Drew Brown, from Danbury CT, is a Porsche 911 fan extraordinaire - he's owned over 35 911s, which he's used variously on the track and on the road. Despite his long association with all things 911 Drew considers himself lucky to have recently come across a Carrera 3.0 that had remained garaged, and unused, for the last eight years. Although the car was in excellent condition overall, and with just 88,000 miles on the clock, its (original) engine and LSD gearbox had been removed as part of a restoration project and were waiting on a shelf needing to be reunited with the car. The previous owner, an English race car mechanic, had simply run out of time to complete the project and Drew saw an excellent opportunity to aquire a thoroughbred 1970s Porsche Carrera that he could bring back to life and restore to pristine condition.

Carrera 3.0 Registry number 76 (chassis number 9116600830) was first registered in 1976 and is a genuine 'matching numbers' car. The car is very similar to Andrew's black coupe that is featured on our Projects pages, and it shares the Red Tartan interior trim so typical of the mid-1970s. Drew thinks the build date was around September 1975 (it has the early door panels without the round locking knob) which would make it an early example of the breed.

Drew's first job was to tackle the car's engine and gearbox. The engine is running J&E pistons matched to EBS ported and worked heads and cylinders, and 964 grind camshafts. A pair of SSI heat exchangers run out to a sport muffler and Drew is looking for a compression ratio of 9.7-1 after running a 1mm spacer (California Engines did a beautiful job line honing the cylinder heads and machining the bores).

The transmission (#915/44, with is factory LSD) presented few problems. The ring and pinion gears are all OK as are the dog teeth but Drew replaced 4 synchros. He notes the strange small bolt axles and boots (which he describes as very 2.7 Carrera) and the more he and his team get into the car, the more they realise how lucky they are to have found a Carrera 3.0 in such original condition thoughout.

The next job on the list was to get into the engine bay to give it a good clean and install a new sound blanket, new struts for the engine lid, a new fuel filter and new engine mounts along with some further detailing.

Finally the engine was re-united with the car's body and Drew, after removing the 8 years' old petrol from the car, fired up the Carrera 3 for the first time. It sounded great, like all C3s do when they fire up from cold. Drew was delighted and moved on to concentrate on the more detailed aspects of the restoration of the car.

The restoration was finally completed in late July 2008, with the car running and road-tested. Drew says that the project has been a lot of fun - and if you take a look at the photos you can see the superb attention to detail and quality of the work that Drew and his team put into the restoration

The Carrera 3.0 has now been added to the exclusive group of hot rods that make up Drew's 911 collection, a worthy addition indeed to any line-up of Zuffenhausen's finest.