​
If someone told me this story, I would most likely dismiss it as fanciful bullshit - if not for the fact that I lived it myself.

It’s a story about a pair of Woolly-Necked Storks that arrived, completely out of the blue, in our front yard in Westville, Durban, one day.

The female stork was slightly smaller than the male. Otherwise, they were identical. You could tell them apart when they were together, but when they were apart, you couldn’t tell who was, who?  Pun intended.

Hence, I named them Arthur and Martha.

They were distinctly different characters, though. We learned to distinguish them by their mannerisms.

Arthur was the cocky, inquisitive one. Martha was more reserved, always keeping a safe distance.
We scattered broken pieces of bread on the front lawn for our regular flock of Egyptian Ibis’. Hadedas, as they are called locally.

Hadedas are common around here. They’re relatively domesticated, and if you feed them, they quickly multiply and shit everywhere. Noisy bastards too. I’m not particularly fond of them.
Arthur chased them and pinched the bread.

We also had plenty of small birds - sparrows, wild yellow canaries, weaver birds, and a few red bishops. Fights regularly broke out around the overcrowded bird feeder, so we added another... and another... and another.

Eventually, we had a tree full of feeders and swarms of chirpy, happy little birds.

A lone brown African Hammerhead made regular pit stops at the pool. A pied kingfisher perched on a branch in the front yard, hunting worms and whatever else it could find in the grass. A purple-crested lourie frequented the same tree - a strikingly beautiful bird with an equally beautiful call, serenading a potential mate somewhere in the distance.

We had two overnight veranda-dwellers: a small spurfowl that befriended me when I started leaving a bowl of special seeds the other birds couldn’t find, and an Egyptian goose that swam in the pool and slept at the far end of the veranda at night.

Of course, there was also a sizeable contingent of local nuisance birds - Indian mynas, red-winged starlings, pigeons and doves. Pesky things.

And birds of prey too—brown kites and various species of African eagles gliding along the coastal thermals and making regular fly-bys for a quick takeaway. 

Hell, we had a decent private bird sanctuary going. All to ourselves…

Good times. An enjoyable part of our lives.
​

​Arthur and Martha, being the largest birds around, had no natural enemies.

They reigned supreme. Spoilt buggers.

Raw lean beef mince became their staple diet. They loved it.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

They overnighted on top of a T-shaped telephone pole next to our property, dropped in for breakfast, flew off, returned for lunch, disappeared again, and came back for their late-afternoon snack before retiring to the pole for the night.
​

​Arthur was an impatient fella with a bad attitude.

When the mince was late, he’d get pissed off. He chased the other birds around the garden. Attacked the pot plants. Pulled on the curtains. Vandalised the place.

When my wife Danielle eventually arrived with their plate of mince, Arthur would be pecking at it before she’d even put it down. Martha would come sprinting from the far side of the pool in long strides, leaning into corners like a MotoGP rider on the opening lap.

Every feeding was entertainment.

Of all the birds, the storks were the ones who kept us entertained the most. They were real characters. My friends found it hard to believe the stories I told until they visited and saw for themselves. Everyone fell in love with Arthur and Martha.

Then something changed...

One day, Arthur and Martha didn’t pitch up for breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner.

The next day, they were still missing. Days passed with no sign of them. Weeks went by. Then months.

Danielle and I were distraught. We worried and wondered what had happened to them. Eventually, we made peace with the idea that nature had taken its course. We had simply been fortunate to share part of our lives with two wild storks.

We came to terms with the fact that we might never see them again.

Then, one Saturday, while having lunch on the veranda, we saw storks approaching from a distance.
Arthur and Martha came flying in from the south with a third, slightly smaller bird in tow and landed by the pool as if they’d never been gone.

They had brought another stork with them.

A baby stork.

That explained everything. They had been away breeding, raising a chick, and had brought it home.
Arthur demanded his mince immediately. Danielle scrambled to feed them before any acts of vandalism commenced.

They spent days around the pool, quite content to have their culinary needs taken care of rather than foraging for food in some distant swamp, as nature intended.

A while later, they chased the baby stork away. For his own good, I guess. The time had come to go forth and learn to fend for itself.

Arthur’s trust in me deepened.

He began taking food from my hand - shredded chicken, chunks of kingklip, calamari tubes, even fried peri-peri chicken livers.
​

​Sometimes he would sunbathe, parked off in a goofy pose that was too comical for words.

And then something bad happened.

One night, while I was away racing at Kyalami, we had an attempted break-in. Fortunately, I had my in-laws John and Teddy stay with Danielle while I was away. John woke in the middle of the night to find a burglar trying to gain access through one of the lounge windows.

That incident changed everything.

A sudden crime wave flared up in the neighbourhood. Our property was too large and spread out to secure effectively. It would have cost a fortune, and there would always have been weak points. We had no choice but to appoint night guards while looking for a safer place to live.

Eventually, we found a secure house in Hillcrest, a neighbouring suburb about twenty kilometres away as the crow flies - pun intended.

Danielle was in tears the day we moved.

It was an incredibly sad moment. Leaving our beloved friends Arthur and Martha behind, not knowing what would become of them.

Time marched on.

Our bird sanctuary faded into memory. We put up bird feeders in the trees at the new house, and a few small birds came - but nothing like the swarms we’d had in Westville. We scattered chunks of bread around the pool. The odd Hadeda or two would stop by but never stayed long.

