As I begin on the project of putting the ’67 912 back on the road, I can’t help but think about another 912 that played an important role in my life.

In early 1993, I was finishing college at Florida State University. I had recently been accepted into law school, and wanted a car to take with me. Bored with 914s at the time, I decided to look for something else. What I found was a project. A big project.

The early 912 was listed in the printed autotrader as a “barn find.” I bit and drove up to Thomasville, Georgia to investigate. When I got there I had mixed feelings. It was an early targa 912. The car was complete, but it didn’t run. The rough blue paint also left a lot to be desired. None of that mattered, as much as the transmission. It had a Sportomatic. And in my mid-20s at the time, the last thing I wanted was an automatic.

I bought the car anyway. It seems like I paid a few thousand dollars, but, I don’t recall. All I remember was that it was a lot of money for me at the time. It didn’t matter. I owned it.

My future wife, Julie, helped me tow the car 40 miles from Thomasville to Tallahassee, Florida. With a rope. The car sat the few months remaining until I graduated, and I then took the car back home to Daytona Beach.

We wheeled the “little blue egg,” as I referred to it, into a friends garage, and I got to work. My first day of law school was three months away and I had a lot of work to do. The car needed work on the engine, brakes, and most of all paint. It has to be red. Guards red.

I haven’t owned many red cars over the years. And I don’t recall why I insisted on painting the car this traditional Porsche color. But, I assume it had something to do with my mindset at the time. Going to law school. Taking a Porsche. It had to be red.

I spent the summer working on the car. It was one of the quickest “restorations” I have ever done. And it holds particularly special memories for me, because I did it all myself. I sanded the body down, painted the car in my friend’s garage, and got it running. I still have a piece of blue paint visibly stuck under my skin, 27 years later. By the end of the summer, the car was done, and I drove it to out of Daytona and onto the road toward my new future. The photo above is the day I arrived at law school. In my, now, “little red egg.”

My 912 excitement didn’t long. Within a few months, I had grown tired of the Sportomatic. The combination of the automatic transmission, which I never got shifting correctly, along with the amateur “restoration,” left me wanting something different. One day on the way back to my apartment from school, I spotted a white 911, and that was all it took. I summarily sold the 912 and bought the 911.

In retrospect, I wish I had kept the 912. First, it was a unique car in that I bought it while in undergraduate college, worked on it all summer, and had it in law school. But, secondly, a sportomatic 912 is quite rare. Today, the car would be worth more than most of my others, combined. Like the blue paint stuck in my finger all these years, I never really got the “little blue egg” out of system. But, isn’t that everybody’s car story?