![]() ![]() Minor hiccup aside, he'd made it to America. It ticked all the boxes, but Magnus wasn't based in Detroit - instead taking refuge 30 miles north at the summer camp. So, in 1986, I packed my bag and hopped on a flight to New York, followed by a 600-mile bus ride to Detroit."ĭetroit was gritty, rough around the edges and home to America's automotive industry. With no significant education, no real job and no reason to stay, why not try his luck in the States? "I joined a thing called Camp America - where kids are sent to the States in return for working on a summer camp. The American dream fascinated Magnus, where classic contemporary American TV shows like Starsky and Hutch made the USA look like a haven of fast cars, fast women and serious facial hair. By the age of 17, it was beginning to sink in, so, sure enough, he decided to get a proper job.Ī natural draw to US culture would prove prophetic. "Cut your hair and get a proper job," he was constantly told. Undeterred, Magnus bummed around on the dole making money exclusively to fund these new hobbies. ![]() two hobbies not exactly renowned for sparkling future prospects. About this time he also discovered drink and heavy metal music. By 1982 he'd dropped out of school with two O-levels to his name and no real education. Unfortunately for Walker, Sheffield in the early Eighties wasn't exactly the place where dreams came true. Sure enough, this tentative contact engaged a little thing Magnus describes as "Porsche passion". To his surprise, they replied, thanking him for the interest and suggesting he establish contact again in a few years' time. In between scrawling 911 shapes on any piece of paper he could find, he wrote a letter to Porsche HQ asking for a job - solid ambition for a 10-year-old northerner. This feature originally appeared in the February 2015 issue of Top Gear Magazine. I knew right then the Porsche 911 was my dream car." The engine plaque read turbo, the spoiler was as tall as my head. "I travelled there with my dad, and as we reached the Porsche stand, I laid eyes on a 911 painted in Martini red and blue stripes. "It was the Earl's Court motor show," he explains in his strange amalgam of US twang and Yorkshire vowels. But, for Magnus, aged 10 years old, 1977 signalled a very different kind of obsession. England was an exciting place to be as a young 'un - the Sex Pistols kicked off the punk rock movement, and a little film called Star Wars was about to spawn a whole generation of geeks. So how exactly does a scruffy lad from Sheffield wind up nestled in Los Angeles as an aficionado of Stuttgart's finest? Yet the self-proclaimed Urban Outlaw has shot to fame as one of the world's most prolific Porsche collectors and something of an underground hero for anti-establishment tuning of vintage Porsche products. Sit him outside Kings Cross, and you'd be excused for handing him your spare change. Magnus Walker is not what you'd call a typical-looking Porsche enthusiast. His beanie hat hoards a mass of dreadlocks his beard is a mixture of silver and blonde hairs. ![]()
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