Porsche fans can be a pedantic bunch and, in the first two years of the brand’s official restoration challenge, it seemed to celebrate only those classics that were brought back to like-new condition. For its third year, though, Porsche has updated the rules of the challenge to celebrate three kinds of classics.
American Porsche dealers will now be able to compete in one of three categories. The first is the Preservation category, which asks dealers to be as restrained as possible. That includes historic cars that have only had minor touch-ups and repairs to keep them working, rather than a full restoration.
The second category, then, is the one you might expect the most from the challenge. For dealers competing in the Restoration category, the name of the game is getting their car as close to like-new condition as possible. That means unblemished paint, and everything in perfect running order, with any new parts replaced with Porsche reproduction parts.
Read: Porsche 930 Turbo Is This Year’s Winner Of Porsche Classic Restoration Challenge
The final category is either the most exciting, or the most heretical one, depending on your point of view. For the Individualization category, dealers will still be incentivized to use Genuine Parts, but will be celebrated for their creativity, and their ability to “fulfill a special wish” for a client.
“The response from the Porsche community and our participating dealerships for the past two years has been tremendous,” said Jonathan Sieber, the senior manager of Porsche Classic in North America. “It’s incredibly rewarding to watch a classic Porsche vehicle go through a well-documented, step-by-step restoration that the challenge expects, and the results certainly show.”
Porsche says that 60 dealers will be competing in the restoration challenge this year, and will be able to select any model from the ’60s to the 2000s. Judging has now begun in the three regions—East, South-Central, and West—and a winner in each category will be selected.
The nine regional winners will then be presented at the Rennsport Reunion 7, the world’s largest Porsche fan gathering, which runs from September 28 to October 1 at the WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, in California this year.
There, one winner will be chosen for each category, meaning that, for the first time ever, there will be three top trophies awarded at the Porsche Classic Restoration Challenge. They will be selected by a panel of experts from Porsche Cars North America.
