Turbo-look 1998 Porsche 911 Cabriolet 993
Although there were wide-bodied convertible versions of the Carrera 3.2 and 964, Porsche didn’t produced a showroom model of a 993 Cabriolet with Turbo-look wheel arches. We meet a man who made one for himself...
Words Johnny Tipler
Photography Dan Sherwood
CUT A WIDE SWATH
TURBO-LOOK 993 CABRIOLET A bespoke Turbo-look 993 Cabriolet
Many people frown upon certain words being used to describe appearance. ‘Fat’ is one such label, but in this instance, I invite those of judgemental ilk to come up with a more appropriate epithet to describe the swollen Turbo-esque wheel arches of the 993 Cabriolet belonging to Chronis Tsiligkeridis. Bulging? Bulbous? Unlike a broad-beam narrowboat, where the whole hull is widened, only the Porsche’s arches are larded up.
THE GORGEOUSNESS OF THE MODIFIED 993 CABRIOLET BODY WE BEHOLD BELIES THE BARBARIC CRUDITY OF THE OPERATION
Enough fatty talk. The story of this impressive, widebodied, drop-top 993 began some twenty years ago, when you could pretty much say what you liked and not get cancelled. Chronis, who speaks with an entrancing Greek lilt (think Zorba), was living in his native country and bought the car from a seller in Austria. It was a regular 993 Cabriolet in left-hand drive, complete with innocent standard narrow body. It didn’t stay that way for long, though.
THERE’S ALSO THE POINT ABOUT ITS UNIQUENESS, BEING A 993 MODEL DERIVATIVE THE FACTORY NEVER MADE
Chronis wanted something out of the ordinary, different from the regular 993. “I was always fond of Porsche’s wide-body 911s. Surprisingly, the 993 convertible was the only model in the range not offered from factory with the option of wide Turbo look.” Of course, he’s right. When you run the Turbo-arched droptop inventory through your memory bank, you’ll recall its immediate predecessor, the 964, was made in widearch format, as were the earlier Carrera 3.2s, known as Turbo-look and Sport Equipment SSE models. The water-cooled 996 and 997 Cabriolets were available in wide-bodied design, provided you ordered a Carrera 4S version. Chronis recognised the missing link and decided to go about filling it.
“I figured I could make my own 993 Cabriolet widebody and set about creating it. Obviously, back then, classic cars were not worth as much as they are in the present. Today, if you had a perfect low-mileage 993 Carrera in totally original shape, you’d think twice about cutting off its wheel arches and inserting new ones from a Turbo. Back in the day, however, a car like this was worth a lot less money — modifying it was not really an action viewed on the same level as destroying the Holy Grail.”
Chronis went ahead and placed an order with independent parts retailer, Design 911, for brand-new replacement Turbo wing panels manufactured by Danish Porsche spares brand, Dansk. Going the whole hog, at least as far as handling was concerned, he also ordered new suspension componentry, including Bilstein coilovers, which he rightly assumed would sharpen up the ride. He also decided to upgrade the brakes, buying a set of ‘Big Red’ calipers and pads, the kind ordinarily equipping the 993 Turbo. They were shipped in from the USA, Chronis having found them available on an especially good offer. “I had a friend who was regularly flying back and forth to the US. I asked him if he would mind bringing 100lb packages to me, and he agreed to courier them, one packet each month.” The Cabrio also needed a set of wheels to fill out those broader wings. Consequently, it is endowed with a set of eighteeninch Turbo Twists, shod with Michelin Pilot Sport tyres (225/40 ZR 18s on the front, 265/35 ZR 18s at the back). With all parts to hand, Chronis had the transition performed in 2002, whilst he was in Greece carrying out his compulsory military service. I ask him where the metalwork was done, but unfortunately, the specialist responsible is long gone. “I can’t remember the name of the place, but the firm went out of business in 2007. It was a company in Greece, that much I do know!”
The delightful gorgeousness of the curvaceous modified 993 Cabriolet body we behold belies the barbaric crudity of the operation which created it. The job the bodyshop was tasked with was brutal: slice off the standard wheel arches, weld on wider replacements, roll over the edge and repaint. There’s a concise — if slightly alarming — online tutorial for the work, authored by the good folk at Design 911. Point your browser at bit.ly/design911turbo and enjoy the read.
