RESURRECTED

Resurrected

Lyn Woodward’s journey to pull a dusty Porsche 912 back from the brink.

The world of classic cars is an intimidating one to enter, fraught with so many traps and pitfalls that it’s a wonder sometimes how anyone gets started. When Lyn Woodward first went looking for a 912 to buy, she was almost immediately scammed on a fake car. The second one she went to see actually existed, but that’s about the kindest thing you could say about it. Car number three was where things started to show promise, but Lyn’s previous experience had primed her to be cautious.

“I get there and it’s a dirt lot in the back of the dude’s house. He said it wasn’t even his house, but his buddy’s. Great, red flags already. I tried to look at every part of the car I could, I had a friend on FaceTime checking it out with me. He’s saying ‘that’s the wrong bumper for the year’, stuff like that. I knew it was a solid car though, even just in the way the doors shut. Some people don’t believe in intuition, I do.”

The car was going to be a restoration project, which Lyn was already mentally prepared for. She spent the negotiation tallying up everything it would need and figuring out what she could afford. Money was exchanged, and the journey began.

“It’s been a year since then. It went on a truck the day I bought it, straight to my friend Aaron Robinson’s house. The idea started out as a full restoration. I wanted it painted in Aga Blue, I wanted a red interior. I was pretty specific about these things, but I knew I had to get it mechanically figured out first. I had to get it started, period. We pulled the plug on the sump and water came pouring out first, followed by a tiny bit of oil. Oh boy.

We ran some diesel fuel into it to clean things out, replaced the oil and sprayed a lot of starter fluid down the carbs. It was so parched from sitting for years but eventually it coughed, and the biggest explosion of dirt and rat shit came flying out of the tailpipe like a cartoon. I was in the car, Aaron was behind it, he said it looked like something that had been staged. It had trouble holding idle, but it ran.”

Though a relief to get it running, Lyn’s 912 was a long way from getting back on the road. The biggest problem was the front suspension, which was hanging on by a thread. Besides that, every little consumable had to be attended to, far from the effort of a single weekend.

“We worked at it for months. I would go to Aaron’s house every weekend and just chip away at it. Brakes, shocks, front wheel bearings, transmission linkage (which was a hot mess). Parts were not hard to come by. I’d order them on Sunday night, they’d usually get in by Wednesday and the following Saturday we’d be back at it again. It was just this constant but very consistent work.

We sent the car down to our friend in San Diego to help weld the suspension mountings. He said he’d do it in exchange for some new tires on his truck. What would have cost me a fortune anywhere else, he did in a week and a half. That’s what the car community is all about. You have these friends who say sure, I’ll do that, and we’d do the same for him. That’s what makes it so wonderful, since car people are such advocates for each other.

"We worked at it for months. I would go to Aaron’s house every weekend and just chip away at it."

It was only then that we could get working on the interior. I’d never done that before, it was a lot of youtube video watching as that carpet went in, lots of swearing and frustration. With some of that glue you can’t get it wrong the first time, there were definitely stressful moments.

"You just start to do and when you do, you learn and find the opportunities to overcome the mental blocks you may have had. That to me is what life it all about.”

It’s all been very satisfying though, honestly. I’ve learned so much, despite never having thought of myself as a mechanical person. In the same way I never thought I could be a writer because I did’t think I was smart enough. You just start to do and when you do, you learn and find the opportunities to overcome the mental blocks you may have had. That to me is what life it all about.”

More than half a year of work led up to the day the car could finally power itself off the driveway of Aaron’s house. Though it was technically a solid car to start with, you can never underestimate how much work goes into even a basic recommissioning for a car that’s been left to sit as long as this had. The car was ready in time for an inaugural trip to Monterey Car Week, but it was at Luftgekühlt 10 where it really had its first time in the sun.

“It was incredibly special. I didn’t walk around much, just stayed with the car and watched how people got so much joy out of it. I could never in a million years afford a 993 or that slant nose perfection over there, or the perfectly restored 356 with the paint so shiny it looks like it’s covered in tempered chocolate. But it was all equal at Luft, it didn’t feel as though there was a hierarchy.

Where Jeff Zwart placed the car was such a treat. I thought I would just be parked on a side road somewhere in a 912 corral, where everybody’s gonna walk by and be like ‘oh yeah, those don’t count’. But he put me right in front of this barn, on one of the main thoroughfares of the event. Everyone was going to walk right by the car. I said to Jeff ‘are you kidding me with this spot?’ And I’ll never forget this, he said ‘don’t worry about it, you’ve earned it.’ Hearing that from him was just really satisfying, like hearing your favourite teacher saying ‘you did good kid.’”