general info - pictures 1999 - pictures 2000 - pictures 2002 - pictures 2003 - pictures 2005

Meet my Speedster (and the other love of my life: Ingrid):

This is my dream come true. There is no other car in the world that can move me in such a way than my Speedster.

Although it 's a replica of the 1957 original, I like at as much or even more as the real thing. Not just because it 's my own car, but because it has more than the original: instead of a flat 4 beetle like engine, it has a genuine 911 flat 6.
Whoaah! The sound and power that this baby produces is in no way comparable to any street version 4 cylinder boxer.

What is it?

The car you see is a replica of a 1957 Porsche 356 A Speedster. The original was a car made especially for California, where it would have to compete with cheap convertibles of other brands. Therefore the 356 had been completely stripped down from all of its non essential components like heating or slide-in windows. Even the cover is only but a single layered cloth with a few iron bars, barely enough to get you home should it ever rain in California.

This fake-Speedster is a car based on a 27cm shortened VW Beetle chassis, with a steel body frame to support the polyester body.

There are several brands of replica Speedsters, mine is an Apal, a Belgian company that these days only creates exclusive bath tubs anymore. Visit their website http://www.apal-et-sunset.com/

What 's different from other Speedster replicas here is that it has a genuine 1970 Porsche 911T engine. It 's a 2.2 flat 6 with 2 triple Weber carburators and a custom made exhaust pipe. The exhaust pipe is custom, not so much to give it more power (it doesn 't) or the cool sound (oh yeah), but just because it doesn 't really fit into the back of a 356. Even then one has to be carefull when riding of driveways, because the engine is fitted so low that the exhaust pipe hits the ground now and then. You can see the exhaust pipe coming from underneath the car on the above picture. Below is a picture of the engine that 's been cramped in the back.

You 'll notice that the engine fan has been tilted forward 90°.It 's a weird modification, but it works (I recently heard this comes in kits from the USA). The belt is being twisted by two wheels mounted on the engine. When I first bought the car (it was already like this) I thought this system would never hold and I thought I had to replace the belt every couple of miles. As it turned out over the 7 years since I 've been driving it, this has never posed any problems.

Since the time this picture was taken, a lot of work has gone into engine refurbishing. A sumup of what 's been done over the last 2 years:

-carburator revision: in fact, the actual carbs were in such a badly worn out state, that the were replaced by others (same type Webers), but less worn out and in turn revised completely. For this, I had to wait a whole year before all spare parts were found. I was already glad I found somebody was able to repair/revise them (thank you Peter). Price: 1500€
-new air filters: the old foam caps are finally gone and replaced by decent K&N filters. It 's been quite hard to find these. But it looks nice now. I 'll post a pic of the engine later. Price: 500€
-new ignition: the Magneti Marelli from the 2.2T is replaced by an earlier Bosch for 2.0E and not with an original because of the price, lack of spare parts and difficulty to tune. This together with the revised carbs gives the most impressive tuneup result.
-new clutch: the old clutch was burned up and badly installed already long before I purchased the car. The car was still driveable, but in low rpm the torque of the engine made it slip, so you had to adjust your gas pedal and be gentle. Price: 700€
-completely new brakes (new disks, new shoes, new claws, new tubes), type 1973 VW Beetle. Price: around 400€
-new windshield (finally). Price: ONLY 200€! Regards to L&B Cars
-new screws and bolts, new fittings, lots of spark plugs for testing (and then throw away), various fluids, new battery, valve and camshaft tuning, carburator tuning + many many more work hours resulting in another 2200 €.
-revision of the alternator (don 't know the price yet, still in repair as of this writing)

So, apart from the new windshield, all improvements are invisible. The complete price of recent repairs/refurbishing come around 5500€ (or around 7500$). But finally, the car runs as it should, no more stottering, no more overheating, no more afterburning and fuel consumption has dropped by half from 25L/100km to 13/100km, sportively driving!!! I say that 's nice with current fuel prizes. And no more getting wet from unburned fuel when driving in reverse (or being the unlucky bastard right behind me ;-)). All weird sounds have gone, leaving only a long, healthy roaring ascending sound flat 6 sound when you pull up, making every hair on your body come to an upright position (almost even more than only hair :-D). I 'm heading for a wonderful summer at last (2004 and most of 2005 were nada)

People who visited this site earlier might remember I mentionned my gearbox. My 4th gear is still singing, but I 'm reassured that this is a normal and known phenomenom with 901 gearboxes. So if you own a 911 2.2T with a singing gearbox, you probably don 't need to worry.

So now the engine should produce it 's original 125Hp, more than enough for a plastic body on a Beetle chassis.

What 's left to do on it:

-the exhaust. It 's completely wrong: it easily touches the ground and is quite thin, so easily gets holes in it. But this will be another 2000€ if I want a stainless steel one. Maybe less for a normal one. But it will always have to be custommade.
-the wheels: I like Fuchs wheels like on this Speedster from the movie with Bruce Willis "The Kid"