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Hello, I'm just joining this site by recommendation of Troy. I'm looking to find my 1st Porsche Speedster replica. I've owned American muscle cars & Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  Always loved the look of the 1957 speedster. So here I am... Learning, looking and taking the steps needed to find the right one for me.

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If you haven't already, I would strongly suggest that you read this linked article end-to-end to get a crash course on these little cars and their eccentricities.   It may save you a lot of time, aggravation and money later on.  

(Plus, have you bought Troy's book; "How to negotiate and buy your first Speedster Replica while looking like you know what you're doing - Spring 2016 Edition" ?  Highly recommended by newbies and fish taco lovers the world over.)

Here's the article:

https://www.speedsterowners.com/pages/articles-ready

 

Paul, there was a similar question from another new forum member just a few days ago (actually, inquiries like yours are common here). I wrote an absolutely brilliant response to him, which is here if you're bored and have nothing better to do.

If you know Troy, you've already found a great source for information and guidance about these cars. As he'll tell you, these are not like most other cars - especially modern cars built by major manufacturers. They're not even like old Volkswagens because each one has been built by hand - either by a small shop or by some guy in his garage - and there are a million things that can vary from one car to the next.

As you can imagine, quality of parts and assembly varies all over the map, and at first you'll need someone who knows these cars to look one over for you if you're seeking a used one. 

If I were you, I'd find out what kind of beer Troy drinks, buy him a case of it, and take him out to his favorite Mexican restaurant.

And tell him to shelve the Outlaw for a while and get to work finding your car.

 

 

Hint:  Word on the forum is that Troy is partial to "Fish Tacos" - whatever-the-hell those are.  Although, Kathy and I were out on the Cape Cod "green-head, horse-fly sanctuary" and sand bar with the Gallos this past week, and I saw that, in one place near Hyannis they had "Lobster Tacos".  

I passed.  

If it ain't a real "Lobstah roll", I don't eat it.  God only knows what the hell those "Tourists" think they're getting.  

We're semi-regulars at this clam shack on the north shore of Cape Cod, little known by the "Tourists" and almost impossible to find, even if you know where it is, until one of the Boston TV stations did a cameo on the place.  NOW, you have to wait for 45 minutes just to place your order!!

Anyway, August 2016 issue of "Cooking Light" has a Boffo Fish Taco recipe (page 38) so you could invite the Sloan's over for Tilapia Tacos to discuss how you want him to find/build you your perfect Speedstah.  Don't miss the sweet pickle sauce.  We had them tonight - awesome! 

Good luck in your search!  Contact Theron!

And Happy Tacos!

 

Paul, fish tacos are not like most other main courses - especially modern entrees available in large, commercial restaurants. They're not even like ordinary tacos because each one has been built by hand - either in a small surf shack or by some guy in his kitchen - and there are a million things that can vary from one fish taco to the next.

As you can imagine, quality of ingredients and seasoning varies all over the map, and at first you'll need someone who knows fish tacos to look one over for you.

If I were you, I'd find out what kind of beer Troy drinks, buy him a case of it, and take him out to his favorite Mexican restaurant.

 

Yeah, I hear yah, but the tourists love it because they don't know real Cod or North Atlantic Whitefish.  There are only a few hundred N.A. Whitefish left, all trapped inland near Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, by a dam.  Those are the only ones left from populations in the 1700-1800's in the millions.  Same thing for Alewife fish - The early settlers (think original Pilgrims, here) saw Alewife fish so thick they thought that they could leave the ships and walk upon them.  Now, they're truly endangered, but several New England Universities are helping them to make a comeback (they were used as bait by the fishing industry).

Around heah, the fishing folks started to run out of "Designer" fish years ago, so they started pushing "Monk fish" as tasting "just like Lobster", which, in fact, they do, because they feed on bottom-living lobster, as well as all the other scum fish that sit on the bottom (the same place that whale poop ends up).  

