“Luxury is about pleasing yourself, not dressing for other people,” said fashion designer Marc Jacobs. And what goes for clutch bags and sunglasses is equally true when it comes to cars. Anyone in the City who earns a suitably sized bonus can buy an off-the-peg Porsche, but commissioning a car from Theon Design is an altogether more personal process. This is automotive haute couture.
Nestled in Oxfordshire’s ‘Motorsport Valley’, close to Silverstone circuit, Theon Design has been reinventing the Porsche 911 since 2016. Co-founder Adam Hawley cut his teeth as a car designer, working for the likes of BMW, Jaguar Land Rover and Lotus, then spent evenings and weekends planning his “perfect Porsche”. However, the dream soon spiralled into “a bit of a nightmare” when he employed other people to build it.
“I have always loved 911s,” explains Hawley, who still has the die-cast 930 Turbo he played with as a child on his office desk. “I bought a 911 SC and transplanted the engine and gearbox from a 993 Supercup race car. It was light and focused, inspired by the original 911 ST. The project got loads of attention, but there were many delays and the quality wasn’t what I’d expected. My wife Lucinda and I thought we could do a better job. We decided to build our own Porsche 911s, bringing the whole process under one roof for an upfront price.”
Six thousand hours per car
That price starts at £430,000, which excludes VAT and the cost of a donor car. So a Theon Design 911 certainly isn’t cheap. Nonetheless, when you see the work involved – approximately 6,000 man-hours per car – you understand why these ‘reimagined’ classics cost more than a new Ferrari or Lamborghini. “We hand-build five or six cars a year, all based on the 964-generation [1989-1994] Porsche 911. If we ramped up production, we wouldn’t be able to tailor each one in the right way.”
Ah, say Porsche purists, what about all those lovely old 911s that are sacrificed? Will the humble 964 Carrera be hunted to extinction? “Absolutely not,” says Hawley. “Porsche produced well over 35,000 examples of the 964, and we’re saving cars that wouldn’t be economical to repair. We strip them down and straighten them out, giving them a new lease of life. It’s a kind of upcycling, really.”
Beginning from a bare shell means everything about a Theon Design 911 can be bespoke, from the size of its engine to the colour of the car key. “Some people want to be involved in every decision and detail, while others just ask us what we think,” adds Hawley. The possibilities for personalisation also stretch far beyond what can be listed on a spec sheet: “Customers always come and drive their car before taking delivery. We can make adjustments to everything from throttle pedal response to suspension stiffness, depending on their feedback.”
Drawing on the 911’s history
Has Hawley ever refused a request on grounds of good taste? “We’d never say no to a certain colour or trim combination, but we might suggest how it could work in a coherent way, in keeping with the car. Many aspects of our design, such as the Fuchs-style wheels or green numbered dials [a nod to early, pre-1968 models] are inspired by the 911’s long history. We are all Porsche enthusiasts at heart.”
The car I’ll be driving was commissioned by a Mexico-based architect and is painted in a blend of two classic Porsche colours: Nato Olive and Underberg. Its rear spoiler also replicates the famous ‘ducktail’ fitted to the 1973 Carrera 2.7 RS – arguably the most iconic 911 of them all – albeit in F1-grade carbon fibre instead of the original fibreglass. Reversing out of Theon Design’s crowded workshop into the afternoon sunshine, it combines purpose and pulchritude like only a modified Porsche can.
All the car’s body panels except its door skins, which remain in steel to preserve “closing feel”, are also made from carbon fibre. The result is a kerb weight of just 1,150kg – 200kg lighter than a stock 964 Carrera 2. A current Porsche 911 Carrera, for context, tips the scales at 1,520kg.
Fans of air cooling
Theon Design offers a menu of three air-cooled engines: 3.6 litres (304hp), 3.8 litres (412hp) or 4.0 litres (427hp). There’s also a 400hp supercharged alternative for those who want a more relaxed, GT-style driving experience. This car, codenamed MEX001, has the middling 3.8-litre motor, which serves up 313lb ft of torque. Drive goes to the rear wheels via a five-speed manual transmission, with a six-speed ’box from the Porsche 993 available on the options list. A power-to-weight ratio of 358hp per tonne is on par with a new 911 GT3.
