The Lowdown:

Being Porsche specialists Olly thought it would be rude not to turn to Porsche for his next personal project replacing his crappy kangoo van, but when he arrived back at the shop with this beaten up Carrera 4s, we thought we had our work cut out and to be honest at first glance we thought it may end up in the bin! The previous owner on his maiden voyage lost control of the car after exceeding the Porsches limits on a corner and ended up in a ditch resulting in the sort of negative camber an 18 year old could only dream of. Oh well they say “one man’s loss is another man’s gain”

The Plan:

Suspension: 50mm drop all round

Wheels: 20″ dished rims

Bodywork: Custom fabricated wide arches, custom fabricated rear spoiler, custom wing louvers, resprayed

Engine: Custom exhaust, remapped

Once on the ramp we inspected the car and discovered that, it was not as bad as it first looked. The only real damage was to the suspension, Happy days! So 4 new suspension sets for the front and rear near side were fitted and with the car now sitting back on 4 wheels it was wheeled over to the bodyshop ready to make a start on the custom bodywork.

We have replaced the nearside sill as this had been damaged in the crash and everything else looked straight. We are now ready to start on the custom bodywork.

We want to give this 997 the full GBG treatment so Olly and AL are going to be widening the wings with custom fabrication.

We started by cutting out a cardboard template to help us visualise how it would look before we start to fabricate anything.

Once happy with the look we masked up the shape and cut up the rear wing.

To give us more clearance for the 20 inch wheels that are going on we cut away and cleaned up the inner wing. It also means we can go lower with the car!!!

Using the cardboard template, a steel plate was then fabricated and cleaned up ready to weld in. Olly also cleaned up the outer wing to give us clean metal to weld to.

Everything was then spot welded into place and we all stood back to have a look.

After much deliberation and a few beers, we all though that the fabrication was not complimenting the shape of the body enough and was just not heading in the direction we wanted it to. Yeah we want it wide but we felt it needed to compliment the car. As with all custom builds you have to experiment until you get the right lines and are happy with the look. So out came the angle grinder.

This time we fabricated and then welded some steel brackets to the inner wing that held the part of the wing that we had cut off. We then fabricated some steel plates that were welded in to bridge the gap, making sure they followed the contours of the car.

Sorry for the gap in shots, AL has now widened the front and rear wings and finished with a light layer of filler. The back wings are now 2 inches wider with the fronts 1.5 inches wider.

The air vents in the front bumper has now been cut out. We are going for a GT3 inspired look.

We will be ghosting in a subtle Golding Barn Garage logo on the bonnet that will only be seen when the light hits it. Ash has masked up the logo ready for paint.

A sneak peak of the new 20 inch rims that are going on the porker, man the rears are wide!!

With the wings now widened, the 997 is getting masked up in the booth ready for the body to be sprayed tomorrow in a custom GBG paint mix.

AL has been custom fabricating a new exhaust to reroute it up through the bumper.

This is going to look bad ass when dropped to the deck.

With the front bumper now sprayed back on here is a sneak peek of the front.

With the finish line in sight we started on the rear bumper. This has been heavily modified to allow the custom exhaust to exit through it. Apertures were cut into the bumper and then steel trumpets were fibreglassed in. We took this approach to allow the bumper to be removed if needed in the future without having to remove the exhaust.  The old exhaust holes were then fibreglassed up, new vents cut into the bumper and it was given a fresh coat of paint.

The back boxes have been cut out the exhaust rerouted and wrapped in heat wrap. I have to say it sounds awesome, we will be uploading a video soon.

All that was left was to reattached the rear bumper and stand back and admire our work!

This is a taster of the finished car but head over here for the finished photoshoot