One day, a pair of storks landed in the yard, and we were beside ourselves with excitement - but they were skittish and flew off before we could feed them. After that, we more or less gave up on the idea of ever getting a vibe going with the birds of Hillcrest. 
​

But here’s the kicker.

The truly unbelievable part.

One day, almost a year to the day after we moved from Westville, Arthur and Martha dropped in. Totally unexpected.

​They had found us.

Twenty kilometres away.

Arthur was immediately up to his old antics. We scrambled to serve their mince, just as we always had. Martha did her characteristic MotoGP run around the pool when she saw Danielle appear with a plate of mince.

It was really them. No doubt.

Danielle had tears of joy rolling down her cheeks. I was doing my best to hold back my own emotions. It was incredible. Completely unbelievable.

They remained on our property of their own free will, and we continued our friendship as before.

But how the hell had they managed to find us after a year?

Danielle and I discussed it many times. How did they track us down?

There could only be one explanation. The only common denominator they could use...

My spunky little Porsche 964.

The White Goose.

They must have recognised the car from our Westville days, spotted it from the air, and followed it to our new home in Hillcrest.

There can be no other explanation.
​
True story.

──────────────
“In my world, even the birds are petrolheads.”
──────────────
​
- Pierre Martins​

CKICK HERE for more Experiences That Shaped My World

nMarch 2010

Nestled in the Andaman Sea on Thailand's Indian Ocean coastline lies a tropical paradise called Phuket.

The island has absolutely nothing to do with this story.

However, if you deliberately mispronounce the name in English, it perfectly describes what went through my mind five laps into first practice at Zwartkops Raceway. I was climbing the hill towards Table Top when I heard a clunk from somewhere deep inside the engine.

Not a little clunk.

Not a maybe-I-imagined-that clunk. A proper mechanical death rattle. The sort of noise that immediately translates itself into fluent profanity. I knocked the car into neutral, hit the kill switch and coasted back to the pits.

Phuket.

Race weekend over. Or so I thought. 

A quick inspection revealed the culprit. The crankshaft had broken. Before I could slip fully into my finest Phuketian accent, the Shelby Can-Am guys had the rear bodywork off and were already discussing replacement options. Somebody disappeared into a trailer and returned with another engine.

An entire replacement engine. The race was back on.

But perhaps I should explain how I ended up behind the wheel of a Shelby Can-Am in the first place.
The best things in motorsport tend to happen with very little planning. About a week before the race meeting Rod Cole phoned and asked if I was interested in an arrive-and-drive opportunity for the Pro Tour round at Zwartkops.

Now, anyone who's spent enough time around race circuits knows that's not really a question. The correct answer is always yes. The details can be sorted out afterwards. One thing led to another and I found myself entered as a guest driver in Rudi Patour's Shelby Can-Am, with GT1 Workshop handling race preparation duties.

I was delighted. I'd always admired the class.

For those unfamiliar with the formula, Shelby Can-Am racing is one of South African motorsport's hidden gems. The cars are purpose-built spaceframe sports prototypes weighing around 850 kilograms and powered by near-stock Nissan 350Z V6 engines producing approximately 330 horsepower and 410 Nm of torque.

Power is delivered through a four-speed crash box with a locked differential.

Suspension consists of double wishbones all round, adjustable anti-roll bars, SAX dampers, coil-overs and substantial Willwood brakes clamping onto double-ventilated discs.

The cars run on massive Goodyear slicks - thirteen inches wide at the rear and ten inches at the front.
The result is a lightweight, highly responsive sports prototype capable of embarrassing far more exotic machinery.

Unfortunately my introduction to the class involved a broken crankshaft. Apparently the problem wasn't entirely unheard of. The Shelby association had investigated previous failures with Nissan South Africa.

The prevailing theory was that the solid engine mounts used in the race cars introduced harmonic vibrations absent in road-going 350Zs, occasionally resulting in crankshaft failures. I was simply lucky enough to experience one firsthand.

The engine swap became a frantic race against time. Gerald and the GT1 Workshop crew worked like men possessed. Spanners flew. Bodywork came off. Fluids drained. Parts changed hands. And somehow, by Friday afternoon, the car was ready for qualifying.

Which was unfortunate. Because now I actually had to drive the thing properly.

Qualifying was one of those situations where experience has to compensate for preparation.
I had effectively missed most of Friday's track time and was still learning both the car and its peculiarities.

Zwartkops is a fascinating circuit in that it's really two racetracks stitched together.

The section from Turn Two through Turn Five rewards commitment and momentum. Long sweepers and decent straights make it a drag-race sector where carrying speed is everything. The remainder of the lap is far more technical. Tight corners, short straights and constant direction changes make it feel almost like a kart circuit.

The Shelby and I immediately established a working relationship.

It wanted to go sideways. Everywhere. Under power through the fast sweepers. Under power out of slow corners. Under power whenever it felt like it.

The rear end felt looser than a Bangkok prostitute.

Okay, I don't actually know what a Bangkok prostitute feels like, but it seemed an appropriate comparison at the time.

Truth be told, I quite enjoyed it. The car, that is - I've never been to Bangkok.

The car was fitted with tyres that had already lived a reasonably full life and grip levels weren't exactly spectacular. The result was a wonderfully entertaining balance that required constant attention and rewarded commitment. 

