"Why I built the world's lightest Porsche 911"

I'm on a busy street in Essex and I'm about to go in a pub that's not a pub anymore. It's now home to a well-known purveyor of Porsche and Porsche bits. And the reason why I've come here is to meet the guy Richard King, who was a massive inspiration to me back in the late 80s, 90s in modified Beetles and air-cooled VWs, but also because he's built the lightest Porsche 911 ever. Oh, welcome to the Late Break Show. This is Richard King, and this is a bit weird for me, Richard, because I grew up and I kind of got into cars by reading Volkswagen in the late 80s, early 90s. And I remember for years, your cars were on the cover, always featured, Karmann Gears, Targa Top Beetles. That was a wild era for custom stuff. And yet I've never met you and I've never been to Karmann Connection. I don't know why. But it's great to finally see you, because I know you migrated from sort of air-cooled VWs into Porsches early on. I remember that. I remember 356s and thinking, oh, that's a dream car for me. It still is, actually. So where did it all start? Well, with the Volkswagens, I was primarily into custom cars, believe it or not, sort of American, but then in smaller English versions of them. And then I was out in France, funnily enough, chopping a Mercury, and there were some American VW Trends magazines in the workshop. OK. And we started, I was with a friend of mine, Rick, and we started looking at them thinking, that'd be nice to do a little VW. So we went back and we both bought VWs. He bought a Bug. I bought a gear to get the motor out. And then I thought, oh, do you know what? I can't throw this gear away, even though it's rusty. So that was my first Volkswagen and I kept it. It became the yellow car. That's became that? OK. And this was in the 80s? Yes. Oh, yeah, just. Oh, really? Early 80s, like probably 81 or two. And then so through the 80s, the whole fluorescent paint, wild custom thing, and then into the more traditional kind of cowl look. Yeah. Seen as we know it now. Yeah. So the sort of resto cowl look first, and then it was the resto cowl. When people realise that if you do too much of them, you devalue them quite a lot. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we just we kept doing that. And then eventually sort of I've run out of steam with it personally. The scene changed, you know, you get older and you get a bit bored, to be honest. But yeah, basically anything from 1950 up to really probably 1980. You know, we short wheelbase 911s, long wheelbase 911s, big on. But then the 70s cars, late 70s, we're getting into big time now and we'll probably do a project soon. OK, show me the rest of the work, because I know you've got complete cars elsewhere. You've got bits here, full cars over there. Come through. And this is a pub, remember, or was a pub. Yeah, bit thirsty now. It's a great building. That's my workshop there. That's the 65 911, been waiting 32 years to finish that one. Seriously, a 65 911 that you've been working on for many decades. But it's yeah, it's all done by the show, all done by the paint job and assembly and just waiting to get other projects get in the way. Before we talk about this car in detail, because this is this is the main reason we came here today, because it's just such a bonkers eccentric project. Let's have a look in this shed here because you've got some of your other other Porsches. Bloody hell, look at this. The Carrera, yeah? Every home should have one. It's the car that made Porsche famous, really. It was certainly the engine that did. Yeah. At Le Mans and many races afterwards and continued into the 904. Is this yours? Yes. Yeah, had that quite a long time. Didn't restore it for a long time, but we restored it about four years ago. It's going to the Volkswagen show, funnily enough, to go back to my rooms. Is it? You're going to the Volkswagen show? Yeah, with that and with the lightweight. Brilliant, brilliant. I've got to say, still to this day, I think this is probably the best shaped car. So good. This is 58. That's a 58. Quite an interesting car. Right hand drive, supplied by AFN, supplied by Porsche to AFN, but went to Nigeria. It was meant to be owned by Kwame Nkrumah, the dictator, but I can't corroborate that. That was the story I heard from the man who imported it. The coolest coloured. Yeah, Delphi green, a lovely metallic option colour, obviously. It's an American spec, so it's got the markers on the front. But it's only done 18,000 miles, which is why we've got it. 18. And it hasn't done any more lately either. Sticking with Porsches. Only Porsche. Just, it's in my blood. When I was a kid, when I was, well, when I was three, my dad bought his first Porsche. So in 1960, I was four, a 356 Super 90 Coupe. And then he bought an SC Coupe in 63. I didn't know that you'd grown up around them. Yeah, but then he bought, he had a 911 Order, the 65, but didn't get it. So I've got