One Year with My 912: Expectation vs. Reality

When I bought my 1967 Porsche 912 and began the journey to restore it, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I knew I was a Car Guy—would I suddenly become a Porsche Guy? After 365 days, my thoughts are more concrete. 

While I had tinkered on other cars, I knew as much about working on vintage Porsches as I did about working on first-generation Mustangs—nothing. The 912 was the first major restoration project I had undertaken. I learned quickly, from forums or books, at cars and coffees, and on YouTube. (Bless these, each and every one.) If you’re just now joining me on this project, check out the stories that I wrote documenting my first days with the car I now call Wolfie, thanks to her ZWOLFEE vanity plate. (Zwölf means 12 in German.)

I fell in love with the Porsche marque as a wee girl. My father owned two 356 Speedsters and those charming, upside-down bathtubs inspired my lifelong love of cars. Since the 356 market occupies a space well beyond my pay grade, I looked for a 912, the more affordable, four-cylinder alternative to the 911. By a miracle, I found a work-in-progress car on Craigslist. It was halfbaked both literally (from the sun) and figuratively (from a very partial restoration) and in November of 2023 I pulled it out of a dirt lot behind someone’s house in the suburbs of Southern California.

Work began immediately to simply get the engine running. Once that happened, the car still wasn’t drivable. This was only the beginning of the adventure. Every weekend for months, Aaron Robinson (Hagerty editor-at-large) and I worked for hours on projects as they popped up. Welding needed to be done on the rusted front suspension pan, which had been welded over another rusted front suspension pan. A friend, who had skills I did not possess, replaced both. The pedal assembly was redone correctly, the crotchety Solex carbs were replaced by Webers, brakes, and shocks were swapped out for new components. We swapped out the 14-inch Fuchs—we never could figure out if they were authentic—for stock steelies and a set of Vredestein Sprint Classic tires.

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I pulled out the seats and most of the original sound-deadening material, which now looked more like matted rat hair, to make way for something more modern. I traced tin foil patterns for the SuperLite Dynamat that would line the floor of the cabin and the scant second row. I wanted to strike a balance between keeping weight down and being able to hear a conversation at speed.

I watched “How to do a 901 Interior” YouTube videos on repeat. If they had been on VHS, the sections of tape showing how to form the front pockets or how to pad the bump between the rear seats just right would have worn out. Does anyone else find it strange that when it comes to the toughest parts of any job, the ones where you’re desperate for details, the video host either ramps up the time-lapse or just cuts past those parts? “Okay, now that hard stuff is done, you can put it all back in,” they all seem to say. Just me? Maybe the YouTubers struggled with it, too.

Redoing the interior was more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Once the carpet was in, the remaining spiders that had once called the 912 home realized they were not part of the renovation and disappeared. (That, or the toxic glue that may or may not have been legal to use in California snuffed them out for good.) I’m a self-taught wannabe decorator at heart and, unlike the mechanical work, this was progress I could see daily, and it motivated me. When we put down the tools at night, the rear seat humps would have transformed into smooth curves, or the carpet on the transmission linkage cover would finally poof just right. It was satisfying.

Not that the interior work was stress-free, of course. Once the seats came back from the upholsterer, I had to add the door panels and parcel shelf. If “measure twice, cut once” is the standard for good upholstery, caution ensured I was way above average—I measured again, and again, and again. The interior kit from Sierra Madre had been on a massive Black Friday sale when I bought it, but each piece still cost hundreds of dollars. Each slice of the razor blade into the material became a cardiac moment.

Knuckles were scraped, progress got thwarted by other, more urgent projects, tempers flared between Robinson and me, and colorful language definitely got thrown about, but as the weeks turned into months, the car looked better and better. I happily sweltered in my Carhartt coveralls during June and July, because we were now on deadline. The goal was to drive the 912 from Los Angeles to Pebble Beach—a trip of about 300 miles—for Monterey Car Week, the annual extravaganza of all things automobile, with a calendar of events that attracts the best cars in the world. Talk about lofty expectations.

Less than a week out from Car Week, I remember driving the car home for the first time from Robinson’s garage. We’d done small test drives around his place to shake down any hidden issues and the 912 seemed fine. But as I gathered speed onto the 405 North heading from his South Bay home to mine—just over the Santa Monica Mountains from Hollywood, in the San Fernando Valley—I’d never been more afraid of driving a car. Even with its imperfect paint, I’d never owned a car worth more than this one. I’d never driven it more than a couple of miles, and Robinson had always been with me in case we needed to troubleshoot an unexpected issue.

The Porsche’s 90 horsepower didn’t exactly hustle me up the Sepulveda Pass, but by the time I had the Getty Museum in my tiny rearview mirror, I felt my shoulders crawl down from around my ears. My doubt in my ability to successfully work on cars was clearly alive and well, but we had done good work. I pulled into my garage, got out, and looked at the car, now in its forever home. I had to take it all in for a minute: Yes, this was my car, and yes, it did belong here. I decided that, like the presence of a newly adopted shelter dog, it might take time for reality to sink in.

Robinson and I vowed to start early for Monterey Bay. The 912 has no air conditioning, no radiator, and I didn’t feel like tempting fate amid the August heat in Southern California. With the sun not even up yet, I headed out. Robinson would start an hour and a half later, but since he was driving a 1970 Lamborghini Espada, a grand tourer with eight additional cylinders, I knew he would easily catch up.

With every mile I got braver, pushing the throttle further and watching the revs rise to a comfortable 3800 on the tach. When I say comfortable, I mean for the car, not for the driver. In spite of the Dynamat, holy smokes—it was loud. The fourth and final gear in a 912 is not super tall, and some compromised window seals on my car were whistling at tea-kettle pitch. I popped in my headphones and listened to a book. The car, however, was very much at its ease. At 70 miles per hour, the engine felt energetic but also relaxed. It conveyed its contentment with the staccato thwapping that I remembered so vividly from riding in the back of my mother’s 1970s VW Bugs. 

Wolfie’s reception in Monterey astounded me. Everyone fawned over the interior and loved the exterior patina just as it was. We were issued directives not to paint it. (Funny how people with pristine cars always tell you to keep yours rough.) Heads turned for my car in the same way mine had the first time I attended Car Week and spotted Aston Martins parked in the garage of a Motel Six.

“It’s just a 912,” I heard myself saying when someone gushed over my car. Is that a woman thing? Trying to diminish every accomplishment or accommodate other people by appearing more relatable? My response both shocked and saddened me. But it also made me realize that this car hadn’t changed me, as I had first wondered. I wasn’t suddenly Kelly McGillis in Top Gun chasing after Tom Cruise in her Speedster. Nor had I joined the ranks of social media Porsche girls with accounts solely focused on their cars. Neither the fictional nor the online characters were me. I hadn’t become a Porsche Guy—I was still a Car Guy.

My 912 continues to feel more and more like a reflection of me. It’s true, with solid bones, classically simple with no frills, pleasing to the eye but still rough around the edges. I remain cautious about some of the creaks and coughs we both make and, as it turns out, neither of us enjoys being super cold. Wolfie remains a work in progress, but just as she hasn’t changed me, I don’t intend to change her all that much, either. I just want to keep her running. Those seem like expectations I can manage.

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