Rad car, rad bike, Radwood | Project Porsche 911 Carrera

Update by David S. Wallens to the Porsche 911 Carrera project car
Mar 8, 2022

Photography Credit: Chris Tropea

How’d many of us get around in the ’80s? A BMX bike.

How’d we wish we got around? A Porsche 911.

So we put the two together for Radwood, the celebration of ‘80s and ’90s automotive culture, sticking a 1984 BMX bike atop our 1984 Porsche Carrera 911. Radwood joined The Amelia this past weekend, sharing Saturday’s card with Concours d’Lemons.

Before the event, we added some details, like the 1984 radar detector ($15.50 via eBay) and 1984 license plates (found them in our garage).

The IMSA GT stickers, likewise, came from the era. (Thank you, Decal Shop, for the hookup.) A Vans fanny pack (recent holiday gift) held our tools and detail supplies.

Gotta represent, right? The day’s attire: Wayfarers (already had them), Agent Orange cap (already had it) and Curb Dogs T-shirt (custom-printed from original artwork via Zazzle). Agent Orange defined the ’80s skate punk sound, while the Curb Dogs, a San Francisco BMX freestyle team, blew up the scene in 1984. (Thank you, team member and super-nice guy Maurice Meyer, for the artwork.) Then add our daily Vans Sk8-Hi high-tops and, of course, a Swatch.

An Agent Orange cassette, along with Bad Brains' debut, sat in the center console. (They were sitting on a shelf in our office.)

So really, as children of the ’80s, we pretty much had it already. The trick, as usual, was keeping things appropriate and period-correct while resisting the urge to, as the kids say, go nuts.

We spent the week before Radwood cleaning the car. An hour or two each evening helped spread the load: paint one day, wheels and tires the next, etc. You can find our easy detail regimen here, and for this one we pretty much followed Tim McNair’s cars and coffee cleanup: Griot’s synthetic clay bar followed by the company’s 3-in-1 ceramic wax. Watch the video for more.

The night before leaving for Radwood, we watched another detailing video: What to bring to a concours.

Part of the prep: cleaning our period-correct, rad-era Yokohama A008P tires.

Then we did our final packing. The Vans fanny pack carried our tools and detail supplies. The quick detail, rubber dressing and glass cleaner made the trip in a cardboard box that happened to perfectly fit behind the driver’s seat.

Showtime. After 2 hours of driving, at 6:30 a.m. we rolled into Amelia Island, Florida. First, a pit stop, where we met a dude who totally dug the Porsche and was just wrapping up his evening.

The Porsche was on the show field by 7 a.m.

And half an hour later, the bike was assembled and on the roof. The rack is a recent purchase, so we decided that sea trials weren’t going to take place on I-95 at 5 in the morning. We scored the Thule Echelon bike mount via Craigslist for $45 and attached it to the car with 47-inch Thule Squarebar load bars and the company’s Rapid Gutter Low mounts. The gutter mounts were an open-box special from Rack Attack. PCA’s Vu Nguyen answered our (many) questions about this.

Skyway released its T/A frame set–short for totally aerodynamic–in late 1983, and it became an instant icon for being light, strong and rather attractive. Updated retro models have been released over the years, marrying those classic looks with modern geometry. We bought this frame set in 2015 and built it to resemble a freestyle bike from the sport’s early days–something that would have looked natural in this 1984 magazine feature that introduced the Curb Dogs to the worldwide BMX community. U.S. Olympic team member Chelsea Wolfe screwed the bike together for us.