one now to make up for it. But yes, and then he dropped out of cars completely. And then he got into other stuff and retired. And the rest isn't history because he never, I used to take him out sometimes. He's not with us now, but I used to take him out in the twin turbo and a Carrera 2S we had for a while. Show me around this incredible orange, holy thing. It's the holy thing. You might not see it at first because from a distance, it just looks like, a racy inspired 911, but there's so much more to it than that. How did it, how did this bloody thing start? The project started with an idea to build a 911 R replica. Okay. So I was inspired by 911 R because they made so few, they made for a specific purpose and they were fairly light. Although nowadays I think of them as fairly heavy. How heavy were they? I can't remember. They were eight, 10 kilos, I believe. And then LaRusse's one, he apparently bribed the mechanics at Porsche to get a kilo off and a kilo off and gave them a case of champagne for every kilo. Wow. At the end of the day, they were a bit boring. They just, they were built to do a job. And then I thought, if I build that, I'm going to sort of look at it and think, I've just copied what Porsche did like 50 years ago. Why, why would I do that? So I think I'll copy what Richie wants to do today. And the project commenced. I read that you'd basically bought quite a bad car to start with. A rolling shell, no engine, no gearbox. Exactly. A blank sheet, really. Yeah. You know, no fenders, no front. Oh, we did have front hood and fenders, but they were all late models. So nothing relevant to a short wheelbase, basically. Very little left that was short wheelbase. And then, so you thought an R is okay, but it's a bit formulaic. When the project was started, the R was still on my mind. So I did get, you know, the basic influence from the body shape and panels from the R. But then I didn't want to like get the exact R fenders. I could have, a friend of mine makes them in steel out in the States. And I didn't want to get the exact R this and that and just end up with a replica. So I then, it transformed into a one-off. And then I've talked to a few people and one of them made a comment about, oh, you know, how light could you build the car? And I said, well, maybe 720 kilos. And I was 810, saved 90 kilos. And someone made a bet with me that, you know, anything under 700 and they'd sort of pay some champagne bottles. I'm still waiting for that, but he can hear this. And so... And is it? What is it? Well, it's about 627 at the moment. Oh my gosh. So it's light, but it's going on a diet. It's going on another diet. Another diet. It's going on its first diet. So the first one was its incarnation. Now it goes on a proper diet for two reasons. One is to get it to ideally to 599 kilos. And two is to make the weight distribution better. So of that 30 kilo saving, 90% will be at the back of the car. So we have got some of the components and the whole plan is in place to do it. I looked up before we did, before we started the shoot, what's the lightest production Porsche that's new today? And it's a base model Boxster, which I think is 1380 kilos. Yeah. So how did you do it then? I mean, the whole thing is brilliant. Yeah. Talk to me about the front end first. I was inspired by Lotus. When the new guy came in, he wanted to build the Lotus lighter, more efficient, a bit faster. They had three warehouses and they took the cars to pieces. But the three premises is, do you need the component? Or, so you get rid of it. Or can you replace it with a lighter one? You replace it. Or can you lighten the existing one? They're the three premises. And I've approached every single part of this car with that basic outlook. And this is you working out of hours. This is your hobby, not your business. All my hobby, not the business. I've got two great mechanics here. I had a great metal worker, Lionel, at Lionel's Body Shop, helped me on all the fundamentals. Jeff Barry helped fitting all the five glass. A really good guy is helping on this project. You know, it's not a one man project. Andy and John, the mechanics, you know, couldn't do it without them. But we work as a team. Yeah. I don't care what people say. There's such a similarity between a Beetle and an old 911. Yeah. And people who deny that, I reckon, have never driven a Beetle. Yeah. Sounds nice. It's really, it's really good. Feels really good fun. Wow. We're staring at holes everywhere. I know. Usually holes in an old car mean rust. This is the opposite. I thought you meant holes in the front. Bloody bow on that, I like that. It's actually really nice. You can see all the way through into the car, isn't it? How suddenly 180 horsepower is so responsive. Because there's just no weight going on. So no soundproofing. No soundproofing. No. No grab handle. No. No seatbelts. No. Check. Yeah. It's like the ultimate delete option. So front end. Front