05 • THE INTERVIEW

Downtown Los Angeles March 2020.

MAGNUS WALKER URBAN OUTLAW

Magnus Walker is not trying to sell anything unless you count i n f o r m a t i o n , and even that’s not charged for. He’s not about ‘brand building’, but all about stories. Stories of cars. Some stories about his cars, and some about OPP, (that’s other people’s Porsches).

This editorial isn’t about his life history. If you want that, it’s everywhere on the Internet, and some of it is definitely worth reading, but much of it has been written a hundred times. Mine is just a personal review of the guy I emailed and asked to visit for b500 -and just like the man from Del Monte, ‘he said yes’.

LA for me is a bit like going home as I lived on the West Coast for many years, and half my family still live in different spots between San Diego and well across the Canadian border but alas this was no family social call and I was in and out of LA from London in 72 hours!

From the moment I met him to the moment I left we started chatting and didn’t stop. Magnus Walker is a very likeable man. Is he a geezer? Not sure, but from where I grew up, which was south of the river, (that’s the Thames in London for all you non Anglophiles) we would just say, he’s a nice bloke. Originally from Sheffield in England, Magnus has been living the slightly more exotic Porsche fuelled lifestyle of LA for over 30 years.

He still has a bit of a Yorkshire accent but it’s been softened round the edges into what I would describe as a Southern California drawl. Instantly likeable and welcoming he quickly offered me the “10 cent tour”. His place, (or ‘gaff’), is a pretty big old warehouse in the Arts district of downtown LA, (DTLA), and is a mix of home, garage, workshop, atelier, shop, film studios, office and is most petrolheads’ dream of what we would all like to own or at least have access to.

Although these days he tells me he lives just around the corner and hasn’t lived in the building for a few years now, it’s still very much a home from home and the living spaces are used regularly.

To begin I took a few shots of him up on his roof which has great views over LA, and on an unfamiliar grey day I had plenty of colour around from the reds and purples of various free growing plants and flowers, both up on the roof, as well as in his fabulous, colourful courtyard below.

As fantastic as his roof, courtyard and several levels of shop, accommodation, chill-out rooms etc are, it’s inside at ground level I had really flown 6,000 miles to see. Magnus has crammed a

lot of cars into this space and it’s split into two main areas. One has easy drive in and out access and, depending on his mood, the cars lined up in the front with the easiest access to the road will be his weapons of choice at any given moment. The ones at the back, not so much use, and then there’s the second space. Here he has various iterations of 914, 924, 944, 968 and the most glorious manual 928, which I wanted to crate up and ship home.

He has an even rarer 928, which I noticed parked in the front yard, with the easiest access to the road. “I’ve been driving this one a lot lately”, he tells me, and his Instagram shots certainly back that up.

Having taken my first hour to attempt to take it all in, I notice many cars of noteworthy mention, (not least of course his ‘277’), but something else grabs my attention. Many of his cars are not pristine or concours. No, these are bought, built or rebuilt and converted for driving. These are not show ponies, and that’s rather special.

Take his 1978 rare manual S1 928. It’s a bit scratched and has a few dings and marks, and the interior definitely hasn’t

been messed about with, such is the state of the drivers’ seat. And I like that. I like that a lot. It’s actually refreshing to find a collection of cars which in the most part, have not been restored. Use the word modified, and with many of his cars that’s a whole new story.

In more rarified or gentrified circles, it’s called ‘patina’, but I think it’s just aged and a little bit worn around the edges, and has seen some life. A bit like

Magnus then? Well yes, and meant in a very complimentary way. Like yours truly, Magnus is a man of a certain age (note 6 years behind me) and that age (just like me), remembers those early Porsches, ‘out the gate’, when they were all shiny and new, and now here we are 30 and 40 years on and the cars like us, are still around and look amazing with their life stories of stone chips and frayed edges. Give me one of these all day any day, rather than a new one. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s an age thing, I don’t know but they just feel right, smell right and to quote Magnus himself, “Are like a favourite pair of well worn-in shoes”. I get that 100%.

We’ve all probably got a Magnus favourite we’d like to take home, and for many it would undoubtedly be car 277. For me, I’d be very, very happy with his 1978 928...

As we walked around and in-between each of the tightly parked cars, my eyes quickly noticed Magnus’s very special 964, sitting patiently for its next outing between his Punk 914 and his 924 Carrera GT.

Not to say his custom builds aren’t ALL special, but this one to me was something else. The basic story of his 964 is that it started life as a track car which had left the road backwards, which meant

that Magnus could start with what was essentially a blank canvas.

There are many details on this car to mention, (note: you can find some great videos online), but for me not least the 12-inch wide channel that starts on the bonnet, and which then continues over the roof-line and becomes one seamless look right across the tail end. Not an easy thing to have achieved, and gives more than a nod to the GT3 RS’s double-bubble roof.

For the front wings, Magnus turned to Rod Emory and together they created their own die to produce what is quite frankly a gloriously over engineered work of art - just in that one piece on the car. Drilled and turned and carved out, the louvres look sublime.

Rear turn signals are inspired by the ‘67 R, and running your fingers along and around the bodywork of this custom

964, you begin to realise quickly there’s not a square edge anywhere.

For this build, Magnus steered away from his now famous three colour paint scheme, and has left the 964 in a single and very subtle colour. Inside it’s more pared back than stripped out, and I particularly like the leather roof lining. Magnus redesigned then rebuilt the front dash, taking out the radio so the only music you will hear will be the 3.8 RS spec engine, which puts out around 300hp.

Not only does it look the part, it sounds the part and it drives the part. Running on Magnus’s own Outlaw wheels, with Brembo Club Race brakes, and Pirelli Trofeo R rubber.

For me personally, there’s so much to like about this car but the detail and work that’s gone into various parts, like the wing louvres, just beggars belief. A custom built 964 which unlike most that you find out there doesn’t look over worked, and instead has retained its DNA. This car is a beautiful thing to behold and amongst all of his cars did definitely not go unnoticed…

Magnus uses Instagram to get his message across to his fan base, and has built up quite the following, with currently just short of 670,000 global fans. But what exactly is his message? I think it’s just that he’s passionate about Porsche and therefore wants to share that passion with anyone who might also share a passion for cars, whether old or new. There’s a lot to Magnus Walker, whether that’s his passion, knowledge, life-experiences, coolness, fashion, (and of late whilst on lockdown, his Instagram ‘Cookery show’), or just the way he looks.

We ended by sitting down in his garage, chatting of course about cars, and also about photography, and he showed me his new camera. It’s a Fuji, which he can link direct to his iPhone for ‘even better’ off-the-cuff Instagram shots. “They just flow straight in”, he told me, and as demonstrated in a few shots I took of him here. You can find Magnus on Instagram @magnuswalker

He’s definitely come a long way since those days as a kid growing up on the streets of England’s Steel City.