DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Oh good but what can possibly go wrong?

It's 16 years old today - first registered April 24th 2002

But, how to get home?. Edinburgh to London... Or in my case, Edinburgh to Yorkshire for a funeral the next day. Well, there's the A1 or...



I’d quickly sketched a route south. It was midweek In April. With the kids in school. It was warm and sunny and I had no plan to be back in London that day. A look on maps and viamichelin for what might be an interesting, scenic drive yielded what turned out to be an epic 6 hours or so: Galashiels, Selkirk, Hawick, Kielder, River Rede skirting the Northumberland National Park, Chollerford, Once Brewed, Haltwhistle, Alston, Barnard Castle, Richmond, Leyburn, Masham, Ripon and on to Harrogate... for a funeral the following morning.

I barely stopped and certainly wasn’t hanging around to admire the views. I 'bonded' with the little Boxster in those hours. Though on those roads most things would have been great. It hasn’t got brutal acceleration, but 80+ came around quick enough and more often than it should. Quick but not scarily so: I did find the 964 scary at times and in it I found myself alternating between driving badly like an aggressive hooligan or bimbling like a granny. In a buttercup yellow Boxster it’s a bit tough to get overly aggressive.








The driving position is a dream (for me) compared to the 964 and at 10 to 2.30 I found the ball of my right thumb was Tip-ing up and down the gears either side of 3rd. The engine sounded good, though less revvy than expected (Tip?, exhaust? ) and it felt light, but all the wheels wanted to stay on the road (other than some roller-coaster dips and blind summits near Kielder ). At no point did it feel anything other than neutral in the corners: it went where it was pointed. Though I was likely driving it well below any limit of that neutrality despite driving it like I stole it. I gather the ZF Tip “learns” your driving style. It likely got a shock that afternoon... I partly missed the option to Tip-change the gearstick: 4 speed Tiptronic boxes are Merc units and stick-tip. My SLK is a 5 speed with stick-tip but Porsche switched to ZF for their 5 speed and it’s a wheel-based shift only.



That said, I had a grand old time.

Looks great in Speed Yellow

You're just jealous that you don't have a speed yellow car...

Looks like you got a great car, Boxsters certainly are the bargain of the moment.
Love the epic drive.

South of Alston are my 'local' roads ... you choose a great route and one where you soon learn about your car on

My local roads are covered in speed bumps (ggrrr)
Had to detour around Alston as the bridge was being worked on. But you sir are a lucky chap. The roads were gloriously empty, and the snow poles really help identify where the road goes over the crests!

you always know youre on a good road if it has snow poles

we've had many a ddk run around Alston area and anyone on the last DDK Yorkshire event did the run down from Alston to Barnard Castle

Faster than I did, no doubt
That said, I got very lucky as it was basically traffic free on a Wednesday afternoon.

A great find Tosh. Colour really does suit the car.

jb wrote:Oh good but what can possibly go wrong?

Funny you should ask. After a pint and dinner with a mate in Harrogate, it came to get going to the funeral the next day: I had an hours run for an 11am.

At 9.15 the car wouldn’t start. Clearly not enough oomph in the battery. Central Harrogate has some lovely shops but none likely to carry jump leads, and I was amazed to ask about 20 people, none of whom carried them. So the RAC man was called and got round to me in due course - at least I sat on a sunny terrace drinking coffee while waiting, as opposed to the side of a wet motorway. It took him 31 minutes to jump the car, run a charging test, run a battery drain test, diagnose a dodgy battery cell, flog me a new battery (dealer has said he will pay for it), fit it, and invoice me.

By which time it was 11.15. Apparently, dead people don’t wait so by the time I turned up she was long gone and everyone was piling into sausage rolls and sandwiches. Ironically, my cousin was the bereaved but on telling him my tale pointed out that he’d missed my father’s funeral as a few minutes after setting off that day, his 911 went bang. Terminally, it turned out.

Family duty done and full of sausage rolls, I had a school run to do. It’s 170 miles from Goole to Stirling Corner at the bottom of the A1. It took me 2.5 hours. The next 21 miles took 2 hours - and all a load less fun than the previous day. Idiot that I am I missed the A14/M11 turn which would be my normal route and I doubled-down on the A1. Never again. Though on a very hot day, the ac kept me cool and the car was brilliant. I managed to pick up the kid from (planned) late-club at school before they got angry and he starved.

So it's home and you start noticing things: I reckon DarrenC would have to dismantle the dash over this one...

So, I am browsing the Brooklands Historics lot list, as you do, and up pops this.

Obviously highly desirable and rare in this colour and spec

https://www.historics.co.uk/buying/auct ... 996-targa/