end. All fiberglass. Okay, so wings. Yep. Bonnet. Yep. Is it glass screen? It's actually a Lexan race screen. Nice. A lot more expensive than the glass screen. I bet it is. There's a lot of complicated little things. So that base isn't off that wiper arm. Because there's a 924 rear hatch wiper motor there. Okay. And that spline doesn't fit a 911. So that is joined there. And is it a hatch motor because you just wanted one wiper? One wiper. It self cancels and it's light as a feather. Okay. But I did drill it a bit. You did you? And ground it. Okay. Front. Now obviously glass fiber kind of. Yeah. Standard spec bumper. Yeah. There's no indicators. No indicators. One tiny little horn off a moped. Is it on your side? Yeah. No, it's just your short side. Oh yeah. It's about the size of a 50 pence piece. And then the bumper irons you've made. What looks like aluminium. Aluminium drilled and anodized. Wow. Got to have a look under here. I've only had a quick look in. Quick look under here. Quite rare the old not black. Yeah. Found them at Mannheim swap mate in Germany. And obviously drilled out the brackets. Drilled the brackets. When you were, by the way, Richard, when you were drilling stuff out. Were you having to kind of look at structural rigidity? Yes, a lot. Because you didn't want the car to sort of start folding around. No, I really thought about every single aspect of it. And really did concentrate on what I wanted the car to do. What the functions of each component were. And how strong it had to be. Bearing in mind the amount of weight we'd lost. Yeah. So you've got to factor in. If you're like five eighths of the weight. And you've only designed it for two people and no luggage. You actually don't need half so much vent. You need about a quarter or third of the strength of an original component. Which of course are vastly over engineered. Otherwise they'd be, you know, prosecuted all the time or, you know, sued. Yeah. But. So fiberglass bonnet. It was so floppy. We had to put some bolster. Some braces in. Braces which worked pretty well. Standard hinges. Still drilled it. Still drilled. More for aesthetics. Obviously people say, oh, you see people get the wrong end of the stick in life. With a project like this. They say, oh, you know, well that was hardly worth doing. Because that's only like, you know, four ounces or a hundred grams or whatever. And I say, no. To do this project. If you're aiming for 595 kilos eventually. Or 627 now. You have to have no compromise. You count the grams. You compromise on the integrity. Don't compromise on the integrity. But you do have to really be resolute about lightening everything. And not thinking that bit doesn't matter. Yeah. Otherwise you don't reach that weight. So did you, you did pretty much unbolt a bracket. Weigh it. And then drill. And then weigh it. We did a lot of comparison weights. Did you? Yes. It's quite exciting doing that. It sort of eggs you on. Yeah. If you think, yeah, well, I've lost four kilos on that. But I could have lost five. Right. Take it back again. Out in the workshop and just see what we can do. This is the oldest form of sort of car lightening though, isn't it? Yes. And back in the 20s, you'd see chassis with extra holes. Yeah, definitely. So did you use, was it just hole saws? Or was it, you know, your stamping? No stamping, but a lot of hole saws. A lot of die grinders. Drills. And people say, oh, you must have used like 500 drill bits. No, I actually broke about four. Really? And they're all small ones. Yeah. But I sharpened probably 150 times, 200 times. Plastic race style, factory style tank. So you could have had that in a 911R or an ST, which was the successor to 911R. Yeah. Significantly lighter than a metal tank. Significantly lighter. Little aluminium. We had to hand form that because I couldn't buy any tubing, aluminium tubing that diameter. So a friend of mine rolled it up. Wow. Thinking about all the cars you've built over the years, the custom VWs and the sort of outlaw style Porsches and things, I suppose aesthetics is a big deal for you. You like your architecture. You like antiques. Yes. It has to kind of look right. Definitely. And, you know, I didn't change many things on this. I like to think I got 97% of it right. I changed the wheels for two reasons. One, the originals were too heavy and they were a bit boring set of folks, even though I'd like them, a bit boring. The interior mirror. I had a 68 911 one in there. I drilled it. I ground it. I made it a bit lighter. It looked quite nice. Yeah. And then I found that little Gogomobile one I had on the shelf in the shop and thought, well, it doesn't, it looks like a Porsche one, but it doesn't fit a Porsche. So I'll modify it. And it's smaller. That was one of the hardest things to drill. I bet it was. That's quite hard to drill. Imagine this with double the power reach. Bloody hell. You know what we were saying before about, like, the