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I swapped some emails with fellow R Grupper Jack Olsen this week, catching up on news of Black Beauty II. Jack and I have not yet met, but he was the inspiration behind pics for my last set of t-shirts. His popular 911 has inspired much, much more.

The t-shirt stuff came from Pelican Scott’s idea for a forum thread to share self-portraits of owners and Porsches in a Jack Olsen style. That selfie was groundbreaking back in the day! The thread has been running for eight or more years, and has some top notch laughs; those in the know snapped up the shirts when we shot them like Jack.

Jack’s car is a legend. His first car – Black Beauty I: a ’73 911 running 3.6-litre power with a 915 trans  – was totalled in a crash at Laguna Seca in 2002. The tub was deemed beyond repair, so he rebuilt the drivetrain into a 1972 chassis, built wide for more rubber, and added mechanical grip.

Petrolicious recently filmed a great spot on BB II: watch it below. This is Jack all over: modest and self-effacing, but with hints of the obsessiveness so often found amongst Gruppers. R Gruppe cars may look like hot rods, but some of the recipes are fanatically precise: see Tilton for the cookbook.

While the chat with Jack was going on, I had Hayden Burvill from WEVO staying over, helping me drain our village of red wine and curry. Jack’s just fitted some WEVO-spec Öhlins suspension to BB, and that led to more good information from both of them, but more of that anon. Check out this video!