Porsche GB is restoring old sports cars to celebrate its 70th birthday

The reviving, reimagining, and restoring of old Porsches knows no bounds. In California, there’s a squad of ‘em, spearheaded by Singer. In Japan, RWB adds wheelarches for days. In Germany, there’s even a carmaker called Porsche, who recently flogged their restored ‘Project Gold’ 993 Turbo for a cool £2.4million.

Now, Porsche GB is in on the act. To mark the marque’s 70th anniversary, 20 restorations have been commissioned by the British arm of Stuttgart’s premier sports car profferer, and will include front-engined, mid-engined and rear-engined models. No word on Macan Diesels, though…

Porsche says: “Each car has undergone a bare metal restoration and is beautifully finished in a special ‘Liquid Metal’ silver paint, which was developed especially for the 918 Spyder hybrid super sportscar. A full engine rebuild, some using a new ‘short block engine’ (as available for Boxster and Type 996 911 models), has also been carried out.” Because, as the internet is happy to exaggerate, some of Porsche’s early dalliances with water-cooled boxer engines weren’t the most bulletproof engines in the world…

Besides a 70 Years of Porsche plaque and some special seat trimming, there are precious few details to separate the 20 restored cars from a really clean Boxster, 911 or 928, for example – the idea was to maintain originality.

In terms of models to look out for, the 20 cars include:

• 10 first-gen ‘type 986 Boxster S
• 2 996-gen 911s, one a C2 manual, the other a Turbo
• 1 993-gen 911
• 1 964-gen 911, pictured above
• 1 G-series 911

There’s also a 914, a 924, a 924 Turbo, a 928 and a 968 among the restored 20.

Which would you pick?