 911's reputation as a widowmaker. Shame.
And here is another curious link I have just thought of. The VW Beetle, the true forefather of the 911, is credited to Ferdinand Porsche (acting on Hitler's orders) but its design was copied - by which I mean stolen - from an air-cooled, rear-engined prototype created by Hans Ledwinka, design genius of the renowned Czech company Tatra.
Ledwinka also designed a rear-engined V8 monster called the T87, which was popular with German officers until the Führer forbade its use, such was the toll its fearsome handling traits exacted on his senior staff, and they had to make do with the Beetle-based Kubelwagen instead.
A generation later, as VW was ordered by the courts to pay a crippling amount of compensation to Tatra, the ghost of the betrayed Ledwinka emerged in Porsche's 911, and promptly started lobbing the owners into ditches again. Sorry.
Anyway, parking these two cars side-by-side demolishes any notion that the 911 is some sort of automotive immutable. Place any recent 911 next to its immediate predecessor and you will get a sense of its gentle evolution. But separate them by four generations, as we do here, and you can see that there is not a single component in common between the unadulterated 1980s thoroughbred and the lumpen approximation claiming to be its rightful heir in the 21st century.
Even the badge is different. The only constant in the equation is that the engine is still in the back, but at best that's just bloody-mindedness and at worst a pathetic attempt by Porsche to fake a spiritual relationship between the new 911 and the sort of car the company produced in its heyday (which, in case you hadn't yet realised, was 1985).
Toyota has attempted a similar stunt with the Corolla, claiming that the same car has been around for half a lifetime. No one is fooled there, and I'm not fooled here. Just because the new 911 feels, in essence, like the old one, and the engine makes the same sort of noise, and vibrates the viscera in the same way, and the front end still feels as lively as it ever did, doesn't mean there is any significant similarity between the peerless silver car and the tawdry appliance that is here spoiling your view of it.
Yes, they've mimicked the instrument design of the old car in the new one but, again, I'm not going to be swayed by mere tinsel. The heating and ventilation works perfectly in the 2005 car, which confirms that Porsche has no sense of its recent heritage.
Of course, the later car is (technically) faster and more stable, and has superior brakes, but these are hardly the attributes the connoisseur demands of a true sports car. We want the unalloyed pleasure of bowling along a B-road, seemingly propelled by just a handful of moving parts thumping away in the back somewhere, and at the mercy of wonky stoppers if it starts raining. We don't want to feel that we can climb into a Porsche and emerge unruffled in Monte Carlo. The best 911 ever, then, is the 1985 3.2 Carrera.
Curiously, I've just been reading C20th Cars by Hilton Holloway and Martin Buckley. It features a smattering of 911 variants, but not the one representing the apex of the model's development, which is the 3.2 Carrera of 1985. This book is therefore rubbish and not recommended.
• James May co-presents BBC Top Gear, which returns, like Porsche Cabrios, in the spring.
Edited by 911mot on Thursday 1st February 18:43
crbox said:
Just read interview of Hammond & May in this month Posche Post. May surprisingly owns a 3.2 Carrera and a new Boxster, whereas Hammond onwns a 997C2.
Being BBC employees, they say they cannot take advantage of any discounts offered. Hammond revealed that although he favoured a white 997, he didn't want to announce 'the bloke off the telly' whenever he arrived anywhere.
Interesting article that shows that when two, diverse personality, car journos spent their own money, they went to the same shop.
Being BBC employees, they say they cannot take advantage of any discounts offered. Hammond revealed that although he favoured a white 997, he didn't want to announce 'the bloke off the telly' whenever he arrived anywhere.
Interesting article that shows that when two, diverse personality, car journos spent their own money, they went to the same shop.
Hammond used to own a very clean and original 928 in light blue, one of the early 4.5 litre cars with no spoilers - BYE 488T if memory serves. My girlfriend is a book designer and did a photo shoot with James May recently; apparently he was totally charming and when a large colour photo of my 928 S2 at Castle Combe "accidentally" fell out of her papers, he cheerfully autographed it with the message "great arse!" - presumably he meant the 928's Rubenesque bum, not my girlfriend's pert behind...
Joel
1985 928S2
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