After the job was finished, Chronis kept the car for eighteen months, enjoying a few top-down trips around sunny Greece during this time, but then he came upon a 993 Turbo coupé with intriguing provenance. It had evidently been either owned by, or at least passed through the hands of, Porsche deity, Walter Röhrl. Adding to this provenance, the great man’s signature was on one of the door cards. “As soon as I learned of this, my heart was set on owning the car,” declares Chronis. A little bit fickle, do we think? “I wanted a really fast 911 and saw this as my opportunity. I decided to sell the Cabriolet.” We’ve all been there, done that. Seduced by the fast lady. In 2003, with the Turbo purchase lined up, Chronis despatched the drop-top to the UK in the custody of his friend, David. “I was still in Greece doing my military service, which is why I asked David to take my 993 to the UK and sell it for me. I wrote the ad and placed it in various publications. Almost immediately, a British Porsche enthusiast living permanently in France said he would like to secure ownership. He posted a cheque to me, and when it was cleared, he visited the UK and collected the car.” In a nutshell, the transaction was carried out by friend, David, without Chronis ever actually meeting the buyer. If I seem to be labouring the point, my reason for doing so will become clear shortly.
The buyer drove his Turbo-look Cabriolet to his home in the South of France, and there it lived for the next two decades. Here’s a thing. Back in the halcyon days of Performance Car magazine, I briefly traded back pages with one Jeremy Clarkson. My column was named Second Chances, in which I reviewed a model of car no longer made, but which had an exalted status (Alpine-Renault A110, for example) or had maybe just gone out of style (Lotus Esprit Turbo, anyone?). Chronis, it turns out, has a similar take on his own Slim-Fatboy 993 Cabriolet. Like getting back together with an old girlfriend who should never have been dumped in the first place, in 2022, he spotted an ad in the motoring press for a car looking very much like his bespoke 993 creation from two decades earlier. Nostalgia is a powerful thing — he decided to make a play.
“I reasoned it was highly unlikely there was another wide-body 993 Cabriolet in Arctic Silver with Metropole Blue seats. I’d put a brand-new soft-top on my car prior to selling. The 911 being advertised had a pristine fabric roof. I contacted the vendor, who confirmed it was my old Porsche! He recognised my name from the paperwork accompanying the car.” As it happened, the contact was a middleman, just like David had been for Chronis many years beforehand.
After a little negotiating, a deal was provisionally struck over the telephone — the owner agreed not to sell the car to anyone else before Chronis had stumped up his hard-earned cash. “He told me he wanted the car to return to my ownership because of my history with it. Two days later, I travelled over to France to be reunited with the Porsche.”
When Chronis looked at its mileage, he was shocked to discover that, in almost two decades, the silver stunner had covered less than a thousand miles each year. “The guy must have just stood around looking at the car!” he laughs. It transpired the seller occupied a house with a heated underground garage, in which he stored a small collection of Porsches. He wasn’t in the habit of using them often. The Cabriolet had been driven sporadically during its first and second summers in France, but spent most of its time thereafter laid up in air-conditioned bliss, alongside a selection of other classic Porsches. When the owner decided to downsize his collection because of impinging old age, the muscular 993 Cabriolet found itself up for grabs.
Chronis did the deal, but before making the trip to the South of France, he’d been on tenterhooks. “The prospect of seeing the old logbook with my name on it, plus all the documentation from when I originally owned the car, was just unbelievable. I was stunned because I knew for certain it was my old 993, although it was carrying new private plates. I really didn’t know what to expect. I wondered if it had been smashed? Maybe repainted? Two decades is a long time. The finish of the body conversion I had done in Greece was near perfection. The car was mint, as though it had just rolled out of the factory. How would it look in the metal almost twenty years later?” Pleasant relief abound when Chronis finally saw the car and recognised in was in pretty much the same condition as when he’d sold it many years previous.
That said, not driven for perhaps seventeen or eighteen years, the car was in need of immediate recommissioning. Although thrilled at getting reunited with an old friend — with whom he’d had an intimate, if whirlwind, relationship — Chronis had some tasks to perform. “Back in 2002, the tyres I had fitted to the car were new. It was rolling on the same rubber in 2022. The treads were still virtually unworn, but they were all cracked. They needed to be replaced as a matter of urgency. I also had to install new fuel lines, a new fuel tank and a fresh fuel pump, primarily because the original fuel pump was seized through lack of use. And, of course, I had a full service carried out in France before driving the car back to the UK.”
Reverting back to British registration might not have been that simple. The French registration process is labyrinthine and arcane, as my Côte d’Azur-domiciled daughter, Keri, found out recently, when transferring her Volkswagen from UK to French plates. “Contrôl Technique is insane,” affirms Chronis, “but luckily, after the seller bought the car from me, he kept it on UK registration throughout the many years it spent France. I really don’t know how he managed with the French MOT, the Contrôl Technique.”