ultimate, like, classic car is a car which feels like it's going quick when it isn't necessarily going quick. Yeah. That's this. Yes. Yeah, this is a lot of fun. It's 60 miles an hour. Yeah, that is terrified. Yeah. How many hours have you spent on this car? Probably about 2,000 hours. Really? Like a whole year full time. Wow. The engine, the gearbox, the upholstery, you know, all the other people that did work. I love the steering wheel, it feels really good. You're right on in here. So this is only the third time you've been out in it? Yeah. Wow. I've just opened the door and it feels like a crisp packet in the wind. It's so light. It does feel light. You can feel how flimsy and, and this, just a piece of strap, simple, simple. Lighter than leather. Absolutely. Which most people use. Yeah. Aluminium door hinges. And then they went on a drilling diet. Oh my gosh, they did. And then we did quite a lot of work here on the door top. So this goes all the way around. Bloody hell, Richard. One screw's come loose there. Oh, better tighten that up before the rotor. This is what gives it away almost at the flash of an eye is the skeletal dashboard. Yeah. The naked trans tunnel. I mean, the tunnel is so skeletal. There's a lot of work and people don't realise as well. In a 356, the trans tunnel is flat like this and doesn't really give the car much strength. It just kind of stops like this. It stops the floor pan boinging around. Yes. And it is a place for all the controls to go. Yeah. The strength of these cars and the 356 is in the seals. So it's in the rocker. So basically, you've got to have a nice strong dashboard. This may not look strong, but we have strengthened it in fundamental places and we've de-seamed it. So then you go down into the A pillar, into the seal, up the B pillar and the roof and the rear suspension points and the front suspension points. They've all got to be tied together safely. Yeah. In this car, they are. I love the seats. Nice bit of corduroy. Seats, yeah. Handmade by, the fiberglass was made by Barry Martin. I made the seat frames. Gosh. Neil Tadman upholstered them beautifully. They look good. Good combination of orange and blue. Green even. The green, yeah. I'm colour-blind, but I'm not that bad. And so the outside colour is Continental Orange, Porsche colour. Yeah. 75, I think. Yeah. And the inside and underneath is Volkswagen Beige Grey. I had to get a bit of Volkswagen in. Didn't actually want a component, so I used a colour. Brilliant. Just noticed all the drilling around the roof. A lot of drilling in the roof. And the whole ethos was just, as well as making it light, to make it look quite pretty. And follow through with all the holes. Pedal box is amazing. Pedal box, yeah. I did at home a lot of work. The throttle pedal I made, so that's just a little bit of alley box section with a proprietary alley door hinge on the floor. And a little nylon bush. Our engineer, Colin, who helped a lot on this project, he turned up. So, simple. Yeah. And of course, the... The 917 style gear knob. 917. I mean, just looking at that gear lever, though. So the lever just looks like the standard gear lever with a few holes in it. It's actually shortened by about 40mm. It's ground down to make it thinner, and then it's drilled, and then it's zinc plated. Bloody hell. You're in so deep with this. Did you ever get to a point where you think, I think this is madness, I'm not sure I should carry on? I actually got more inspired as I went along and started getting edgier. So I did the opposite. I think I realised the lack of soundproofing when you could hear how loud the starter motor was. Yeah. Let alone the exhaust. Yeah, that kind of... It follows after market high gear runs, and it doesn't struggle, but it doesn't sound happy, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah. Also, it's easy to get these dogleg and not work out which gear you're in anyway sometimes. Yeah, because it's... There's not many cars with dogleg. No. And if you do get it wrong, like me, it doesn't bog down. I can remember driving at 9.12s and 9.11s, and they're 4-speed and 5-speed. I remember getting a 9.12 from the States. I drove them for about an hour before I realised it was a 5-speed. Really? An hour? I'll get this dialed in a bit more, and get it on its diet, and yeah. Take it on a track day? Definitely, when I do a kerb or if I can. I love it. I mean, it's bonkers. I mean, it kind of works. Yeah. I mean, it shouldn't really, but I love it. I mean, I never knew what it was going to drive like. I've had the 68 9.11, and it drove great. But this drive's totally different, but similar. Yeah. Totally different because of the extremes, but similar because it's still got the 9.11 suspension and gearbox, and the engine's totally different, and the... Still got the DNA. Actually, let's talk about the wheels, because I noticed them earlier on. Wheels, yes. Steel alloys, that's kind of my