You know all about Paris. Some people drive on the wrong side of the road, most of the people speak French and not many drive Citroens any more. Well, maybe like in Australia, beret-wearing, Gauloises-smoking architects still do, but the rest drive Renault Clios and ride bicycles without helmets.
Anyway I was there last weekend so you didn’t have to put up with all that. Yup, toiling away at the Mondial de l’Automobile and Coys Auction. The world’s largest motor show’s media relations team clearly learnt their skills from the Germans during the four years of the occupation, and apart from that didn’t believe there was an auction and had never heard of Coys, which may or may not be a rude word in French as I pronounced it. Once you located the Coys’ corner in one of the million sheds making up the Paris Expo site it was a pretty rum affair, except there were no free drinks, seating was at a premium and most of the auction was conducted in French by an Inspector Closeau lookalike, which meant I nearly bought Liberace’s gold painted 1931 Cadillac drop-head coupe for $143,000 rather than bidding on the 1989 Porsche 911 Turbo S Sonauto. Estimates for this one of 10 really interesting Porker was $880,000 but none of us got close enough and it was passed in.
As we’ve said, old Porsches are the new old Ferraris. Coys sold two 356s for around $280,000 each and the night before at the La Zoute resort, Bonhams hammered down a 2016 Porsche 911R type 991 for $705,000, and five-time Le Mans winner Derek Bell’s one of three existing 1987 928 prototype club sports for $370,000.
OK. Now you’re really confused, let me explain. With the launch of the new model in 2015 Porsche made turbo power standard through the range. For tragics like me this was a bitter blow as the Turbo had been the highest expression (and price) of the marque.
So to make us all feel better, a few months back the factory said it would build 991 street racers, the 911R. With 370kw and 330km/h, this lightweight manual is actually faster out of the blocks that the track-designed GT3 RS. A quick resale here for a Swedish owner.
In 1989 Porsche made a limited run of 10 Porsche 911 Turbo Ss for French dealer Sonauto to mark the end of the 930 Turbo. The 10 were hand-picked from the production line, upgraded to S specification, they threw in a Pioneer CD player and charged you 40 per cent more than for the ordinary Turbo. I think Coys passed one of these in 10 years ago.
Back at the Paris of the west, Bathurst, last weekend the 1000 showed up the farce of having a gentlemen’s rule in a professional sport. Basically it says that if like Jamie Whincup, you hit another car you can confess, do penance and be forgiven by letting the car you hit move ahead of you. Whincup tried to pass Scott McLaughlin’s Volvo forcing him to drive along the grass for a while. When Scott had enough of the grass he came back on and made contact with Garth Tander’s Holden. Garth and Scott both found the wall and were out of the race. Jamie was given a 15 second penalty and Will Davidson won. “I feel like we tried hard and got the till robbed at the end of the day,” Jamie said.
Lewis Hamilton was also pretty upset when he walked out of a press conference after the Japanese Grand Prix. After a crook start Lou drove a great race to come in third behind Rosberg and Verstappen. I still think he will win the championship but let’s see what happens in the US Grand Prix next week. He walked out of the post race media chat because some journalists had given him a hard time about the fact he drew rabbit ears on the Toro Rosso driver Carlos Sainz on snapchat during the pre-race conference. And who said F1 champions weren’t mature sophisticated renaissance men?
And it was all go and record attendance in Perth for the CAMS state council meeting.
Despite press reports chair Nick Rahimtulla said a proposal to extend the terms of the chair and deputy chair of the WA State Council was never intended to be a vote but a discussion, and that the CAMS board was always going to make the decision anyway. So the terms have not been extended.
Nick will be the new elected director for WA on the CAMS Board on January 1 if the board accepts his nomination. This is a shortened version of the original article. To read the rest go to: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/motoring/chaos-its-french-for-auction-mondial-de-lautomobile/news-story/fa2159154e0630e2c130362c458b4876
