Friday 12 February 2010

James Hunt’s 911 Carrera – will the real RS please stand up?


Although there can be no question of the pedigree of the Carrera RSRs featured in our recent post, it seems like there may have been about the 911 we linked-to for sale at Nick Whale Sport Cars, a car which was said to have been driven by James Hunt.

Since posting the link, there have been several stories in the media questioning the history of the green £365,000 1974 RSR. It seems the car may have not been the daily road car used by James Hunt, as per the dealer's sales notes, the misinformation having passed down the line in good faith to the garage via its previous owner (an easy mistake considering the vehicle was owned by Hunt’s team boss Lord Hesketh).

According to the Sunday Times Newspaper and others, James Hunt’s daily-drive in the mid Seventies was, in fact, a white Carrera 2.7 RS – a vehicle that was often photographed cruising the streets of Marbella (where Hunt lived in tax-exile), before it worked its way back to England in 1980. The 1973 911 was later bought by the father of Gary Taylor (pictured) for £7,000  from a north London garage.

In his interview with the Times, Taylor explained: “Back then, it was viewed as just another Porsche 911 and a seven-year-old one at that. Dad paid £7,000 and just as he was about to drive off the forecourt, the dealer casually mentioned that it had been owned by Hesketh and James Hunt.”

Taylor, having never questioned the provenance of NSD 298L, had its heritage later marked on the car itself  - getting James Hunt’s signature on the glove box door, penned less than a decade before his untimely demise in 1993.

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