Ben Hsu is a car nut and loves his 1981 911 Turbo! He owns nine cars that are purely part of his passion plus four daily drivers. The collection includes Corvettes, Porsches, an Ariel Atom track car, and a Chevy SSR. This episode focusses on his collection of Porsches. The first car he fell in love with was a 1981 Porsche 911 Turbo that he saw near his high school as a teenager. Years later he would buy the very same car and he shows it to us. He also owns a 2015 911 GT3RS and a 2018 911 GT3. His love of these cars is evident as he gives us an overview of each of them.
Transcript:
You know what, this car is priceless to me. It doesn't matter what, you know it's got no monetary value to this car because it's a car that I will never sell. It's been with me longer than anyone except for my parents. Hi everybody and welcome to Center Lane I'm Bruce Hitchen and today I'm at the home of Ben Hsu. Now ben has just a really lovely collection of cars, a big variety of cars in fact but today we're going to focus on his collection of Porsches. He's got three really beautiful ones that he's going to show us today. Now if you like this content please be sure to subscribe to me on YouTube. Now Ben can you tell me a little bit about how you got interested in cars in the first place and what started you collecting? I've always been a car guy. I think I was born as a car guy. I've had the biggest collection of Hot Wheel cars when I was a kid and got my license the day I turned 16 and you know the rest is history. You do have a large collection and I know they're not all here. This is your home garage but I think you've got a facility somewhere else where you've got a few extra cars. How many do you have in total? My household I have thirteen cars but collectibles, I have nine. And what do they range from, tell me just a little briefly about what they are? I have Corvettes, I have Porsches, I have an SSR, you know kind of an oddball. I have track cars, I have street cars. You have three really nice Porsches here in the garage and one is I think a 1985? 81. 81, yes and I'll get you to start and tell me about that because I think that was one of your early cars, correct? Yes. I first saw the car while I was still in high school, it was grade 11. This car came around the corner; it really caught my eye because the colour, you know the wide fenders you know. Remember this is 1981. The Corvette had 170 horsepower, Ferrari 308s had 250 horsepower, this car had 300 horsepower. In the car community people talk about this car. Never seen one because they didn't bring any of these cars into North America from 1979 to 1985. So to see one go around the corner from my school it was quite a sight. As I discovered later on, it belonged to my high school friends dad. He purchased it brand new. Somehow the Canadian dealers found a loophole to bring these cars in. Not as a grey market car but as a Canadian delivered car. They're Euro spec, they're 300 horse, but they have the North American bumpers so they're very unique. After owning a business for a few years, I made my first dollar. Decided to go find my dream car and you know this car...I had posters all over my room of this car instead of Farrah Fawcett back in the 80s. And it's a car that I knew I would own one day. I lived in Edmonton at the time so I flew down to look at the car. You know the car checked all the boxes. It had the documents, it had the mileage, the colour, the option, the condition. Everything what I was looking for except for my budget. It was very expensive, it was over my budget so I thanked the seller for showing me the car. On my on my way to the airport and you know it just came to me. I phoned the seller back asked him what the name of the original owner was, and the name was, it's the same name as I knew when the car was new. So I basically told him. I said look I'll, when I get home, I'll send you a deposit. Don't sell the car. I will come and buy it and and we'll ship it back and 27 years ago!
The fact that this is a Canadian delivered car. This is one of 63 cars that were delivered in Canada in 1981. It's a 3.3 litre, turbocharged engine. 300 horsepower. It has a full leather interior, Recaro sport seats, 4-speed transmission. These were all 4-speeds from 1975 until 1988. 1989 was the only year of the 930 with a G50 transmission.
This particular car it's a, it's very low mileage car just over 60 000 kms. Everything I was looking for in a 930 this car was it. I've owned the car for 27 years, I'm the longest owner on this car. You know like, like, you you asked me earlier; what do you think the value of it? Well, you know what, this car is priceless to me. It doesn't matter. You know it's got no monetary value to this car because it's a car that I will never sell. It's been with me longer than anyone except for my parents and it's just an extension of me. Hopefully one of my sons will will take it and carry on with the with the legacy.
In the Porsche world the GT3 RS, when they first came out, when they first announced this car was going to be made...you pretty well have to be son of god to get one of these okay. So I left the deposit with a local Porsche dealership. For two years they never called me. They they never called me, my deposit was there. I never got a car, I knew production ended, I never got a phone call, so I knew I wasn't getting one okay. So I went out looking for a car similar to what I would have spec'd. Now these were going for 50% over MSRP, when they were new okay. As a second-hand car. So you know, I still wanted one. So after I got this, I had the news I had now allocation for that car and of course I took it. And the fact that the GT3 came with with the manual, okay. This is a PDK only car, automatic car. That's being a manual, so I took that allocation too. That's how I ended up with two very similar cars. They're similar but they're not similar. They announced this car in 2014 and it's a 2016 model year. They made this car one year only. What is the difference between a regular GT3 and an RS? What makes this car so special? Okay, so this is the the the top track model for the Porsche lineup, okay. It's got a 4.0 litre, naturally aspirated engine. The the front ends carbon fiber composite. The roof is a magnesium roof, okay. It has the Turbo wide-body with the vents on the side. 9000 rpm motorsport GT3 cup car engine in it and they only come in the PDK because it's the best transmission they have and they want the best track car to have the fastest, best transmission. PDK sport, which basically it's a track mode. The suspension setting firms up the suspension for track. Electronic stability control, you can turn that on and off. The second button is the traction control and the stability control all off. This button here is the dual mold exhaust. The front lift which lifts the front end an inch and a half to to go over obstacles. This button here it's a Pit Speed. I think when you push this it limits the speed to 40 kms/hr. Everything on this car is very functional and ergonomically correct for track driving. Porsche have done a really good job on this car. It's very quiet when when the exhaust is on quiet mode.
There's cruise control, there's air conditioning, there's a satellite radio. It's like your regular car until you turn all the all the uh, the nannies off. You know, the exhaust goes wide open, then it becomes a different beast. This this is more more of a, like a canyon type car, to me. Because you know it's a stick, it's manual, it's it's got a little narrower body than the GT3 RS, so it's a little more nimble. It's got more sound insulation so it's a little quieter, it rides a little better and it's a, it's more incognito compared to this car. This car is in your face. It's orange, it's got big wing, it's got, you know, big wide body, like this car...it can easily pass for regular car. So you know like I mean, it depends on where I'm going that I choose which one to take. Beautiful selection of cars and really great to see them all. What is it that you love about Porsche? What about Porsche is important to you as a driver? The the racing heritage on these cars is second to none. Like, from the moment you open the door you can feel the quality. You sit inside the car everything fits everything works and when you go to drive these cars, you know that they're put together by somebody that spent a lot of time at the race track. You know if you spend any time at a race track, Porsches are the cars that never break down. Like, I mean you have other cars. You got Hondas, you got, you know, Corvettes you got you got, you know, Alfa Romeos. There's always something wrong with those cars, you know. Like, after a few laps, the weak points come out. These cars you can go lap, after lap, after lap. The only variable is gas, brakes, and tires. That's it.
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