I eventually managed a high 1:05-something lap, which wasn't earth-shattering but wasn't entirely embarrassing either considering the circumstances.

Back in the pits we chased setup. More rear wing. Softer rear anti-roll bar. Reduced rear ride height. Anything that might improve traction and calm the rear axle. The changes helped, but there's only so much setup wizardry available when a tyre has already made peace with retirement.

Trying to dial out worn tyres with setup changes is like spelling racecar backwards.

You still end up with racecar.

The reality is that Shelby Can-Am racing is fiercely competitive. The cars are remarkably equal and small differences become magnified. A slight setup issue. A little less grip. A fraction of hesitation. Suddenly you're nowhere.

At that point I abandoned any thoughts of heroic results and adopted a far more sensible objective.

Enjoy the drive. After all, opportunities like this don't come along every day. And what a drive it was. The Shelby Can-Am is one of those rare race cars that immediately inspires confidence. Quick enough to command respect, communicative enough to encourage aggression and forgiving enough to allow a little experimentation.

The harder I pushed, the more I enjoyed it. The more sideways it became, the more I laughed. By the end of the weekend I finished eighth overall. Not exactly the result that gets engraved onto trophies. But sometimes racing weekends aren't measured by finishing positions. Sometimes they're measured by experiences.

A week earlier I wasn't planning to race. Five laps into practice I thought the weekend was finished. A few hours later I was back on track in a replacement-engined Shelby Can-Am, throwing a sports prototype sideways around Zwartkops and having an absolute blast.

I've had worse weekends.

My thanks go to Jannet for sorting the entry, Rocket Rod for the nomination, Rudi Patour for trusting me with the car, Rui Campos for the opportunity, Alan Eve for the replacement engine, Gerald and the GT1 Workshop crew for their heroic efforts, and all the Shelby drivers for their advice and hospitality.

Good bunch of racers.

Geesh.

That sounds suspiciously like an Oscar acceptance speech. Perhaps I'd better stop there.

- Pierre Martins 

CLICK HERE to view the Shelby Can-Am Test
​
​CKICK HERE for more Cars That Shaped My World

​You get thinking drivers and you get track zombies...

Track Zombies are the brain-dead ones - the guys who circulate a track endlessly and learn absolutely nothing.

The kind who’ll do a hundred laps without once asking why the car did what it did.

They climb out exactly as stupid as they climbed in, just more tired.

If you’ve got even a passing fantasy about climbing into something like a Shelby Can-Am, you’d better not be one of those zombies.

This thing doesn’t forgive ignorance. It doesn’t warn you gently. It just waits for the moment your brain switches off, then it tries to remove your head from your shoulders.

To be consistently quick in one of these things you need to be awake - properly awake - and you need to think at speed. Skill matters, but awareness matters more. Hesitation will cost you time. Overconfidence will cost you panels, dignity, or worse.

I’ve watched the sharp end of the Shelby Can-Am field from trackside and from behind the wheel of my comparatively lethargic Porsche 928 when these cars are let loose in the feature races of the local GT Challenge series.

From there it became obvious very quickly who actually understood slip angle and who was just hanging on. The good ones weren’t wrestling the car – they were balancing it, deliberately nudging it fractionally beyond the edge of adhesion and holding it there like it owed them money.

Getting into that zone - where car control becomes instinctive at a pace that lives just past the limit of traction - requires a few things to line up. You need seat time. Lots of it. You need to understand the car you’re in, the tyres under it, and the strip of tar you’re pointing it at. And you need to know when you’re out of your depth.

So when I was asked to test a Shelby Can-Am for this article, I was excited - obviously - but I wasn’t delusional. I knew full well I was short on some of the attributes required to drive one of these things properly. That awareness probably saved me from doing something heroic and expensive.

I don’t treat track tests as joy rides. That attitude is for idiots and assholes. Every test is a responsibility. The car belongs to someone else, and my job is to bring it back in one piece while still driving it hard enough to understand it. Lap records are irrelevant. But loafing around teaches you nothing either. You need to get close enough to the edge to smell it - without stepping over and ruining someone’s day.

​​Right. Homework time.

I’ve learned over the years that it’s a good thing – a necessity – to familiarise myself with a car’s dynamics, suspension geometry and setup, tyres, engine specs and characteristics, gear and diff ratios and so forth - prior to getting into the car to drive.

​If you don’t have a well-informed idea of that a car is all about, how will you know what to expect from the car? – No room for track zombies here! 

​​On this occasion the Shelby Can-Am website provided the raw numbers.

Stuart Mack from Revolution Racing filled in the real-world gaps for me.

What you’re dealing with here is an 850 kg space-frame car packing 330 hp and 410 Nm, backed by a four-speed crash box and a locked diff, double wishbones, adjustable anti-roll bars, locally built SAX dampers, Wilwood four-pots on ventilated discs, and cross-ply slicks - 13 inches wide at the rear, 10”s up front.

Do the maths. This thing should behave like an oversized kart with a bad attitude.
Armed with that knowledge, I rolled into Zwartkops early on a Wednesday afternoon to find the car sitting there, ready. This example belonged to Craig Shorter of Execuline Underwriters - main sponsors of Shelby Can-Am Racing at the time.

