TWIN PEAKS

Twin Peaks

Nicolas Popea talks about owning two of the fastest Porsches in the 996 generation.

Though a quiet corner of the French countryside might not seem the natural habitat to spot them in, Nicolas Popea’s cars represent parallel heights for Porsche’s 996 generation. Both carry an aura of speed and sharpness of design, broadly made for the same purpose but with very different approaches.

For Nicolas, it was the GT3 that came first, a Speed Yellow car from the year 2000 which he travelled 450km across the country to make a deal on. Adorned with the now iconic fried egg headlights, he admits that the car’s distinctive style won him over after seeing a few of them owned by some of his friends.

On the face of it, the Turbo looks far more conservatively specced, until you spot the Nephrite Green leather all over the interior, even extending to the specially ordered GT2-style bucket seats that were seldom fitted in period. That one is a 2003 car, bought by Nicolas after a second case of love at first sight (or “coup de coeurs” in French). Its original owner was a close collaborator with Porsche, someone to whom we’d guess the factory owed a few favours.

The two make up the perfect power duo of the early 2000s, two tools for very different driving styles. Ultimately, Nicolas still finds the most pleasure in the GT3. It’s been around longer, a car he’s had the chance to examine at length in his garage, honing and fixing to his exact liking as if training the perfect race horse.