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Fashion icon Magnus Walker owns a $7.5 million Porsche collection

Apr 14, 2020, 22:25 IST

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  • 1990s fashion designer Magnus Walker has become one of the biggest names in the Porsche scene thanks to his incredible collection.
  • Kept in his downtown Los Angeles warehouse, it features some of the rarest Porsches around.
  • Experts have estimated that the collection is worth as much as $7.5 million.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcript of the video.

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Magnus: Hi I'm Magnus Walker. Greetings from my downtown LA Arts District warehouse. For those that don't know, I'm a man with a beard, but I'm also an avid Porsche collector and enthusiast. I describer myself as a builder, driver, collector in fact.

Narrator: A fashion icon of the early '90's who designed clothes worn by numerous Hollywood rock stars, Magnus Walker has become a name synonymous with Porsche thanks to his $7.5 million collection and his knack for building the most sought after custom Porsches around. Today we take a look at his most rare Porsches, from historical limited releases to one of a kind custom builds from Mr. Porsche himself.

Magnus: So the car I'm standing next to here is my 1980 924 Carrera GT. Pretty rare car. Porsche only made 406 of these. Essentially it's the evolution from the 1980 924 Turbo. To put it in Porsche perspective, it's the same motor tuned differently with different camshafts producing 210 horsepower compared to approximately 160. It's the street version of the Le Mans-winning 924 GTS or GTR.

So I'm standing next to the car affectionately known as 277. Long story short, the number doesn't mean much, but the car means a whole lot more. It started life as a 1971 911 T. T was the base model of production back in that period. By my math I've owned it for 21 years. I started club racing it in 2002 doing tracks such as Willows Springs, Laguna Seca, Thunder Hill and California Speedway. But it's become a pretty iconic car. It's the car I'm most associated with. It's the car I'm most comfortable with. It fits me like my favorite pair of shoes or jeans.

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Other than this car being repainted once in its original Irish Green color, it is bone stock original. We can't really go back in time but I can get behind the wheel of my 1966 911 and it feels like I've gone back in time 54 years to 1966. 80 to 100 mph feels really really fast in that car. It's moving around. It's making a lot of noise. You're connected to it, it's the visceral feeling. 100 in this car feels like you're doing 150. 150 in a new car feels like you're doing 100 because you're so disconnected.

This is one of my favorite cars, it's a 1978 SC. I call it the 1978 SC / "HR": hot rod. It's a car that I acquired almost ten years ago. It was a former track car, that I converted to more of a street track car. But the good thing about this and the relatability is that it was a "budget build." So this is the do-it-yourself punk rock version of creating a fun car for the street without breaking the bank.

This is number 310. It's the 310th 911 ever built. This was one of the first half dozen at the Brumos dealership. If you're a Porsche guy of course you know about Brumos. The little dealership in Jacksonville, Florida that had Peter Gregg and Hurley Haywood as its number 1 and 2 drivers. Hurley Haywood has won Daytona five times. He's won Le Mans multiple times. And he's really a Porsche racing icon and legend.

This is a '67 911 S. To give you a little history about Porsche these are. The short-wheel-based 911 debuted in 1964 with a 2-liter motor and approximately 140 horsepower. By 1967 Porsche had debuted the 911 S. Same 2-liter motor, but different camshaft and carburetor setup, now producing 160 horsepower. At one time I owned five '67 S cars. But this is sort of a holy grail car. They're now worth about ten times what I paid for them.

So I'm standing next to my center row of what I call the early Turbos. These are the '75, '76, and '77 3.0-liter Turbos. 1975 was the birth of the Turbo. Porsche only made 275 samples for the entire world back in 1975. Only 32 of them like this copper brown metallic one are right-hand-drive.

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This car over here is the first U.S. production Turbo, documented by the museum to be the first Turbo sold in America. The rest of the world got the Turbo in 1975. Due to safety and emissions, the original Turbo didn't arrive on the U.S. shore until 1976. This was the first one sold.

This is a great example of Porsche's mid-engine cars, the 914. That's a fun little project I did for the SEMA trade show in Las Vegas back in November. The interesting thing about this car is that it was literally sort of cosmetically made over in three days, by myself and Felix Holst, the guy I bought the car from. We essentially just sprayed it up with rattle cans and took it to the country's biggest auto show and displayed it with Mobile One.

Let's talk about the 1990 964. This is my most performance-oriented build to date. Obviously it looks like a 911, but if you come around to the front you'll see that the hood is channeled because the roof is channeled. I had the fenders louvered. This was something that had never been done. These are individually stamped into the fender. I took an early Turbo tail, gave it a sort of gurney flap at the back. And it's running on the 17-inch version of my Outlaw wheels with Brembo race brakes. It has a 3.8-liter RS spec motor built on a 1995 993 motor, with approximately 320-horsepower. The car's kind of subdued in its appearance, but it's the car that the more you look at it the more details you see. And it's a blast to drive.

So guys, thanks for taking the tour with me. I'm a goal-oriented collector. My new goal for the year is to grow my beard longer. But all joking aside, let's get out and drive. Pedal to the metal. Stay motivated. Never give up on your dreams. And let's have some fun. Cheers and rock on.

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