There was no real market for Monk Fish until recently, but they got caught up in bottom-dragging nets (which are heading closer and closer to illegality almost daily) and were typically thrown back or used for bait (and they were probably already dead, when the nets were dragged up, anyway because most of the fish in bottom-dragging nets die of suffocation due to the crush of fish in them).  Now, they've become Haute-cuisine and they get $30+ per plate for them.  I don't eat Monk fish, either.

Oh, but did I mention that the US and Canada have not allowed fishing on George's Bank for the past fifteen or so years because they considered it over-fished and are trying to save it?  The US Coast Guard patrols that area and throws out the Russian and Japanese and Chinese factory-ships (it's well within our 200-mile limit).  This move has also side-lined hundreds of fishing boats in New England (the fishermen aren't happy) but we're beginning to see a robust return of those beloved North Atlantic fish we've all loved in the past.

Yes, Paul........A lot of our threads are like this.  Sorry for the drift.  

Last edited by Gordon Nichols

 

Gordon, shellfish are a lot like sausage - very tasty, but it's best not to know what goes into them.

West coast fisheries have been similarly decimated by over-fishing and pollution. Salmon fishing has been mostly banned for several years in California and Oregon - the first time such measures have been required in 160 years of record keeping. Cannery Row canned its last sardine in the 1950's, and has been packing in mainly tourists ever since.

As Tom Lehrer once said, "Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, but they don't last long if they try."

 

And here I thought "Cannery row" was just a bunch of bars serving beer.........

 

Naaahhh, I can't really say that.  I was, and still am, in awe of the descriptive imagery of John Steinbeck.  For some people, writing is like the sound of falling water.  For me, it's more like a thrown bucket - handle and all.

But then, every once in a great while, I come across someone who can really, really write and for a few short days, I am captivated.  Like Max Zimmer, or Burt Levy, or Andy Weir.

Or I go back and try to read Faulkner and just slog my way through it.

Gordon Nichols posted:

 

Or I go back and try to read Faulkner and just slog my way through it.

I just never could (at any point in my life) really get my head around Faulkner. 

So, from February, 1987 to July, 1989-- I lived off the grid in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. We caught rainwater and had a kerosene refrigerator and a wood-stove to cook on. Let just say, evenings were pretty quiet.

I was in my 20s, and had been a shop-head in high-school. I attended one morning of community college when I was 20, and decided I had made the right call when I was 17. The extent of my regular reading before I left was the Bible and Car and Driver magazine.

While there, I decided that I wanted to read the "classics", as defined by an English major friend, who shipped me a new book every week or so. I read probably 50 "big" books in the 2-1/2 years we were there.

My only Faulkner (until years later) was "the Sound and the Fury", which struck me as having been written by a genius... but one that struggled to bring it down to something that would stick. He had great lines ("The past is never dead. It's not even past."), but the stories never could pull me in. It always seemed like he was trying to show off. "My mother is a fish"? Really?

Shakespeare also did nothing for me-- I never could get past ye olde English, and the fact that he wrote plays (not narratives). If nothing else, this proves I'm a Cretan. 

I did, however, really, really like the Russians, and read pretty much everything Fyodor Dostoevsky ever wrote. Everybody talks about "the Brothers Karimozov", but "the Idiot" was a better book, at least in my ,mind. "Crime and Punishment" was better than either. 

When I ran out of Dostoevsky, I started on Tolstoy (who I like much better), and wondered what had taken me so long. Now there was a dude who could write-- I really wish I could read Russian, so I wouldn't have to rely on a translator, but I'm pretty awful with languages beside my native tongue. I started on "War and Peace" (pretty much just to say that I had) while I was bed-ridden with for a month Hepatitis from drinking water I shouldn't have. I had not expected to love the book, I was just hoping to get through it. I had to keep notes to keep track of the characters (and the diminutives of their names), but that guy understood human nature, and pretty much mashed my buttons at that point in my life. I didn't find "Anna Karenina" to be compelling until later on-- I guess couldn't conceive of people making bad choices that they knew were bad choices even while they were making them, in the same way that I couldn't conceive of people lighting a house on fire to watch it burn. But there are a lot of people like that, and 'ol Leo did a pretty bang-up job of getting inside their heads and getting it down on paper.

