German tourists and the Audi R8 by Russ Bond

Good friend and occasional commenter here in The Garage Jouni Ranta is one of those Ontarians whose transplanted himself to a Canadian mountain town. He began his day today with a walk to the office. Rough life in those mountain towns. Anyway, back to our brush with an R8 story.

While walking through a gas station parking lot, Herr Ranta came across a fully fueled R8 about to drive off with it’s fuel door open. Being the friendly Canadian, our hero struck up a conversation with the forgetful R8 driver. One thing led to another and they headed off to a hotel together.

Ok, this is a car blog so get your head out of the gutter. One was working in the hotel, the other was staying there. Hmmm..this isn’t getting any better now, is it? The driver was none other than legendary Canadian automotive trekker Garry Sowerby in one of the Audi R8 Performance Tour cars. Imagine that. One Canadian fellow in a cool car offers a ride to another Canadian fellow in a small mountain town. You’d almost think someone scripted that. This is real life, you can’t script these things. Unless of course there was a Mountie in the picture.

Another friend of The Garage, Russ Bond was actually taking part in the R8 Performance Tour and while Rustye didn’t meet up with the Mounties on his travels from Barrie, Ontario all the way to Thunder Bay, he did manage to get some photo ops with the OPP. Be sure to visit Russ’ full account of the trek over at Painkillerz.ca where he not only has some great shots and the full story, but he’s also filmed a pretty cool V-log of the trip. Very cool.

I’ve been wondering when we were going to hear more news about the progress of Number 27, the Ranta Porsche 901 that is currently being restored in Pfaffenhausen by the Ruf team. The original plan had been to have the car finished some time this summer. It looks like that probably won’t happen, but it’s nice to see that things are progressing well.

Another shot after the break
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#27

We got a nice surprise in the inbox yesterday, sent from Herr Ruf. Our old friend #27 is safe and sound in the Ruf facility, awaiting the beginning of a full restoration. In each of the shots, the car is posing with Alois Ruf on the right. On the left is Hans. He has 34 years of working on Ruf cars under his belt and is the guy who restored Ruf’s other 901, #37. This guy is the real deal, and will begin work on #27 soon.

More photos after the break
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Our coverage of Number 27’s voyage back to zee motherland continues with these pics of the Porsche 901 at it’s temporary stopover point in rural Quebec. After leaving the Ranta garage, the car survived it’s trip and finished up in style with a more than worthy stablemate. It is currently sharing garage space with a Ruf Turbo.

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Today was a bittersweet day. Number 27 left the Ranta household after living there for the last 43 years. It has begun it’s journey back to Germany, where it will be lovingly restored by the crew at Ruf Automobile in Pfaffenhausen under the watchful eye of Alois Ruf. Following it’s resto, the car will tour Europe as it did in the sixties and then finish up in the Ruf Porsche Museum.

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As regular readers of The Garage will know that I spent much of my teenage years in the Ranta household, soaking up not only friendship, but a bit of automotive history. What some of you may not know is that one of the air cooled gems in the family collection is a very early Porsche 911. In fact, so early that the car is actually a 901, not a 911. It is number 27 of a production run of around 82 cars. Many people believe that 1964 was the first year for the 911, this car is a ‘63. This car has been in the Ranta family since 1963. 43 years. It may soon take a long trip back to Germany to begin a restoration to it’s original condition.

Porschephiles will be more than familiar with the Ruf name. Ruf is a premier tuning company that works closely with the Porsche factory. Company leader Alois Ruf visited the Ranta house today and spent the afternoon inspecting number 27 and swapping stories.

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