Several years ago, at 4 a.m. somewhere at a Starbucks Coffee in Newport Beach, California I met a Lady in Red. Still struggling with the Jetlag, I met her gaze. With her tempting eyes and her sporty shape, I got lost. It was love at first sight. No kidding!
Everything on her was just perfect and developed for one purpose: Racing. The Lady in Red is the famous Porsche 911 Carrera from Emotion Engineering.
In a kind of way, the Porsche and my brainstem talked to each other. Then my friend Chris Marion tipped my back, handed me a coffee and introduced me to Joey. Chris, you can ride with Joey. You will love it, my Bavarian Weirdo!
Joey Seely, Engineer, and owner of Emotion Engineering start building this 911 some years ago. He stripped down the streetcar to his pure shell and rebuilt it as a street legal Race Car.
So, I squeezed myself in the Recaro buckets and were looking for my helmet. No helmet needed. We only traveled from LA to Vegas with a race car. Four hours of pure joy. No rental car. Jackpot!
In this Porsche, you will not find any fancy ICE installations or hard parking club sports roll cage. This race breed 911 doesn’t need any toys. The only stuff it needs was carbon fiber. To get faster add lightness – this ultimate rule of motorsports from the Gentleman of Racing Colin Chapman celebrated Joey to perfection.
He even sealed the factory installed sunroof. Hood, bumpers, and decklid are also made of superlight carbon fiber and Kevlar. The stripped interior is now home of a welded motorsport roll cage and the cage is even linked with the front strut towers for a stiffer chassis. And all the weak points of the former streetcar are gone. Because of racing!
If you take your car serious you should always take a closer look at the suspension and the wheels. First of all, wheels are making cars. Period. In Joey’s case he tried in the last couple of years so many different rims and at the end of the day he always comes back to the real stuff for race cars.
Under the hand-radiused and flared fenders sitting a set of BBS E88 Motorsport goodies in 18” embraced from a good amount of rubber, semi-slick rubber. All controlled by an 3-way motorsports KW Competition suspension.
Cause together with the suspension and brakes your wheels and tires are the only things that will guarantee you the freedom of speed if you have a serious engine under your bonnet.
And Joey builds a pretty damned seriously air-cooled engine. The base is a 3.6 natural aspirated high-revving Carrera RS America engine. Rebuilt and modified with the finest parts of motorsport hardware like a crank from the Porsche 911 (996) GT3 Cup Race Car, custom forged Carrillo rods, CP pistons, ported heads, titanium retainers and springs, modified and strengthen intake and exhaust valves, custom programmed AEM engine management system and all the goodies making an air-cooled natural aspirated race engine.
Joey knows his art. The engine is a pure experience. Damn, I want to turn back time.
On the highway, Joey told me his history as he worked in motorsports on Le Mans class-winning GT3 RSR and he even got his hands on Jeff Zwart’s Turbo Cup car from Pikes Peak International Hill Climb! Joey is one of KW suspensions specialties dealers and an expert in suspension.
So his Porsche is the perfect machine for racing through the Californian Canyon Roads and even on Race Tracks. A pity Joey and his Porsche are based in the USA and not in the homeland of the Autobahn and the Nurburgring Nordschleife.
Back home in Germany, I guess Joey, his Porsche and I would be every month on the Nordschleife, the Hockenheim Ring or we would shred over my favorite Bavarian Mountain Roads and hunting my Audi Quattro friends. Built for only one purpose: Fun. This 911 is the pure experience for every air-cooled Porsche enthusiast…
Images Eddy Paesschezoone
