With only 3 Factory right hand drive 3.0 Martini Turbo, the opportunity to restore this car, the first customer car, was both exciting and a tough prospect.

Having been literally dug out of a garden, where it had sat for circa 20 years, the car was purchased by our client, and had actually been handed to another restorer previously. But not unusually, this went wrong fairly quickly. The restorer did nothing. Sometime later, we were selected to assess, and ultimately restore, this historically significant car to the way it would have left the factory in 1977.

Every aspect of this special Porsche required serious attention. Our first step was to document and photograph every detail. Measuring the stitches, recording the wax numbers on the panels. We captured every little detail in order to recreate it later, whether it would be seen or not.

As this Porsche was dismantled, it revealed some interesting ‘anomalies’. For example, underneath the blue leather dashboard was an odd terracotta colour dash; clearly the factory believed any colour would suffice if it were to be recovered in leather! We kept it. Removing the black stone foils on the rear arches revealed guard red torsion bar caps, and again, this is how we rebuilt it…’incorrect caps’ included.

The body, of course, we totally refurbished, but with all the original panels bar one. This meant certain features, only common to the early examples were retained. The rear spoiler, made of glass fibre, had survived, but the metal frame underneath had rusted to nothing. We carefully separated the two pieces and created new, using the same process that Porsche employed.

The engine and transmission carry their own numbers (so called ‘matching numbers’ cars), and for this being such a significant Porsche, retaining the original cases was key. However, they had been resting on the ground for decades, so repairing them was a major task.

Many components were simply not reusable, and quite a few were unobtainable from regular sources. Therefore a worldwide hunt for the smallest pieces was in order.

A car built to replicate the Earls Court Motor Show car of 1976 and carrying the z-order 504 specification, the interior is the true signature of a factory Martini. The interior would have been made by hand at Porsche. Here our aim was to recreate every detail imagining that if the original artisans were to inspect it, they could declare ‘this must be our work – but it surely cannot be?’.

It’s impossible for us to fully illustrate the effort that we put into this restoration, but it included having leather hides selected for thickness, grain and feel, and then dyed for colour & sheen to match the tiny pieces of undamaged material that we were able to salvage from the interior.

Then these hides were cut, stitched and refitted, the result was outstanding. The lipstick red carpet; this too was unavailable. Colour was one thing, texture & depth of pile another.

Bringing all the components together, watching the car re-emerge, and finally testing & signing it off was a moment for our team to be proud.

Ultimately, we rolled back time to 1977. Our team did it, our client trusted us. The result you can see.