According to Jan Kalmar, the founder and owner of Danish restoration firm Kalmar Automotive, most Porsche cars tend to underdeliver on their owners’ heightened expectations. That’s us putting it mildly, mind you; he certainly didn’t hold back.
In his recent interview with Evo, Kalmar opined that an older Porsche feels “like a broken bone” on the road and required serious work to be drivable by a modern driver. Those who find themselves unable to believe that the car of their dreams takes years of getting used to often end up abandoning it in their garage, never to be driven again.
While most other restoration specialists we know tend to pick their words carefully speaking of classics, Kalmar offered a decidedly blunter perspective on the state of affairs with the pre-993-era Porsches. “When they buy the car they used to dream about, they drive it, and realize it’s a piece of shit,” he confided in the interview. “A Golf drives better, and the 911’s headlight costs the same as a Golf.”
But what is one to do with this information? According to the tuner, the times when drivers had to spend years studying their flawed sports car are gone. In our days of sophisticated ECUs and advanced chassis designs, automakers no longer have an excuse to deliver a car that handles poorly.
Same goes for restomod experts, like Kalmar Automotive. Founded around a decade ago, the company started its work on a project called the 7-97. It was originally envisioned with the Porsche 964 as the donor, but the tuner grew frustrated with the flaws of the older chassis and ended up moving the 964 bodywork onto a more robust 993 platform. Even then, it still required plenty of aerodynamic tweaking and track testing to be fully drivable.
Kalmar’s next big release, a hypercar known as the 9x9, is expected to set a sub-7-minute Nürburgring lap time when it debuts. It’s still unclear when that might happen, though.