This car was no shed refugee. It won the September Phakisa round with Wesleigh Orr at the wheel and had just been raced again at Zwartkops the weekend before by Donavan Roscoe.

Peter Jacquet of DAW Racing had it turned out immaculately. - Clean race cars matter. Sloppy preparation usually reflects sloppy thinking, and sloppy performance.

​Strapped in, belts tight, quick glance skywards - “Please don’t let me cock this up” - and I fired it into life, rolled down pit lane and out onto the track.

First impression? The engine note is offensively loud. Not the good kind of loud either - not a deep, mechanical bark - but a high-pitched scream that drills straight through your eardrums into your skull. I like engine noise, but this was just painful. Earplugs would’ve been sensible.

The car immediately felt honest. I spent the first couple of laps calculating the controls. The crash box shifts clutch-less both ways, but it demands commitment - half-hearted inputs are punished. Straight-cut gears whining away like they mean it.

Brakes came in quickly and felt solid. I defaulted to left-foot braking without thinking about it. No need to heel-and-toe - just brake, blip, and shove the lever home.

Time to stop pretending...

Time to pay attention and take control of the car - Short shift to third for Turn One. The fast guys take it flat, but bravery without familiarity is just stupidity with a stopwatch. I lifted slightly, fed the power back in at the apex and let the car settle.

Turn Two requires kart logic - brake hard, then get back on the throttle immediately to unload the inside rear or it’ll understeer like a supermarket trolley with bad front wheel bearings - thanks to the locked diff. Get it right and it rotates cleanly.

Out of the hairpin and through turn 3 the thing pulls hard and clean, easy to keep your right foot planted all the way to the outside curb onto the back straight.

At Zwartkops these cars run long gearing. First is good for over 100 km/h, which sounds wrong, but it works. The motor pulls well but revving past 6500rpm in the lower gears is pointless. The ratios felt too tall for this circuit - no way around that. You can hook fourth down the back straight and let the torque do the work - or stay in third and let it sing. I chose the latter.

Turn Four took a few laps to earn my trust. Staying on the gas later, letting the rear step out just enough to tighten the line, then feeding it back in without shocking the chassis. Slip-Angle-City!

The climb to the Tabletop felt laboured - something I didn’t like - but the car made up for it in Turns Five and Six. Again, kart mentality: off the brakes early, progressive on the throttle, rotate the rear deliberately. First gear works surprisingly well here, carrying all the way through the change of direction before grabbing second on the exit of T6.

Final corner: back to first gear on entry, second onto the straight, short shift to third and do it all again.
It’s not an easy car. It doesn’t flatter you. And if you’re not fit, it’ll grind you down over a race distance. But it rewards commitment and punishes laziness - which is exactly how it should be.

​Roscoe managed 1:04s here on fresh tyres the previous weekend. I ran low 1:07s and dipped into the 1:06s on shagged tyres during my first outing - not because I’m a hero, but because the car is fundamentally that good. Jacquet’s setup is neutral, predictable, and steerable on the throttle. It talks to you. You just pay attention.

My complaints are few...

The noise is brutal, and the gearing isn’t ideal for Zwartkops - but the rules dictate that, and cost control matters. I’ve no doubt it comes alive on longer tracks.

To sum it up - Shelby Can-Am cars don’t care who you think you are. They don’t flatter, they don’t forgive, and they certainly won’t tolerate track zombies.

​They demand attention, honesty, and respect - every lap, every corner. Drive one properly and it will teach you things about weight transfer, throttle control, and yourself that softer machinery never will.

​We lived in Pretoria for about ten years.

Zwartkops Raceway was my home track. I loved the place. Still do.

It’s a proper circuit, run by people who give a shit, which already puts it ahead of most things in this country. I’ve always said that if someone like Peter du Toit oversaw motorsport in this country, the sport would thrive.

We’d have world-class facilities everywhere instead of excuses, weeds and locked gates, like Phakisa Raceway. But that’s a pipe dream. We don’t really do functional utopias in South Africa anymore. 

​Anyway, I was at Zwartkops one Wednesday afternoon way back when the new track just opened. My crazy German mate Olly was there in his tweaked black 911. I was in my 928-S on Bilstein shocks, HR coil-overs, new Porsche Cup2 wheels, Bridgestone Potenza tyres and the best setup we could dial into the otherwise stock suspension. 

During one of the morning sessions I caught up to four older 911s with painfully obvious novice drivers behind the wheel - stiff arms, death grips, braking where braking wasn’t even an idea, eyes the size of saucers.

So what was I to do? - Play axe-murderer, of course. Carved them up like I was late for a braai. One guy pointed me by on the straight like he was doing me a favour. Another missed an apex by a postcode and neatly parked it in the kitty litter.

When I came in, Olly was leaning against the pit wall, arms folded, shaking his head.

“You’re a bully.” He quipped.

I told him the car under-steered like a fat pig and he laughed and said,

“Then it’s settled – the car is Fat Bully.”
​
That was that. Once a car has a name, you’re done arguing.

Later that year I entered a few Porsche Club time-trial events and won hands down in the class I was running, which did absolutely nothing for my already questionable humility.

Then came that magic day at the Gerotech banked oval. A local legend – who shall remain anonymous for now - reputation bigger than his lap times – ego the size of Texas - was circulating in a very well-known, gazillion-horsepower twin-turbo 911.