trademark. I've made about probably 25 sets up over the years for both Wide 5 and disc brake fittings. Okay. I got factory centres, steel, and aftermarket rims that I normally use. They look great. We turned down the rims on a lathe, and then the centres, we turned the centre out, milled the back, made the holes twice as big, and I ground and ground and ground. Twice as big? Twice as big. So basically, they're weighing in about 4.9 kilos, and someone on Instagram said, oh, but they'll never be as light as a gas burner, which is 4.5 kilos, I think. So I kept working on them. They weigh in at 4.3. Okay. Then we, of course, run them tubeless, and we put those Dunlop race tyres on, and we saved 20 kilos. Brilliant. Brand new, old stock, proper 911R lights. Are they real? Yeah. New, old stock? Found in Germany, yeah. Bloody hell. The rear bumper is actually secondhand, because I couldn't get one to fit, and this was off Mark Sumpter's two-litre race car, but they have to run steel, so he changed it all to steel panels. We've got the lovely deck lid. It was a really nice, straight deck lid made by TRE in the States. No extra trim on there. No extra trim there. Little 911R style, then drilled a little bit for the hinges. It's a great design, this. I mean, you lift it up, and this is how the factory designed it. That just leans on the back window. No stay, no... Brilliant. No rods. That's nice. What is this engine and transmission? Because it obviously didn't have one when you bought the car. So basically, I needed an engine, and I already had one without realising. We had a 914-6 that had a 67S motor, so that has an aluminium case and a counterweighted crank, two litre. The problem, I sent it off to my engine builder, Jez, at GCS Engineering, and he said, oh, I've got a customer who needs an aluminium case for a race engine. So we did a trade with some money. I ended up with a magnesium case. Oh. So that was lighter. So basically, it's a 1970 magnesium case. It's got the counterweighted crank. Probably a bit heavy with hindsight, but had a bit of work done on there. New 2.2 miler barrels. Rebuilt 40 Webbers. Yeah. So it's pretty good. Pair of S camshafts. So big valve heads later. Yeah. So it's not a mega powerful engine. It's about 180 horsepower. If it's 180 horsepower with 627 kilos. It works good. Later on, after the die-out, the next move is probably a more powerful engine. Not ridiculously powerful, but possibly 250. Got to say, the carb linkage is just something from a Swiss watch. It's amazing. We didn't use rubber. We used the foam that's out of a Type 4 Volkswagen. Oh, that's the only second Volkswagen part, isn't it? Yeah. I used to have a 412. OK, so that's aftermarket foam. Yes. It's the one that sometimes catches fire when there's a bit of petrol on it. I know, yeah. How we joke. There's no componentry here, which on most 911s and most of the 911 race cars, it's all there. I put it in the centre and I think that looks aesthetically a bit better. Obviously, weight distribution is towards the right, driver's on the left. Yeah, yeah. Little bit of help, maybe. But my, well, I think one of my favourite things in here, just little details, like the plastic carb tops, you know? Ah, because they're lighter. And then, obviously, we've modified the crossbar mount. But the actual engine mount that bolts on, that's not the factory steel one here. That is aluminium handmade. Right. So, basically, this car was an SC replica with big arches. And when we took them off, you had a big hole. So I had to buy two 69-73 rear wings, second-hand ones, but rust-free, and then cut that arch off because I wanted that 69-73 rear arch. Metal finish the whole car. There's not any filler in it. And you painted this car? Painted it myself. I couldn't trust anyone else to do it how I wanted. It's three coats of primer, blocked to within an inch of its life. And then three coats of orange. It's like 300 milliliters of orange, just quickly. There's not a lot of paint on it. Just dust it on. But it's just enough. It's just enough, isn't it? For it to not show through. Yeah. I feel like it's sort of been therapeutic, this whole project. What interests me about cars like this is that the creator, Richie King, he's had dozens and dozens of cars. And he kind of treats them as pieces of art. This is a silly idea. And it's become a bit of an obsession. But nevertheless, actually, a really, really interesting car. And just when you think you've seen every iteration of Porsche 911 going, someone brings out something a little bit more quirky. And that, I'm all for. I hope you've really enjoyed this episode of The Late Brake Show. If you haven't already subscribed, why not subscribe? If you support this channel through Patreon, thank you very much. And if you want to know more about that, you can get early access to videos and extra info, behind the scenes stuff. I will put a link in the description below. Cheers.