The Old Workhorse

Tony Heyer has driven a number of different Porsches on the street; everything from pumped up turbo 944's to his roof-racked '73 911 with a Jerry Woods built 3.4 liter engine mated to a screaming sport-muffler exhaust. For the last couple of years he's been driving a 1982 911 SC - an example that he's very familiar with.

Back before Tony formed Heyer Performance in 1992, he was with Garretson Enterprises, a Porsche shop known locally for service, and nationally in the Porsche racing community. One of the street going 911s he serviced at

Garretson's was (then) a brown Targa. The owner's wife regularly drove it to work, and Tony performed most of the service on the car. When Tony started Heyer Performance in 1992, they followed and kept on top of regular maintenance. At some point in the nineties, the car was damaged on the left side in a traffic incident. It was fixed, and painted black. Up until 2001, the Targa ran reliably with no major parts failures. At 190,000 miles, Tony rebuilt the transmission, and the Targa kept plugging away. Several years ago its owners decided it was time for a new Porsche, and headed to the dealer to trade it for

a Cayenne. They were shocked when the dealer offered $1500 towards the SUV, so they decided to just give the car to Tony, who was between Porsche street cars at the time.

"I've put 40 or 50k on it in the last 3 years. It's got 280K on the clock, and listen to this..." He touches the key, and before you even hear the starter crank, its happily running. "I've never seen one start so easy." Tony beams. It's fitted with a semi-rare non-turbo optional SC wing, Fuchs alloys, a chain tensioner update, and has a definite patina of use. It gets the job done, and could easily be on it's way to covering 400k miles on its original engine.

(Thanks Glen & Denele.)