THE FULL MONTE

Buy your dream 911. Drive it on the roads that created the legend 60 years ago. Pinch yourself, a lot

- Story: Piers Ward

DESCRIBING HIS HISTORY WITH THE Porsche 911, there is a danger Romain Dumas might be getting a bit misty-eyed. 'When I was a kid, I saw a 911 on a rally. I saw a 911 at Le Mans. I saw a 911 even in a rallycross, and a 911 in a hill-climb. This kind of car was capable of everything and could perform everywhere.'

This is the same Romain Dumas who has won Le Mans and who has driven, raced, rallied, and hill-climbed the 911 in more places than probably anyone else on earth. GT3 on the ice of the Monte Carlo rally? Tick. Driving one to 6,734 metres above sea level? Tick. Le Mans, Nürburgring, Spa, Pikes Peak. Been there, won that.

Over the 20-plus years of his career, it is always the 911 he keeps coming back to. For Romain, read Piers Ward: less French, definitely less talented but just as in love with this weird, rear-engined paradox of a sports car. On any sensible level, it is not a car you should covet but still it gets into your soul; Dumas talks of it being 'authentic'.

This is why I find myself in a Porsche centre in Newport on a wet day in January, staring down the barrel of blowing the vast majority of our family savings on a Meteor Grey 997.1 Carrera 4S. What would Romain do?

I have wanted a 911 for decades, apart from a momentary blip around the time of the 1997 British Motor Show when TVR unveiled the Speed 12. Blame teenage hormones. But the Porsche has consistently been my dream car for years: when my children pipe up with 'I want' this or 'I want' that, my standard response has always been: 'Well, I want a 911—but that's not going to happen.'

Bang goes that argument. The dealer hovers, anxious to seal the deal before the weekend, while I pretend to be distracted by a Cayman GT4. He shuffles closer, to the point where I can no longer ignore him. Crunch time. We shake hands and I nervously totter off: keen to call mates and brag; less keen to call home and explain my man maths.