GOING UP THE COUNTRY

Going up the Country

Roaring through the Yorkshire Dales in Lucas Fothergill’s exceptionally well backdated 911 3.2 Carrera.

Gentle rolling hills, ancient stone walls, shallow streams and idyllic little cottages peppered all over. It’s easy as you travel through the Yorkshire Dales to feel like you’ve slipped into lines written by Tolkien or William Wordsworth, among countless authors inspired by the pristine beauty of the Northern English countryside. Here be the lands unreachable by emails, Microsoft Teams and expense reports. All is silent, until you hear the low echo of Lucas Fothergill’s 1985 3.2 Carrera rising up the valley.

There’s more than a hint of the Carrera 2.7 RS about this car, the 911 that Lucas admits is the ultimate dream, but it’s the little refinements that come with the underpinnings of a later car that make it workable as a daily driver, which is exactly how it gets treated. He and his father rebuilt the car together, building on years of experience working with and racing Porsches together.

“We’ve had it three or four years now” says Lucas. “It stems from a car my dad had when he was younger, also a 3.2 Carrera. The dream for me was always this 2.7 RS look and I’m fascinated by the era that car lived in, and we were lucky enough to find a base that already had some backdated parts on it. The ducktail wasn’t there, but it had the front bumper, 16 inch Fuchs and a bit of everything really.

We stripped it back to bare metal for the respray so we could have it in the authentic, non-metallic black of a ’73 car, then I found some 15 inch Fuchs that I spent months researching to match to the perfect set of Avon tyres. Underneath it has the 915 gearbox, 964 cams and an LSD, so it’s a little bit fruity.”

Though an original 2.7 RS these days is considered much too precious to put at any risk, they were once the workhorse of the privateer racing scene. They competed everywhere from the dust of Greece to the peaty hills of Ireland, not a dissimilar environment to the roads of Yorkshire in fact, so the car feels right at home here.

Working out of a facility in Harrogate, Lucas’ family business is in rebuilding classic Land Rovers to spec. Though the main hall is packed with parts and customer cars in various states of completion, the back of the room is where things get interesting.

There’s a Cayman race car that Lucas and his father compete in together, there’s an RWB 993 with a few visual cues to the GT2 EVO that Lucas’ father used to race back in the 90s, and then there’s Lucas’ own Carrera 3.2, meticulously rebuilt in the after hours at this very facility.

A few different people lent their helping hands to the build, not least Lucas himself, who’s training as a tailor went to good use when detailing the interior. “We’ve got our wiring technician who taught me a little bit about how to install the speakers and the radio, we’ve got these black Cobra-style corduroy seats in it and I helped our trimmer out with the carpets and the door cards too.

"The dream for me was always this 2.7 RS look and I’m fascinated by the era that car lived in, and we were lucky enough to find a base that already had some backdated parts on it."

Roaring through the tight lanes, gravel roads and river crossings of the Yorkshire Dales makes for a very convincing reenactment of a mid-70s rally stage. For this photoshoot alone we covered hundreds of twisty miles with very little preparation, just a full tank of fuel and some pins on a map.

I’d love to say I’m skilled enough to be able to work on the bodywork and paint, but that’s something you really want to get right, so I left that to our specialist. I’ve been very lucky to be able to ask for help when I’m a little in too deep and to have all these facilities available too makes things much easier.”

It’s a beautifully comprehensive build, more so when you learn that it was his first project car. Roaring through the tight lanes, gravel roads and river crossings of the Yorkshire Dales makes for a very convincing reenactment of a mid-70s rally stage. For this photoshoot alone we covered hundreds of twisty miles with very little preparation, just a full tank of fuel and some pins on a map.

“There are no bad miles in the car” says Lucas, who woke up early the next morning to take the car on a casual 600 mile trip to the South Coast and back again. “With the car finished I want to finally enjoy it now. Maybe I’ll drive it to Le Mans, or to visit my mother where she’s moved to in the South of France. The plan is just to make memories in it and do loads of miles, which I’m really looking forward to.”