On June 14th I get a text from Tom. “Hey Doug…how’s things? Hope you’re well. Give me a call when you have a minute…might be ready to sell Grey back if you’re interested. I’ll keep it if you’re not there yet.”
I call him immediately. My first two words are “How much?”
I buy plane tickets 48 hours later. Work obligations keep me from getting out there for another four weeks, but the deal is done. I’m getting my car back.
Why a 914
My grandparents lived in Sewickley, PA. Small suburb of Pittsburgh with a Porsche dealer right on the main drag. Every time I’d walk to the grocery store as a kid, I’d take a hundred-foot detour through the dealer’s parking lot. The 914 was really small…small enough that I could see into it easily at whatever age I was. It became my favorite car before I was old enough to drive.
There are people who’ll tell you the 914 is really a VW. That debate has been going on for more than 50 years and I’m not getting into it here. To me it is a Porsche. It became my first.
The First Two
In 2002 I’m living in Columbus and I meet a guy with a 1976 914 2.0 in Sunflower Yellow. $2,000 is all the money in the world to me, but I have to have it. I enjoy that car for a year before the rust in the “hell hole” gets so bad I have no choice but to sell it.
A few years later, I buy a Saturn Yellow 1973 2.0 and spend the entire winter restoring it in the garage. Down to bare metal. Painted it myself. Re-did the interior to near perfect. I love that car. But then Garrett comes along and I’m buying a business. Banks care more about “money in checking account” than “number of cars in the garage.” I sell it.
The Seed
A few years later I’m at a 914World.com event in California and I see a guy who’s crammed an EJ20 out of a Subaru WRX into his 914. The car is a hot mess…wires everywhere, breaks down just idling while he’s showing it off. But he plants a seed. I’m going to do another 914. And I’m going to use a Subaru power plant.
August 19, 2013, I post on 914World.com: “Hey gang! I’m back in the mix, and getting ready for another 914 restoration.”
I find a 1975 914 in California that someone has already converted to a Chevy 350. Good starting point since it already has a radiator. Little do I know how far I’ll be taking things over the next decade.
The Build
When you’re restoring a car, there are different levels. There’s the quick turnaround. There’s the take-apart-and-put-back-together. And then there’s the full resto-mod. I’m doing the latter.
I strip everything until I’m down to a bare metal frame. Parts pile up from the teardown. More parts arrive daily from UPS. I have the idea to paint it in a dove grey with darker grey and black accents…way before the grey-on-grey look becomes trendy. The car gets dubbed Grey Matter.
Garrett is 7 at this point. Old enough to “help dad in the garage.” I hand him a wrench and point him at a part and let him go to town. To be clear, he is absolutely no help whatsoever. But that’s the whole point of every car guy letting their kid in the garage for the first time.
I set a goal of one year. I’ve done a big restoration before. I figure I can double down on that same energy.
I am very wrong.
Handing It Over
By page 30 of my build thread on 914World, the car is 80% done with 80% to go and I have to tap out. Then I get a DM from a guy in Columbus named Scott Amenson who’s been following my progress. He’s done his own Subaru conversion. His car is on the road and impressive as hell. He offers to take over my build.
Music to my ears.
Scott shows up with a trailer and an empty pickup truck. He leaves with the bed full of parts and Grey Matter on the trailer. Over the next year, I get updates every few weeks. Pictures appear on the build thread. The whole community is watching.
A lot of the parts we spec for this build end up becoming production pieces. I’d design something, we’d fabricate it, fine-tune it, and then the fabricator would start selling it to other people doing Subaru swaps on 914s. Adapter plates, mounts, brackets…parts that people are still buying to this day for their own conversions. That’s part of why Grey Matter becomes known in the 914 community. It’s not just a build. It’s a reference car.
The engine is an EJ20 out of a 2006 STI with a VF39 turbo. I have the motor completely torn down and rebuilt by a master engine builder who spares nothing. If there’s a performance mod available for the internals of a Subaru motor, this one has it. Close to 400 horsepower in a car that weighs less than 2,000 pounds.
Letting Go
Right around 2015, life comes apart. Divorce. An impending bankruptcy from a co-signed loan where the company defaulted. I need to sell things. Grey Matter is the thing I can sell. I don’t want to…I have to.
But how do you sell an 80% done car that still has (now) 40% to go…sitting in another guy’s garage? I have a hard conversation with Scott and tell him the lay of the land. He’s obviously in a bit of a pickle but agrees to be helpful where he can. I post it for sale. Within a week I have several offers. Nobody wants to pay anything close to what I have invested. Not for a non-running car. Then I meet Tom.
