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Visiting Canepa

There is no place like Canepa in the world. Where else can you find a showroom with the world’s finest Porsches alongside a complete on-premise restoration facility, a private motorsport museum, a workshop dedicated to the support of historic racecars, and an innovative custom vehicle design house? Now here but Canepa close to Santa Cruz in California. Bruce Canepa is a American race driver who started his career in 1966. He drove in late 1970 ́s and early 1980 ́s the famous Porsche 935 race cars and in the 1980 ́s his own Porsche 962. He started Canepa Motorcars business in 1982. Carrera Classic had the great honor to meet Bruce Canepa at his base in Scotts Valley in mid September. We first looked his showroom with nice Porsche 959, two 356 Carrera 2 and very original 911 S among other cars. The star of the showroom was the yellow, one of 4, 1967 911 R prototype. As we met Bruce in his showroom, he invited us to the tour around his workshop and museum. The large restoration facility was full of exotic Porsches like 959, 993 GT2, 935 ́s, 962́s… The facility is doing everything from body work and painting to the engine and electrical work. Everything was clean like a hospital and very professional. Canepa has their own special program to upgrade old 959 to be road legal in US with their 763 hp engines. The original was already 444 hp ! In the private museum there are several historically important race cars. Closest to our hart was the 1969 Porsche 917K chassi 015. This is the Gulf Blue 917 which was driven in 1970 and 1971 by Leo Kinnunen. In 1970 he won the Daytona 24h race with Pedro Rodrigues and Brian Redman. In 1971 Kinnunen won in Imola with the same car. There would be a lot more to tell, but it was truly a memorable visit, thanks to very kind hospitality of Bruce Canepa himself.

 

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