Naturally, Chronis is happy to have the car back home again. “I wanted to resume ownership because of all the memories I have with this 911, not to mention all the work involved in the wide-arch transformation.” He has a fairly large collection of cars, including a Brumos RSR replica, which we featured on the cover of the September 2021 issue of Classic Porsche. Then there’s the ‘Walter Röhrl’ 993 Turbo and two 930-generation 911 Turbos, one being a 1976 build, the other from 1977. “I’ve also got a 928 GTS, a 924 Carrera GT, a 944 Turbo S and a few other Porsches.” It seems as though he has a classic Porsche for more or less any occasion. “I’ve always liked Porsche sports cars. Whenever I’ve had the opportunity to buy an interesting Porsche at a good price, I’ve done so, especially if I’m in a position to keep it. The only exception is the 964 Turbo 3.6.
They’re very difficult to obtain because the factory made only forty-two examples in right-hand drive. Three of them have passed through my hands. I sold one for around £40,000. It’s worth nearer £240,000 today! This is the model I wish I’d kept above all others.” Chronis is eager “to wrap some flesh around the skeleton of the story,” as he puts it. “I transformed a standard 993 Cabriolet into something more extravagant, then sold it in a moment of madness. The fact it has come back to me is amazing. This is a very unstressed 993, having covered only 40,000 miles. It features a VarioCam engine and, as far as the cosmetics and mechanicals are concerned, is in as-new condition.” There’s also the point about its uniqueness, being a 993 model derivative the factory never made — as a volume production car, at any rate.
Chronis is a professional money man, dealing in property and classic cars, with a keen focus on Porsche products. He first became interested in the marque at the age of fourteen. “I’ve always liked Porsches. When I was nineteen, I moved to the UK to start university. From my savings, I decided to buy a 944 Turbo. I was always keener on left-hand drive cars, so by the time I was pushing twenty, I went over to Germany and picked up a really nice late-spec 944 Turbo, stuck it on German export plates and drove it back to the UK. While I was in the process of getting the car registered in the UK, I discovered British insurance companies wanted to charge me a premium as much as the car was worth. I had little choice but to sell it. In fact, I took out an ad in the May 1998 issue of 911 & Porsche World magazine.” Thankfully, he managed to make three grand profit.
The fact the pound was worth a lot more than the euro certainly helped. And so, the seed was sown for further motor trading. Every six months or so, Chronis returned to Germany, bought a car which he ran legitimately for six months on temporary insurance and German export plates, sold it and repeated the process. “From that point onward, I’ve never looked back. My regular line of work was in the private banking sector, but as a hobby, I was sourcing cars for colleagues. After the 993 wide-body project, I decided to quit banking and have since been trading in property and classic cars.”
Based at Silsoe, Bedfordshire, he is located on the same trading estate as Porsche repair and maintenance outfit, Auto Umbau, though his is more of an ad-hoc operation. “I buy and sell cars for people I know,” he admits. “I don’t really have a showroom, though I do have premises where I store cars. I don’t operate normal office hours. I simply act as an agent, finding cars for people or selling on their behalf. To my mind, it’s not so much a full-time job as a hobby.”
His has been an interesting journey, certainly for the unsuspecting 993 Cabriolet, which found itself one minute looking like a sleek, trim drop-top, the next, a somewhat broad-shouldered macho poseur on the Grand Corniche. If cars could talk! Mind you, this one would be multilingual, having had time enough to learn Austrian, Greek, English and French.
Above Have you ever bought a Porsche you owned previously? Drop us a line — we’d love to hear your story.
Above Dry storage in France has kept the car in time capsule condition, including the tax disc Chronis treated it to in April 2005.
Facing page Forty thousand miles suggests this particular 3.6-litre M64 air-cooled flat-six is barely run in.
Above The car was exactly as Chronis last saw it, complete with Turbo-aping kick plates and steering wheel-mounted remote control for the retro Pioneer MP3 player.
Below Design 911 supplied the 993 Turbo quarters, which were expertly grafted to the Carrera Cabriolet body.
Above The car was exactly as Chronis last saw it, complete with Turbo-aping kick plates and steering wheel-mounted remote control for the retro Pioneer MP3 player.
Below Design 911 supplied the 993 Turbo quarters, which were expertly grafted to the Carrera Cabriolet body.
Above Friends reunited — Chronis and his bespoke Turbo-look 993 Cabriolet, joined together once again following a near two-decade absence from one another.