He could not get rid of me. He’d disappear down the straights like I’d hit reverse, but I’d reel him back in through the banked corners by doing something highly technical and advanced - keeping my right foot flat.

Every time we hit the main straight I was tucked right under his massive rear wing, lap after lap, like a bad rash.

Eventually the entire pit area was in stitches. Mr Local Legend got so thoroughly cheesed off that he didn’t greet me for the next five years. Which, frankly, felt like a winning trophy I didn’t have to polish.

But that’s another story.  

I’m a firm believer that different cars put you in different headspaces as a driver.

Fat Bully as a road car, was a bad influence. A 928 is a proper GT - smooth, quiet, planted. The danger is that it doesn’t feel fast, which means you’re usually going far quicker than you think.

Like the day my wife Danielle and I were heading back from a Sunday drive to Hartebeestpoort dam and I tripped an old-school speed trap at just over 200 km/h.

I didn’t stop.

My old man’s voice popped into my head, clear as day: “If a cop is going to pull you over for speeding, at least make the bastard work for his money”.

Something primal kicked in. I floored it. Kept it pinned and smooth, let the big V8 do its quiet, relentless thing. No drama. No panic. Just distance.

Dannielle was completely oblivious.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You’re driving like an idiot.”
“I’m enjoying the car.”

She squinted at the speedo and said,
“Enjoy it slower. Leave the speeding for the racetracks”

By the time she realised something was off, the cops were already someone else’s problem. I didn’t say another word. Neither did she.

That silence lasted longer than the chase.

That reminds me of a saying - If your wife is cross, buy a Porsche. She will still be cross, but you'll have a Porsche.

​Picture this...

A lone Honda CB400 Four stretched flat-out in top gear along a dead-straight country road.

The rider is plastered to the tank, chin hovering just above the clocks, elbows tucked in tight for whatever aerodynamic advantage he can steal. His black leather jacket is snapping itself to death in the turbulence.

The little four is screaming its lungs out - speedo and rev-counter needles blurred, valves dancing on borrowed time - doing an optimistic 170 km/h with everything it has, and a bit it doesn’t.

Behind him sits Fat Bully. Long nose. Squat tail. V8 barely breaking a sweat. No drama, no noise - just that relentless, hydraulic-like surge that only Stuttgart physics can deliver.

On our way to Sun City. Danielle, beside me, wrapped into the snug but genuinely comfortable Porsche Sports passenger seat.

I wasn’t chasing the bike, per se. I was simply sitting on his tail, whether he liked it or not. Patiently. Quietly. Making him nervous.

The road was empty and sun-bleached, slicing through South African nowhere - mealies on one side, thorn trees and hard red dirt on the other. No traffic. No fences. Just heat shimmer and the distant smell of veld.

For a few mad minutes it was man and machine versus destiny - a high-strung, banzai Japanese four and a German GT calmly reminding him of his place in the motoring food chain.

Dannielle was starting to get nervous (again) and giving me the usual static from the passenger seat, so I backed off a fraction and let the bike open a fifty-metre gap.

We were looking forward to our weekend away. The last time I’d been to Sun City was October 1984, for the opening night of Queen’s The Works Tour - long before Dannielle and I had met.

I figured everyone should do a Sun City weekend at least once in their life, if only for the experience. Relax a little. Eat well. Take in a show or two. Maybe gamble a bit - feed some coins into the greedy throats of the one-armed bandits. Not that I’m a gambler. My luck is such that if I ever fell into a barrel of boobs, I’d probably come up sucking my thumb.

We were still pegged at 170. I kept one eye on the road while fiddling with the cassette deck, trying to find a better song. The bike was still there, fifty metres ahead. That was clearly all the top end it had.

Then, without warning, the rider bolted upright - as if someone had rammed a red-hot iron rod up his arse - and promptly turned off the road straight into a freshly ploughed field, disappearing in a cloud of red dust.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Pulled over and ran across to see if I could help. He was sitting there, arse planted firmly in the dirt, wearing a look of pure bewilderment.

I asked if he was hurt.

“Nope. Don’t think so…”

There was no blood. Nothing obviously broken. I helped him to his feet and asked what the hell had happened.

He said he’d been resting his chin on the top triple clamp, hit a bump and knocked himself out cold. Next thing he knew, he was tumbling through ploughed land at close to one-seventy.

In the same breath, he said it was okay to laugh if I wanted to.

I did. It was hilarious - the funniest accident I’ve ever witnessed.

To come off at that speed and walk away unhurt is nothing short of a miracle. He was lucky. Even the bike was more-or-less fine. We picked it up and pushed it back to the road. I used the pump from the Porsche’s space-saver spare wheel to blow both rider and machine clean of red dust.

After a few cranks the Honda fired up and he rode off, heading back the way he’d come. Whatever his original destination had been, he’d clearly lost the appetite for it.

I watched him disappear, wondering if he’d also been bound for Sun City.

Perhaps he should have carried on - before his luck ran out.

Some people mistake speed for winning. Others just live long enough to realise the difference.
​

By then, the writing was already on the wall. I was gonna turn Fat Bully into a full race car.

You know the sickness – reduce weight - strip it, cage it, stiffen it, put big brakes, slicks, fender flares, aero, obsess over it, ruin it financially.

So I dropped the car off with Marino in the south of Joburg and told him what my plans were.

Marino looked at me and asked,..