Victor Hugo did me in with "Les Miserables" (aside from 200 pages on the Battle of Waterloo). I had no idea it had been adapted into a play until I was home for a while, but for my money, it was the best novel I ever had the pleasure of reading.

The common thread here? All of these books had about 1000+ pages in itty-bitty typeface. I suppose this explains a lot about me. I'd like to be more Hemingway or Jack London-- but alas, I tend to ramble like a 19th century European.

Except that I can't write like any of them. Laboring over some 200 word post on a website is nothing at all like writing a good book. An author (as opposed to, say, Faulkner) hooks you early, and then lays a foundation and begins building. He's got to have the ability to tell a story and yet have each paragraph stand on its own as well crafted and insightful. All it takes is to be able to keep that up for a couple hundred pages. That's astounding to me. I'm just not even close to that good. There are a lot of bad authors, and people who think they are authors but are not. I don't want to join the legions of the hacks littering the stacks.

Regardless, aside from some pulp Jack Reacher-ish vacation books once a year: I'm pretty much back to the Bible and "Car and Driver" magazine (although of late, Sam Smith of "Road and Track" is pulling me in like nobody since Brock Yates has)

... and then there's this site. I read pretty much every post here. Guys like Bob Garrett and Mitch and Ed are razer sharp, and have a sense of humor I find really, really gratifying.

Keep it up guys, you're better than Faulkner. 

Last edited by Stan Galat

I am currently focused on the prose in Derale Performances' thome:

"Installation Instructions - Remote Filter Mount Part #13049"

After that it is back to Hemingway.

One of my 15 year old twins writes so well that he has been accused twice of plagiarism by teachers new to him who didn't believe he could write as well as he does. Other teachers who knew him came to the rescue and so his talent was affirmed.

He struggles, though, with being succinct and focused, a trait we all see in young guys of that age.

Therefore, a little summer reading of Hemingway with him. Nobody gets more out of fewer words than Hemingway I think.

We have had writers who were famous in their time in the bloodline over the last couple of centuries. Nathan Covington Brooks, in the 1850's wrote poetry so stilted in the formality of the times that I just have to shower after reading it.

He was a close friend of Edgar Allan Poe and Poe was on the way to visit Brooks when he died mysteriously a few blocks away from Brooks' house in Baltimore. Brooks led a renaissance man sort of life, never owned a Speedster, but he did write the definitive history of the Mexican-American War

A five times removed uncle named MacWatters wrote a then famous book in the 1850's about his exploits as a New York city detective entitled "Knots Untied". Pretty cool stuff if you can handle the flowery style. He also uncovered a scam to bilk Civil War veterans out of their retirement and spent some time with President Ulysses S. Grant straightening the mess out.

Maybe the  writing gene has skipped to my son Matthew. He wants to be a sports journalist. Go ahead.....ask him anything about basketball, college or pro.

I catch fish, work my crab traps, fiddle with the Speedster and try and keep the family on track, functional and happy. The gene really didn't emerge in my generation.

Stan has the gift.  

Last edited by Panhandle Bob
BobG posted:

Paul:

Two quick sources:

Der White's 

Wilhoit Auto restorations.

Google "1957 Porsche Speedster Color Charts"

Mine is a classic silver with oxblood or what Vintage Speedsters calls Wine Allante. The Allante part refers to the fact it's the vinyl and not leather.

20150621_120430Even easier:

http://derwhites356literature....orsche356Colors.html

http://cprclassic.com/referenc...arts/356porsche.html

http://convertibledregistry.co...cts_info_colors.html

http://willhoit-auto-restorati...56-4x8-paint-sample/

 

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