Ultimate Old 911 “Collection”

I was on a flight last week and happened to pull out an older issue of Total 911 magazine from a few months ago. I had read most of it, but still had a few articles to finish up. I got lost in a story I ended up re-reading called Ultimate Barn Find. These stories always appeal to my imagination and the “buried treasure” dreams you have as a kid.

The man, John Small, lives in Wyoming and houses his aged 911 collection in an old Ford dealership. It’s one of those serene “only in the movies” scenes based on the pictures and description in the magazine. You walk into an old building and sitting before you is a bunch of old, really cool cars. In this case, all 911s. In fact, in every direction is Porsche. Completed 911s ready to rumble down the road. Project cars in various states of restoration. Old daily drivers waiting for their turn at new life.

If that weren’t enough, there is a second floor of Porsche parts, body panels, deck lids, wheels, etc. all waiting to be fit to their appropriate car. In the background of the picture below, you can see a row of front fenders and quarter panels hanging on the wall like Porsche art.

John Small, as it turns out, is a real estate developer who wants to some day turn restoring these old cars into his daily job. At last count, he had 51 “complete” 911s. The inventory list in the magazine was pretty amazing, even if none of the cars are extremely rare.

Can you imagine having a place like that to go and tinker on the weekends? Talk about a whole new set of problems. Just trying to figure out which car to work on next has got to be a new source of “stress” in his life. Much less deciding whether to work on a car vs. taking something out for a drive.

I’m certainly no mechanic, nor am I a wealthy man, so I probably don’t need to worry about anything more than putting the dreaming aside long enough to get some work done. But I will say, if I had money to spare, this wouldn’t be a bad way to spend it. Be a heck of a father-son project!

Unfortunately I couldn’t find the article online nor any pictures of his collection aside from a couple of shots of cars it looks like John has posted for sale in the past on TheSamba.com. If you look closely at the pictures though, you can get a sense of what the line of cars looks like in his old Ford dealership.

It’s kind of funny to think about how many people drive by that old Ford dealership not having the slightest clue what’s inside those brick walls. Think about THAT on your drive home today.