“You sure?”
“Yes.”

“You know this will get expensive.”
“Yes.”

“And stupid.”
“Yes, again.”

He nodded.
“Okay then.”

Back then, the problem with building a race 928 became obvious the moment we started shopping for upgrades.

In 911 land, there were tons of aftermarket plug-and-play options. Want handling? – Order the parts. Want brakes? - Order parts. Want power? - Throw your money at Marino and let him do his thing.

In the 928 world there were almost nothing available in terms of upgrades. Nothing to just bolt on. Most of what went onto Fat Bully had to be invented with a combination of brains and stubbornness - Designed and modified with lots of F-Bombs.

We stripped the car bare and sent it to his body shop to check it on a chassis jig. Marino and old slow Ted from Afrishox spent hours on the shock dyno developing a custom set of Bilstein with H&R coil-overs with spring rates suitable for something that weighed about as much as a guilty conscience.

We started with a base weight of 1,550 kg and hoped to end up around 1,250 kg. The weight of the wiring loom alone was criminal. - there’s something like 13 kilometres of wiring in a stock 928. Thirteen freakin' kilometres of wiring. Who was this thing designed for, NASA?

The original ’83-S motor remained stock. 350hp. I opted for handling before horsepower. The gearbox, also stock, but got a shortened GTS shifter and a limited-slip diff from Transaxle Developments in Pinetown.

Brakes were lifted from a Turbo 964 courtesy of a mate who was so anal he replaced all four callipers and discs because the callipers had a few stone chips.

I paid him R8k for the lot and kept my mouth shut.

For wheels we went with spacer adapters to run BMW PCD, so I had more choice and didn’t need to bond my house to buy genuine Porsche rims.

Then came the bodywork. I’d always wanted a wide-body 928 of my own design, so I sketched, collected reference photos, and handed the car to a fibreglass guy working from home. A three-month job took over a year. I got the car back eventually, mostly done but the quality of the bodywork sucked.

I lost interest and parked Fat Bully for three years while I went 250 Superkart racing.

When I got my head straight, I took the car to a guy who built decent fibreglass street rods. He fixed the fibreglass sins and built a proper roll cage.

Then, back to Marino’s for final setup, and a shakedown at Midvaal Raceway. The car worked okay, albeit down on power for its weight...
​

​Instead of easing into it sensibly, I jumped straight into the local GT Challenge series.

That was educational.

I was used to scratch racing, no handicaps and crap. We all started when the lights went off and raced as hard as we could to get to the front and hopefully stay there until the checkered flag dropped.

GT Challenge was bracket racing – different car classes with massive speed differences between the classes. That’s sports-car racing.

Getting lapped by the big chequebook cars wasn’t all bad – traffic management was a new game. I quickly learned to use them to punch holes for me - allowing me to pull moves on the cars in the class I was racing against.

When I first arrived on the scene a GT Challenge Primadonna said to me...

“Welcome to the big leagues, bru.” 

Idiot.

He tied a ribbon to the rear wing of Fat Bully - a signal to the other drivers that I was new to the class, a rookie.

I promptly ripped it off.

Then he walked around the car twice, crouched down, peered into the wheel arches, looked at me, clearly trying to wind me up -

“This thing looks heavy.”
“It is.”

“In what class are you racing?”
“The one they put me in.”

“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“You know what you’re up against, hey?”
“Yes.”

“You’ll get lapped.”
“I hope so.”

He gave up and walked away. They say racing attracted kings and clowns. The idiot didn’t leave the impression of a king.

That year’s championship concluded with Fat Bully 1st in Class and Runner Up in the overall results. I raced hard, had a blast and bullied a few of the faster cars along the way.

At the end of the season, I parked Fat Bully and that’s where it remained – In storage. Perhaps one day I’ll recommission it and continue the relationship.

And that idiot assclown who tried to wind me up came over...

“You made history with that big car of yours. Well done!”
“Thank You.”

“Where did you learn to drive like that?”
“On back roads – I was Ten.”

I think he thought I was being sarcastic.

​- Pierre Martins
​

CKICK HERE for more Cars That Shaped My World

​Someone suggested I should make a list of all the memorable cars I’ve owned, driven, tested, raced, modified, coached in, or simply experienced over the years. So, I did.

Honestly, it blew me away a little.

Not because the list is full of exotic machinery or rare metal, but because every car instantly unlocked a memory. A person. A racetrack. A road trip. A near-disaster. A friendship. A laugh. A lesson.

Some were world-class performance cars. Others were rough around the edges. Some were beautiful. Some were gloriously ugly. A few tried very hard to kill me.

What started as a simple list quickly turned into something else entirely — a rolling anthology of motoring memories spanning decades of track days, racing, road cars, workshop projects, endurance events, magazine tests, and the wonderfully strange world of South African enthusiast car culture.

This is very much a work in progress.

As I continue adding cars to the list, I’ll also be expanding many of these entries into full stories and individual blog posts. Some will be funny. Some mildly terrifying. Some nostalgic. Some technical. Most will probably wander off sideways into unexpected territory, because that’s usually how motoring stories go once enthusiasts start talking.

​And yes… there are still many more cars to add.

