SAVE THE WHALES

Since a Californian startup began reimagining 15 years ago, the popularity of restomod Porsches has exploded. Does Singer still do it best? We'll let its latest-turbocharged - creation answer that one...

- TOM FORD

IF you were to pick a road on which to have a go in a classic Porsche 911 Turbo, it wouldn't be this one. Time has chewed hard on this landscape, leaving the edges of the B6278 ragged and cracked, cambers drooping, tumerous bumps the rule rather than the exception. It looks like the tarmac had a tantrum and left itself exhausted - any lack of suspension will get found out within metres. And let's face it, old 911 Turbos are bitey, famously unforgiving of inattention or a skills gap. It's enough to give you palpitations.

And that's not all. Although it seems appropriate that we're in a Californian car in Holliwood - the misplaced consonant equates to the North Pennines in the UK rather than America - it means weather changes like a mood, and sheep have the self preservation instincts of peculiarly woolly rocks. But as we begin, it turns peaceful. The days up here often get blown out by a scathingly cold wind that pours down the hillsides like an impending argument, and yet today we are gifted the orange and gold of summer. And it is good. As is the car. It's a Porsche 964 that's been 'reimagined' by Singer Vehicle Design in the US, stripped to its components and DNA rewritten into something else. But this time it's a homage to turbocharging, specifically the legendary 930 Turbo of the mid 1970s. Suspiciously good timing, since we're staring down the anniversarial barrel of half a century of turbocharged Porsches. But this isn't one of Singer's flashier daydreams like the DLS Turbo. It's a homage rather than a caricature. And if there's a more photogenic sports car right now, I'm not sure what it is.