A Class Act

Matt Denton shows us his fabulous 1963 Porsche 356which hes restored from top to bottom. He tells us all about this gorgeous German classic.

- Imran Malik

Welcome back to wheels, Matt!We last saw you over three years ago and back then you had a lovely 1967 KarmannGhia and a really cool, very low-mile 2001 Esprit V8. Do you still have them?

Thanks for inviting me back again! Not long after that article I relocated to Dallas, Texas for a while. Try as I might I couldn’t take either car with me, the Karmann Ghia had left the US on a salvage certificate so I couldn’t take it back there and I also couldn’t get them to accept the Esprit as a federalised car — even though it had the badges and letters from Lotus. Sadly I gave in on both and sold them.

The good news is they are both in good hands; the Ghia went back to Germany for a full restoration and the Lotus is in a collection in the UK. I often lament many of the cars I have sold, but those two hurt more than most.

We’re sorry to hear that, but, your awesome 356 has taken a bit of the sting away! It is simply gorgeous, where did you find this Porsche?

Believe it or not I found this one night on the Emirates Auction site. I didn’t really know how that worked, thinking it was like EBay, but obviously it’s not. My tactic of bidding late just didn’t work and I got bored of the tiny increments and four minute extensions and so I threw in a stupidly large bid to move things along. Naturally, I won!

Haha,we like your style! What condition was it in when you got it?

‘Never buy a car unseen’, they say, well they’re right. I didn’t bother viewing the car, but it looked good in the pictures. To be fair, it was all there and it was a nice red with beige interior but with some cheap and tatty carpet.