​TJ-007 
The story of a '62 Ford Thunderbird from my youth...
CLICK HERE to read the sory

​The Road Train 
I’ve driven some weird and wonderful things in my life,
​but this was kinda strange…
CLICK HERE to read the story

The White Puppy 
I've done so many races in this little car.
Helped develop it. Won races with it.
And many unforgettable experiences...
CLICK HERE to read the first story

​Chery QQ – 48-Hour Endurance Record
I got roped into this event way before Chinese cars became a thing…
​CLICK HERE to read the story

Naughty Tyres
A friend had this car standing under a carport.
Insisted I take it off hands for free. 
So, I did what I always do when I didn’t know what to do with a car.
Gut it and turn it into a track car…
CLICK HERE to meet Naughty Tyres

​Fat Bully 
Take a heavyweight GT cruiser.
Gut it, add good brakes & suspension.
Bully whoever I found in the corners…
CLICK HERE to read Fat Bully's Story

Stupid Fast Mini
People talk about “the good old days.”
They usually leave out the part where they probably should’ve died.
CLICK HERE to read the story

​The Red Lady
Untold memories in this car.
CLICK HERE for The Red Lady & Fake Ray-Bans 

​VW Scirocco 
The wildest taxi ride I've ever experienced...
CLICK HERE to read the sory

​The White Goose
The one and only car I ever regret selling…
CLICK HERE to view Arthur & Martha & The White Goose

Shelby Can-Am Sports Prototype
I was asked to test one of these things for a magazine writeup.
The test lead to an invitation to drive one in a race.
And the engine broke during my first practice session…
CLICK HERE to view the Shelby Can-Am Test
CLICK HERE to view the Shelby Can-Am Race

​

250 Superkarts
Still the most mental thing I’ve ever driven.
Zero to 100km/h in under 3 seconds.
Zero to 200km/h in under 6 seconds.
Top speed north of 250km/h.
No cage.
No belts.
​No brains.

Half Pint – Our Pre-‘73 Porsche 911-R
My buddy Chris and I bought a butt-ugly ’83 SC.
Turned it into a brutal little lightweight longhood track car…

The White Lady – Dave’s ’83 Porsche 911-SC
Canyon carving through the Lowveld when the roads were still topnotch…

The Brown Cow – Dirk’s ’83 Porsche 911 Targa
I introduced Dirk to the 911 experience.
Then built this sweet little targa for him…

The Yellow Bird V-I – Dave’s ’74 Porsche 911-RSR in IROC spec
Started life as an ’83-SC.
Dave turned it into a concourse condition race car…

The Yellow Bird V-II – Dave’s 911-RSR in Grp-4 spec
Then it evolved into a serious piece of kit.
No expense spared…

The Sperm Whale – My Cayenne GTS V8
I’ve always thought of the Cayenne as a good grocery-getter.
A tow vehicle.
And a very unusual Track Taxi…

Customer Porsche 991-Mk1 GT3 (Street)
A customer was galavanting somewhere in the Mediterranean on the Queen Mary.
Asked me to take delivery and test his new 991 GT3.
It was the first time I've experienced taking delivery of a brand new Porsche.

Lawrence’s Porsche 991-Mk1 GT3 (Track)
The kind of car that pays dividends exponentially...
When you start throwing money at the right upgrades.

Prevan’s Porsche 997 Turbo
Modified by RACE!
A beast of a thing at the time. Still is…

The Bread Bin – My Ugly Duck Subaru Forester
At the time I modified this thing, you could build horsepower
to match 911’s for a fraction of the cost
of building a 911 performance engine…

Less – My Subaru Forester SG
A car I named “Less”.
Because there aint no such thing as a pretty Subaru.
Only less ugly ones…

Charles' Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 (RS)
Porsche raided their parts bin and built a few of these…
​
Albert’s Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2 (G50)
The thing about old air-cooled 911s is that you can do a road trip to a faraway track.
Do hot-laps all day long, and then drive it back home without a hassle.
Not many cars from the seventies and eighties could do that…

The Green Tea – Marino’s Pre-73 Porsche 911-T
The official Porsche colour is called “Irish Green”.
Clearly, it looks more like British Racing Green.
Is that German sarcasm?

Mark’s Porsche 993 Carrera 2
Nice car, but Porsche supplied these cars with candles for headlights…

Albert’s Porsche 993 Carrera 4
I spent 4 days doing an inch-by-inch paint-correction buff and polish on this car.
Entered it into the local Porsche Club Show & Shine.
And won a 1st Place trophy…

Tefo’s Porsche 993 Carrera 4 Turbo
These cars make a perfect “Doctor’s Porsche”.
In stock trim they are remarkably silent.
They just go woooosh, woooosh, but they are blisteringly quick.

