The Best Stories from a Year of the Petrolhead Corner

Just as we do with watches at the end of the year, we also take a look back at a year of Petrolhead Corner goodness. Our weekly automotive stories are always a joy to write, and I hope you enjoy them, too. This year, we had the good fortune of not only writing about cars and motorcycles but getting to experience some of them for ourselves as well. Thanks to the good people of Porsche Design and Lebois & Co we got to play around with a Porsche 911 Dakar and an Indian Sport Chief, two incredible machines sure to put a smile on anyone’s face who’s into this sort of stuff. Naturally, those two stories are the top of our fuel-injected highlights for this year, but there was more than that to be discovered over the past 12 months or so. With that in mind, here’s our rundown of the Best Stories from The Petrolhead Corner.

Porsche 911 Dakar x Porsche Design Chronograph 1

For me, this one was an absolute high point of the year. I am a huge fan of the Porsche 911, so getting the keys to one for a week was amazing. And we had the luck of getting to mess about with one of the most captivating 911s in recent years, the 911 Dakar! Thanks to its beefed-up suspension, increased ride height and stubby Pirelli Scorpion off-road tyres, it can handle any terrain without breaking a sweat. But it’s not a car for the shy, especially in that Sage Green tone and that roof rack with built-in high-beam LED lights and tools on top of it! You wouldn’t believe the comments you get on this when you pull into a petrol station or park it at your local supermarket!

Anyway, we had a blast unleashing all of the 911 Dakar’s 480bhp on the road, but even more so off it! Being based on the 911 GTS of the 992.1 generation, it’s no slouch to begin with, and even off-road, it’s mighty impressive how good this thing grips. You can launch hard, and the car just seems to find traction instantly, thanks to Porsche’s four-wheel drive system, of course. The production run of 2,500 cars is long gone and prices on the secondary market have doubled since it was introduced, but it’s one of the coolest 911s we’ve ever seen, period! You can read the full story on the Porsche 911 Dakar and the Porsche Design chronograph to match, by the way, right here.

Indian Motorcycles x Lebois & Co

Next up is another ‘real world’ experience but on two wheels! Our friends from Lebois & Co partnered with Indian Motorcycles Benelux for a special edition of the Heritage Chronograph, with a cream and red dial inspired by the vintage logos and colours of the famous American motorcycle manufacturer. So when Lebois & Co’s owner Tom van Wijlick jokingly said to me that it would be cool to try one out while also trying out an Indian, I jumped at the chance! And boy, what a thrilling ride that was! I was used to driving a V-Twin for myself, but one of a very different kind than this menacingly dark Sport Chief!

The Sport Chief has all the traits of a classical American motorcycle but with modern tech inside. The 1890cc engine puts out a modest 90 horsepower, but it’s the 162nm of torque that gets you! Even in docile driving modes, you feel the engine just wants to pull, and pull, and pull. Put it in Sport Mode, however, and the bike becomes a very different animal altogether! Everything is sharpened and tightened for an even more aggressive ride, and you have to have your wits about you not to let the bike run wild with you! I was warned about the bike’s temperament beforehand, especially in Sport Mode, but I can honestly say it’s a breeze in cross-town traffic and a leisurely cruiser out on the open road. But if you want, it can be a proper hooligan! Check out the full story with the Indian Sport Chief and the Lebois & Co Heritage Chronograph right here.

The Rudi Klein Junkyard Auction

Throughout the year, I keep an eye on the automotive auction scene to see what’s going on, and every year, there are a couple of amazingly cool cars to discover. From time to time, I share stories about something very special, very rare, or very expensive. This year, though, the auction highlight when it came to cars (for me, at least) was the Rudi Klein Junkyard auction! It wasn’t about a pristine one-off with immaculate history and pedigree demanding record-breaking prices, but a truly bizarre collection of parts and cars collected by Rudi Klein over several decades, and it showed!

This junkyard owner, starting out as a butcher after immigrating to the US, amassed an incredible number of car parts from some of the rarest sports cars around. We’re talking some absolute legends here, including seemingly every type of Porsche 356 and 911 ever made, a number of Lamborghini Miura’s, several Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullmans, and even an ultra-rare alloy-bodied Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing. It seemed that the list of parts and cars was endless, ranging from simple things like steering wheels to carburettors, body panels, windows, transmissions, complete engines, and so on. You can revisit the story of Rudi Klein and the auction of his estate right here.

The Maturo Lancia 037

The madness of Group B rallying has always been one of my favourite motorsport categories. The sheer in speed, determination and skill portrayed by the drivers back then still leaves me in awe. When it comes to cars, one of the obvious highlights is the Lancia 037, the last rear-wheel drive car ever to win the World Rally Championship. And low and behold, inch-perfect continuation cars are being built right here, in my home country of the Netherlands, by Maturo Competition Cars!

Using the original cars as a blueprint, Maturo-built Lancia 037s (or Delta Integrale’s, for that matter) are built to factory spec but better, safer and more reliable. In many cases, parts had to be reverse-engineered as you can’t simply walk into a parts shop and buy stuff off the shelf. The result is awe-inspiring, to be honest, and each car is eligible for FIA-sanctioned historic rally events. The Maturo 037 is also a bit faster than the original car was, as the team has made some improvements to the Lampredi engine that is tucked away underneath the rear clamshell. More on these incredible continuation cars, even though not built by Lancia themselves, is right here!

The Don & Bill Whittington Story

I must admit that I love a good “Bad Guy” story every now and then, even though sometimes the actions are more than a bit shady. Take, for instance, the story about Don & Bill Whittington, the Le Mans 24 Hours winning brothers from the US. Don and Bill were quite capable racing drivers who managed to work their way into the seat of a Kremer Porsche 935 K3 and win one of the most gruelling endurance races on the calendar. The way they pulled that little stunt off, though, is not exactly the proper way to conduct business, and that makes for a great piece of history decades on!

When talking to Erwin Kremer, owner of the Kremer Racing team, leading up to the 1979 Le Mans 24 Hours event, Don and Bill were told that pro driver Klaus Ludwig would be the starting driver. Not content with that, the two brothers asked what it would take to go out first instead. Kremer told them they could buy the car for USD 200,000. The story goes that just minutes later, the two showed up with a duffle bag full of cash. A couple of years later, the brothers were accused and convicted of smuggling drugs and using the money to fund their racing adventures, including buying the Kremer car. Honestly, it reads like an action comedy! Nevertheless, the 1979 Le Mans race would go down in history not just because of the Whittington brothers but also because it was the first race-win for a rear-engined car (engine behind the rear axle)! The full story on Don & Bill Whittington can be read right here!

Editorial Note: The images of the Porsche 911 Dakar and Indian Sport Chief are our own. The Rudi Klein Junkyard Auction images are sourced from RM Sotheby’s. The images of the Maturo Lancia 037 are sourced from Maturo Competition Cars. The images of the Kremer Porsche 935 K3 are sourced from Road & Track.