Tom lives in Massachusetts. 700 miles from where the car sits in Columbus. Tom calls Scott…they talk extensively…Scott agrees to continue the work. I’m saved. Tom’s offer isn’t the lowest I hear, and it isn’t the highest. But it comes with a promise.
“If I ever want to sell the car, you’ll be the first person I call, and I’ll only charge you what I have into it.”
Sold.
Watching From a Distance
Work continues. Scott finishes the car about a year after Tom buys it. They keep posting to the build thread. It’s like a divorced dad watching his kid grow up through pictures on Facebook.
I get invited by both of them to Columbus when Scott fires it up for the first time. That sound…an EJ20 with a built bottom end and a VF39 spooling up in a car that was designed for a flat-four Volkswagen engine…it’s angry. It’s perfect.
The years go by. Tom sends updates. He takes the car in different directions from some of my original design decisions. Makes modifications I wouldn’t have made. It’s his car now. I call Tom before I buy every other toy car just to check. Before the 911. Before the M6. “You ready to sell yet?” The answer is always no.
In early 2022, I want another 914 build so badly that I buy another 1975 chassis and start accumulating parts. I’ve got a 2,000 square foot garage that a friend owns in Mentor, Ohio with every tool imaginable. I start tearing it down to the frame. Boxes and bins of parts everywhere. It’s go-time again.
And then I have to move. I leave my wife and relocate an hour south. I’m no longer five minutes from the shop. I’m also working in Chicago every week. The build becomes an all-day event I have to plan for. I can’t just pop over for an hour anymore. I’m stuck.
The Text
June 14, 2023. Tom’s text. Tickets bought 48 hours later. Four weeks of waiting through work obligations. Then July 15th arrives and Jake Strong and I are on a plane to Boston.
Jake is a mechanic at Porsche Beachwood and exactly the kind of friend who’s down for stupid shit like flying one-way to pick up a 48-year-old car with a modified engine and driving it 700 miles home.
True to his word, Tom sells it back to me for what he paid, plus the money he put into getting it running. As I’m leaving, he says something that sticks with me. “This was always your car. Everyone that saw it knew it.”
The very first time I drive Grey Matter is pulling out of Tom’s driveway.
The Drive Home
The car drives like an angry cat. Close to 400 horsepower in a chassis that weighs nothing is something to behold. Jake and I are ear to ear the whole way back.
Somewhere in upstate New York we drive into a monsoon. No AC. No heat. Top off because you can’t exactly pull over on the highway and put the top up on a 914 in the rain. Jake has his shirt off and is wiping the inside of the windshield with it to keep the fog at bay for an hour straight. We are soaked and laughing the entire time.
We pull into Mike’s garage and put it up on the lift. Mike and Jake have only ever heard about this car. I’d reminisce sometimes about “the one that got away.” Now they’re seeing it up close for real. Every piece of fabrication. Every detail. The engine bay. I am so proud to finally show my close friends what I’d been talking about all those years.
Scott
Just days after I get the car back, on July 18th, Scott Amenson dies suddenly in his sleep. He was 47. Perfectly healthy. No warning.
We’d been planning the next round of work together. He wanted to upgrade the engine management computer and redo a few little things that bothered him. Nothing that bothered me…but Scott was just that way. If it wasn’t right in his eyes, it wasn’t right.
I’m talking to him on the 17th all day. He doesn’t respond to my text on the 18th. No big deal…he takes a day or two sometimes. Then a text from my other friend Mike on the 20th. “Did you hear about Scott?”
Scott was the most talented fabricator and engineer I’d ever met. He took Grey Matter so much farther than I would have ever been able to on my own. When I handed things over to him, he told me the car was in good hands. It truly was. We talked a lot over the next ten years. Truly gifted engineer.
There is still a list of things I need to finish on Grey Matter. But the work that Scott did…that’s permanent. Every time I open the engine bay or crawl under the car, I see his craftsmanship. The car is a monument to what he could do.
Full Circle
A few weeks ago, I had some work to do and I roped Garrett back into the garage. He’s 18 now. The last time he “worked on it” with me, he was 8 years old. Ten years. Same car. Same kid. Different everything.
He still refuses to drive it. Says he’s scared of it. I don’t blame him. 400 horsepower in a car this light is not for the timid.
There’s still a list of things to finish. There always will be. These cars are never really done. But I can take my sweet time with it now. Grey Matter is home. She’s never leaving me again.