John’s Speed Yellow Porsche 993 Carrera RS
If Jeremy Clarkson was a Porsche fan ...
He would probably wax lyrical after a proper drive in one of these.
He would probably liken it to some sexy supermodel…

My Speed Yellow Porsche 996 GT3-MkII
Even ordinary guys like me get lucky sometimes.
I bought this car before the Porsche price boom…

Neerajh’s Porsche 996 GT3-MkII
I guess not many people can say I did endurance racing with my attorney in his GT3…

JP’s Porsche 964-RS
Racing with your attorney is one thing.
Testing the taxman’s Porsche on a racetrack is quite another…

The Jug-Shaker – My Porsche Cayman 718 GT4-MkI
I’m no pervert, but a sportscar with stiff suspension on a slightly bumpy road does have its advantages if your female companion is nicely shaped...
And you have good peripheral vision…

Black – Hugh Tower’s Porsche Cayman 718 GT4-MkI
I’ve probably done more miles and hot-laps in this car than my late friend Hugh did…

My Ferrari 458 Italia
I couldn’t afford a Ferrari in my wildest dreams...
But one thing leads to another, and I won an auction bid on a 458.
With mild front-end cosmetic damage…

Customer 458 Spider
It’s a privilege and an honour when customers and friends entrust you with driving their cars.
It is also a huge responsibility…

Customer Maybach
Who says you can’t join the Porsche Club guys...
For a spirited Sunday morning drive to the Natal Midlands.
I a Maybach. Yes, a Maybach…

The Donkey – My BMW540i 6-Speed
People asked me - This is not a slow car. Why do you call it The Donkey?
It did all my donkey work.
Hands down the best car I ever owned…

My Audi RS4 Avant
I’ve always had a thing for performance station wagons.
They make excellent tow vehicles and packhorses.
Plus, you can double-duty them as track taxis when demonstrating racing lines…

Gerald's Ferrari F12
Life gives you a test ever so often.
But driving a 720hp front-engined Ferrari first thing in the morning
on a race track with a hangover the size of Texas...
Is not really what I would consider fair play, 

The Yellow Banana - Lynda’s Porsche Boxster
Marino warned her. 
“If the car goes to Pierre for work, it’s gonna come back with a name…”

Christo’s Porsche 718 Boxster GTS
This “hairdresser’s Porsche" alerted me to how
ridiculously quick these things become with the right modifications…

The Red Rocket – Porsche 718 Cayman GTS
These cars are the real sleepers of the Porsche world.
I’ve done software & cat delete on a few.
This time I turned into a real giant killer…

The Bue Rocket – VW Golf 7.5-R
A project.
Taking a bone stock Golf 7.5-R and throwing a grocery list of aftermarket mods at it.
And investing the kind of manhours you could never recover…

Arshad’s McLaren 720-S
What a car!!!  
If you ever see me roll up in one of these and I tell it’s really mine,
you won’t have to guess whether I’ve hit the Powerball Jackpot. You’ll know…

Formula GTi
When I look at photos of this car,
the tune Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas comes to mind.
That’s how it was with this car.
I just wanted to drive…

Yasis – Adrian’s Toyota Yaris GR
When you drive it normally it’s just a Yaris.
When you tackle the corners in anger it quickly becomes “YASIS !”…

Allan’s Porsche 930 Turbo
Dropping my arse into my friend Allan’s 930 Turbo.
For some hot-laps at an open track day.
Felt like I was stepping back into a time capsule from 1981…

Tabasco – GT40 Track Test
Getting out of bed at sparrow’s fart
on a cold winter’s morning is really not my thing.
But on this particular day I was heading to Kyalami.
To drive a very hot GT40 replica…

917 Track Test
When I was a kid, I had a poster on my wall...
Of Jo Siffert’s number 24 Porsche 917 in the iconic Gulf livery…

Lotus Exige S - Track Test
I arrived 45 minutes late for a track test of three Lotus 7 race cars and an Exige.
There was no time to check out the cars beforehand.
I was ushered straight into the Exige with the words “You gonna like this”…

VW Challenge Track Test
I’ve never been interested in hot hatches, or front wheel cars in general, for that matter.
See, I was raised in the parallel universe of RWD and AWD cars…

Becker’s Porsche 944 Turbo Cup
I have known many Beckers. Enthusiastic. Committed.
Quick enough to feel confident.
Inexperienced enough not to recognize what they did not yet understand…

Gabor’s 944 Turbo
I remember this car.
It was rough around the edges. Really rough.
The windscreen was cracked.
The carbon fibre doors, fender flares and hood were all warped
and none of the panels lined up properly…

Speads Single Seater Track Test
What we have here is a car at 92% the scale of the 2007 Ferrari F1 car.
It weighs 360kg with a 110hp Gixxer 1000cc power plant strapped to the back.
Chain driven with the rear sprocket ingeniously crafted onto
a custom Quaife limited slip diff…

Speads Sports Prototype Track Test
A stroked 1400cc 220hp Hayabusa motor in a car that only weighs 380kg.
You don’t even have to do the math.
You just know it’s going to be quick…

Mark’s Porsche 924 Race Car
"I guess you could always mount a small BBQ in the passenger footwell
and turn the sausages on the back straight"…

Mark’s Porsche 924 Carrera GT
Google this car and AI will tell you - To qualify for FIA Group 4 racing
(where it famously competed at Le Mans),
Porsche produced just 406 road-legal examples…

Lamborghini Gallardo 6-Speed
Porsches have that low-pitch powerful roar like a lion. F
erraris buzz like mosquitoes in the everglades.
But this thing, oh hell, it growled like a tiger in mating season…

Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera
Kyalami. Private test day.
They brought me the keys for this thing.
Brand spanking new. Delivery miles on the clock.
Two Lamborghini factory representatives were present.
Time for me to do what I always do when presented with a strange car -
pay attention and take control of the situation…

Gerald’s Lamborghini Huracan
When you cruise out of pitlane and the owner’s son tells you
“My dad said you must take it to the limit”
you just know it’s time to pay attention and take control of the situation…