Owners take the posh out of Porsche

The annual Porsche rally saw trainees and tycoons - all dressed in Owners' Club fleeces - united in their passion for a prudent car that just gets better with age. Giles Chapman reports

You probably have plenty of preconceived ideas about Porsches, but cheapness is not, I wager, among them. Yet at the Porsche Festival - and despite the growl of race-proved engines filling the hallowed Brands Hatch atmosphere - the eager concept of "fiscal prudence" cropped up over and over again.

It felt strange, almost inappropriate even, but here is Roger Coe-Salazar, a businessman from East Grinstead: "I have a 928GT. It's far cheaper to run than a modern BMW like, say, an M5. I can't stand a boring car; I have to have something interesting to drive every day. The 928 has supercar performance, but it's very reliable."

Crikey, it's like getting sports car advice from an aunt. He can't be firing on all cylinders. But James Seed from Woking speaks the same language. He bought his 968 Club Sport, once voted Autocar magazine's best-handling car in the world, after cashing in some share options. Okay, so he's pushing a baby buggy while his wife spends the day pampering herself, but let's hear some tasty driving tales. Er, no. "These cars have very low depreciation. you know," he enthuses. "You can drive one on very little money."

Arghh. Get me David Newton, chairman of the Porsche Club Great Britain, the 16,000-strong body behind the Porsche Festival at Brands. Well, he does put me right on one important point. You should always say "Porsch-a", and not "Porsch", which I'd often wondered about. But here he goes, off again. "I'd had MGs but, dare I say it, got fed up with their unreliability, so in1979 I bought a brand new 924. It cost £10,850, and I sold it nine months later for pretty much the same money. Then I got a 944 and then my first 911".

The reason for all this financial savvy seems to go back to one event in1976. This was when Porsche decided to dip the bodies of their already acclaimed sports car into hot zinc. This galvanising rendered the inevitable onset of rust a thing of the past. Cars like the 911 Turbo, introduced in1974 were already bullet-fast; now they were bullet-proof as well.

Porsche can boast that some 85 per cent of all the cars it's ever sold still exist. And most of them appeared to be thronging Brands Hatch over the August bank holiday. For, no matter what the cars' finesse in the mechanical department, Porsche owners like to drive them. What better nugget to lob into the conversation at the golf club bar (after mentioning the rock-solid residual value, of course) than to say you've just taken a spin in your 911 around a proper racing track?

The Porsche Club GB has always staged an annual weekend jamboree, but this was the first time it's been turned into a festival, and the first time at the luridly bloke-ish Kent race circuit rather than a stately home. What seemed remarkable, however, was the levelling effect of the day. After all, you can count out those 1- and 2p coins and buy yourself a roadworthy Porsche 924 from the small ads, or you can ask your secretary to organise the £330,000 transfer required for a brand new Carrera GT. You can even sell the yacht and hit the million pound-plus mark if you want a piece of rolling Porsche Le Mans heritage of your own.

Yet on the day, trainees and tycoons were united in their Porsche Club fleeces, as interested to hear about each other's cars as new mums sharing the secrets of a full night's sleep. "You have to be an enthusiast", maintains Chris Horton, editor of top-selling monthly magazine 911 & Porsche World, "because the cars are quirky. There must be one or two Boxster and 911 owners in central London who drive them simply because they look flash, but I think they're in the minority".

Today is clearly not the day to bring up the thorny issue of Porsche's diversification away from sports cars and into the SUV world with its comparatively gross Cayenne off-4x4 roader.

"Well, the basic Cayenne is the cheapest new Porsche you can buy", reasons David Newton. "Do I like it? Hmm, that's a good question. I don't know", ponders James Seed, anxious not to break ranks.

"I approve, but I'm not a fan", says Brian Farminer of Gosport, owner of a beautifully presented 1989 Porsche 911 Turbo - before returning to strangely familiar conversational territory: "Did you know, you can buy a really lovely Porsche for under £5,000?"

Only Tage Tatman, a Florida-raised IT guy and 911 Turbo owner from Reading, kept it breezy: "Oh yeah, I love 'em. I've always liked Porsches and I like the Cayenne. I'd have one if I didn't already have a Mercedes as a family car."

I think I'll stop stirring. Anyway, here at Brands you can just ignore the Cayennes which occasionally loom out of nowhere and head straight for the Upper Paddock. Here, a collection of cars has been assembled which should make any devoted Porsche fanatic's heart leap for joy.

Casually parked, as though their drivers had all pulled into Watford Gap services for a pee and a latté, were examples of just about every significant Porsche racing car. Heading the line-up, a dainty Porsche 356, the very first one ever sold in the UK and a prime example of Dr Ferdinand Porsche's original, 1940s concept for a weekend sports car that mixed robust Volkswagen Beetle underpinnings with aerodynamic styling.

At the other end of the scale, Allan McNish's Porsche 911 GT1, the very car in which he won the gruelling Le Mans 24-hour endurance race in 1998. In between, three examples of the 917, Porsche's awe-inspiring early 1970s sports-racer with which it first conquered that epic French race.

Eoin Sloan, a former Royal Navy commander, is in charge of the Club's Motorsport Register, and has coaxed owners and museums into letting these precious machines out for the event. His courtly manner and formidable shuttle diplomacy honed in the Navy have brought £11m of unique Porsche racing artefacts here for all to see, up-close. There are no barriers and hardly any "Do Not Touch" signs; ice-cream drips from cones held in small hands just inches away.

Commander Sloan pats an engine on a metal stand. "If you wanted one of these then one could be made but it would cost over £1m," he says casually. His own Porsche 911T/R, one of just four right-hand drive cars, has a phenomenal rollcall of famous previous owners, including gentlemen racers Sir Anthony Bamford and Alain de Cadenet.

"Porsche racing cars have often proved just too successful," he says. "They were often banned from race series if they began to dominate."

Aren't you just a little bit worried about, er, security, I venture. "Security?" he says. "Oh, I've got plenty of security." He gestures around him at several Club-attired young men, apparently talking Porsche to excited visitors but, in fact, on covert Cornetto surveillance.

You don't need to own a Porsche to join the Porsche Club, and I wondered how many festival-goers have a Toyota Corolla (like me). The first 14 people I accost - men and women, clad in everything from tracksuits to tweed jackets - all own a Porsche, and some of them try to tell me what great value they are. Finally, I encounter Steve Aspinall. He's got a Vauxhall Astra coupé and, because he lives in West Kingsdown next to Brands Hatch, he gets a free resident pass to the circuit. With the high-pitched, air-cooled scream of a trio of 911s speeding past him on the track, it's important to keep the neighbours sweet. "Being local, we'll generally pop along most weekends and see what's happening," he says.

Susan Smith from Banstead, Surrey, meanwhile, has become an instant convert. She only took delivery of her almost-new Boxster three days before and, now, here she is in the cradle of Porsche enthusiasm. "I've always loved the cars, and it's great to see so many of them here. Mine's a lovely blue colour; oh, is that a really girly thing to say?"

No, honestly it's fine, Sue. You haven't mentioned depreciation once.