Air-cooled Porsche 911s feel like trophies for collectors these days. But for US Navy vet Hector, his 1986 3.2 Carrera shows how far he's come from a kid ducking bullets in 1990s Brooklyn.

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"When you’re walking out in the streets of Brooklyn back when I was coming up, it was really dangerous. Graffiti, crack bottles, syringes, drive-bys... I’ve cooked crack. I’ve stolen cars. It was the people that I rolled with that didn't want that for me. [They] were like, this is not for you bro. Go to school."

So yeah, not your typical vintage Porsche guy. After falling in with the wrong crowd, Hector got his head on straight and got out of Brooklyn by joining the Navy. 22 years later, he finally saved enough to buy a car he'd wanted since seeing it in Car & Driver as a 7-year-old: a classic 1986 G-body 911, the last year of the classic 911 that still got the original 915 manual transmission.

Starting with a stock 3.2 Carrera, Hector caught up on a ton of maintenance, then took a page from Magnus Walker's book and made it his own. Performance mods include a Steve Wong chip tune, WEVO shifter and engine mounts, Fabspeed cat bypass and Supercup exhaust, Zimmerman cross-drilled rotors with Porterfield ceramic pads, Elephant Racing torsion bars, upgraded bushings and bearings, and more.

The result is a head turner, one hell of a backroad cruiser, and a ticket to bigger things. He even ended up connecting with Magnus who gave him tips for dialing in his suspension setup.

"I think a car allows us freedom. It’s a gateway. With a car you can get into circles you normally can’t get into. You can start conversations with the most random stranger. Y'know, we have our rivalries, BMW guys against the Porsches, stuff like that. At the end of the day, cars are one of those things that always brings people together."

Produced, shot, and edited by   / tomgorelik  

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