A 40th Year Anniversary Car for My 50th Year!

Karl
Feb 2, 2024
2 min read

While long dark winters are generally pretty miserable, they do allow for more time in the garage, which meant that we could begin the process of stripping Number 17 down to see what we were up against.

I know many would be put off by the sorry state of the car, but always up for a project, for me it was the perfect opportunity to take the basic ingredients of a fantastic Porsche sports car and make it a real one-of-a-kind!

The loose plan was built on the shaky ground of “man maths” one broken front calliper means an opportunity for an upgrade… and as the body work needed repair why not colour change the whole car!

Porsche chose a special colour for the 40 Jahre which in 2003 had only previously ever been used on the Carrera GT. This darker colour, known as GT Silver was used on all 1963 of the 40 Jahre cars.

We explored various options for the paintwork from re-painting in the original colour, to a colour change wrap and to a complete painted colour change.

At all the UK and European Classic and Porsche events I’ve been to, it’s always the 50s and 60s pastel flat colours that catch our eye and they’re so popular right now on new paint to sample GT cars.

In the end it was a visit to Classics at the Castle in Halstead that swung it, seeing a 1957 356 in Fjord Green. The decision was made, Number 17 would be painted a different colour!

I must confess, I was still dubious about painting the car a different colour as I’m not aware of any other Porsche 40th in a different colour to GT silver.

As it turns out, I shouldn’t have worried.