Customer Car

Two Brothers. Two Porsches. One Standard.

How Dave and Rick Lyons turned two very different Porsches into the cars they always wanted, with a little help from PMB Performance.

Sometimes one dream car leads directly to another. For Rick Lyons, the road to PMB Performance began with his brother Dave’s Alaska Blue Metallic Porsche 914-6.

Dave’s car had already been through the PMB process, and Rick had been watching from the sidelines as the project came together. He saw the updates Dave received, the attention being paid to the smallest details, and what Rick describes simply as a team that was “dedicated to excellence.”

Then he got to drive it, and Dave’s twin-plug 2.7-liter 914-6 wasn’t exactly the kind of car that quietly made its case. Rick remembers the experience as exhilarating: the sound, the immediacy, the almost go-kart-like handling, and the sensation that the little Porsche felt more like a vintage race car than a street car. As Rick puts it, “Conversations were challenging, but grins were wide!”

That drive did more than give Rick a good afternoon behind the wheel. It showed him what could happen when the character of an old Porsche was preserved while everything underneath it was made genuinely right. Before long, Rick was going to need exactly that kind of help.

Thirty Years With One 911

Rick’s Grand Prix White 1984 Carrera Targa wasn’t a recent acquisition or a car purchased as the starting point for a build. He bought it in Portland in 1996, nearly 30 years ago, and that history matters because this wasn’t about creating somebody else’s interpretation of a G-body 911. Rick already knew exactly what he loved about his car.

The Carrera had always seemed mechanically strong. It didn’t smoke excessively or consume alarming amounts of oil. It had seen track days, and Rick readily admits he “was not always a Sunday driver,” but nothing suggested that the car was on the verge of becoming a major project.

Time, however, has a way of catching up with even the cars that seem healthy. After spending several years parked in Oregon, the Carrera eventually followed Rick to Whitefish, Montana. It was cleaned, serviced, and put back into use, but after a few years the clutch began making noise.

Rick knew it was trying to tell him something, but he waited a little too long. While the Porsche was being loaded onto a trailer for a clutch replacement and inspection, the clutch finally came apart with a bang. That was the beginning of what would become a much larger story.

When a Repair Becomes a Rescue

The engine and transmission were removed at a shop in Kalispell for evaluation, and then the updates started arriving. Each one seemed worse than the last.

Meanwhile, the drivetrain was at the shop, the body was sitting in Rick’s garage, and what had begun as a clutch job had stretched beyond 18 months. Rick had reached the point every longtime enthusiast dreads: the car wasn’t really broken anymore because it wasn’t really a car anymore. It had become a collection of parts, problems, and unanswered questions spread between locations.

So, Rick called his brother and asked whether PMB could get the project back on the right path. Dave’s recommendation was emphatic. He already knew what PMB had done with his 914-6, Rick had watched it happen, and more importantly, Rick had driven the result. The Carrera was coming to PMB.

Not a Hot Rod. Not a Restoration. Rick’s 911.

Once we got into the car, it became clear that the engine and transmission had lived a harder life than their outward behavior suggested. For Rick, some of the findings were surprising. The engine had always felt strong, while the gearbox had merely shown the familiar signs of age, with some gears becoming more difficult to engage.

But the deeper we went, the more understandable the wear became. This was a 911 that had been driven. It had enjoyed track days, accumulated 148,000 miles, and Rick had used the car the way Porsche intended.

Initially, the plan was to retain the original 3.2-liter displacement. But when the opportunity to build the engine as a 3.4 presented itself without dramatically changing the scope of the project, Rick made the call: “I pulled the trigger.”

The transmission received the opposite mandate: preserve what made it special. Rick had always enjoyed the ratios in his European-market gearbox, including its relatively rare transmission cooler, and keeping that character intact was important. The transmission was rebuilt to factory specification rather than altered simply for the sake of modification.

The result is exactly the balance Rick had been hoping for. It remains an air-cooled Carrera that behaves like an air-cooled Carrera, only now with a considerably larger reserve of confidence under your right foot.

The Difference Between Waiting and Wondering

There was still a wait. Our engine and transmission build schedule meant Rick’s drivetrain spent time in the queue before work could begin, and considering what he had already experienced, you might expect that to have been the hardest part of the process.

It wasn’t, and Rick explained the difference perfectly: “I had been frustratedly waiting before at the previous shop but the news was always bad. At least with PMB I knew it would get better.” There is a tremendous difference between waiting for craftsmanship and waiting because nobody knows what happens next.

Eventually, the Carrera came back together with its rebuilt transmission, its new 3.4-liter flat-six, and Steve Wong engine management. Then, Rick finally got his car back.

The First Drive

The first proper drive took him around Whitefish, up toward his local ski hill, and around Whitefish Lake. After years of ownership, months of frustration, and a project that at one point seemed to be moving farther away from completion rather than closer, Rick was back behind the wheel of his Targa, and he didn’t want to stop.

The transmission is equally transformed. Shifting is consistent, the clutch engagement is right, and the entire drivetrain now works as one system rather than a collection of aging components asking the driver for allowances.

Around Flathead Lake

Perhaps the best measure of any project like this isn’t a dyno sheet or a specification list. It’s whether the owner reaches for the keys, and Rick does.

On a recent trip around Flathead Lake, autumn had begun settling into Montana and the summer tourist traffic had faded away. Rick remembers feeling as though he had the road almost to himself, and this is exactly where the finished Carrera makes sense.

The car is quick and nimble. It can be driven comfortably through town and then come alive when the road begins to twist. Rick describes powering out of corners as “a blast,” surrounded by the kind of scenery that makes you wonder why anyone would leave an old Porsche sitting in a garage.

More importantly, he trusts it again. “My confidence in the car is high,” Rick says. “I feel like it is dependable and fun for everyday driving.” There are still a few aging interior electronics demanding attention, and Rick knows it, but he also doesn’t particularly care when the weather is perfect, the Targa roof is off, and Flathead Lake is unfolding in front of him.

That may be the greatest compliment we could receive. The car is no longer something Rick has to worry about before enjoying; it has gone back to being something he simply gets in and drives.

Two Brothers. Two Very Different Porsches.

Dave’s Alaska Blue 914-6 and Rick’s Grand Prix White Carrera Targa could hardly deliver their thrills in more different ways. Dave’s twin-plug 2.7 is visceral, loud, and immediate: a car Rick describes as having the feeling of a vintage race car. Rick’s 3.4-liter Carrera is more subtle, still unmistakably the mid-1980s 911 he has loved for 30 years, but now with the responsiveness, strength, and mechanical confidence that allow him to enjoy it without constantly wondering what might happen next.

Rick says the greatest surprise in the finished Carrera is the engine itself: smooth, strong, responsive, and accompanied by an exhaust note that finally matches the experience. Asked to describe the car in one word, he chose “Perfection,” not because it has become some immaculate object that should never get dirty, but because, in Rick’s words, “It fits my driving style: subtle and solid.”

When asked what he would tell another G-body Carrera owner staring at a tired 3.2 and wondering what to do next, Rick’s advice was equally straightforward: “Contact the team at PMB and get a classy solution.” We appreciate that, Rick, but the line we like best may be the simplest one he gave us: “Back and better than ever before.”

That is what this work is supposed to accomplish. Two brothers with two completely different Porsches now have two dream cars built around the people who actually drive them, and a whole lot of wide grins.