Lift the lid and the engine is presented to flawless, show-car standard. All the Stuttgart-spec black plastic has been binned, the wiring is carefully concealed and even the fuel filter is trimmed in leather. The battery has also moved to the front boot to even out weight distribution. Both the 997 GT3 intake plenum and cooling fan blades have a ‘champagne’ metallic finish to match the wheels and exterior brightwork.
The 911’s stance looks spot-on, its lasciviously swollen haunches filled out by dished 18-inch Fikse rims that cover Porsche RS-specification Brembo brakes. Like most of Theon Design’s clients, this owner has gone for Tractive semi-active dampers, rather than a ‘passive’ suspension setup. These offer five levels of stiffness, adjusted via a dial on the dashboard. Firmer springs, uprated bushes and quicker electro-hydraulic power steering are all part of the package, too.
Inside the Theon Design 911
Potential interior specifications range from cosseting cruiser to rollcaged road-racer. This car is closer to the former, although there is plenty of exposed carbon fibre on show. The Recaro CS seats are upholstered in the same chequered ‘Pepita’ cloth as a Porsche 991 Sport Classic, with bolsters in Saddle Brown and Liquorice leather. All the formerly plastic switches have been remade in billet aluminium, while the custom Theon Design dials resemble chronograph watch faces.
Infotainment? Some owners are happy with the sound of six horizontally opposed cylinders, but a high-spec audio system with Hertz amplifiers and Focal speakers can be fitted. “We offer a smartphone-based Bluetooth setup,” says Adam, “or we can fit an updated, 1970s-style Becker Mexico. One customer had a drop-down Alpine head unit with Apple CarPlay functionality, all hidden beneath the dashboard.” The options, as elsewhere, are near-limitless.
Time to drive. There’s something curiously satisfying about twisting a key in an ignition barrel, rather than pushing a start button, particularly when it’s followed by the coarse bark of an old-school Porsche flat-six. The clutch pedal is light, and the gear lever moves with a springy precision that will feel alien to most 964 drivers. I check the bullet-shaped mirrors, check them again – reminding myself that this is somebody’s carefully curated pride-and-joy – then point the 911’s nose westwards towards the Cotswolds.
Designed to be driven
First impressions: it feels delightfully compact and wieldy by 2026 standards, blasting along hedge-lined lanes and ambling through antique villages where a supercar driver would be holding back and holding their breath. It also feels fast, but without the instant punch of today’s electrified powertrains. Instead, the 3.6-litre engine thrives on revs, its lightweight flywheel spinning up with gleeful abandon. I find myself dropping down the gears just to enjoy the 7,400rpm crescendo over and again.
The wide Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S tyres offer more lateral grip than any 964 Carrera ever did, but electronic stability systems are notable by their absence. Thankfully, the 911’s calm, lucid steering and progressive power delivery put me at ease, encouraging me to get back on the throttle early and enjoy the delicious rear-biased traction out of corners. The Theon has the alert, energised feel of a 964 RS, but with greater civility and usability. I suspect few of Theon Design’s customers will drive their car every day, but it’s nice to know that you could.
Much of this dynamic bandwidth stems from the Tractive dampers. These have softer settings that are well calibrated for British bitumen, or you can tighten things up for a track day or deserted mountain pass (not many of those in Oxfordshire, sadly). You need to be mindful of the car’s ride height – I’d spec a hydraulic lift kit to spare the front spoiler – but there is enough elasticity to cope with almost any road. Porsches are designed to be driven, after all.
Verdict: Theon Design Porsche 911
Indeed, perhaps this is where my fashion analogy falls down. Haute couture is intended to turn heads on a catwalk, but is often hopelessly impractical in the real world. This car, conversely, retains the charm of a classic Porsche, then layers on greater refinement, improved reliability and more mod-cons. If I spent a similar amount on, say, an original 911 Carrera 2.7 RS, I’d fret about actually driving it, mindful that every stone chip, car park scrape and mile clocked up was eroding the vehicle’s provenance and value. As a restomod, the Theon starts with a clean slate, unburdened by its past.
And compared to a new Porsche? Since 1964, the 911 has evolved with such efficacy that it deserves a chapter in Darwin’s On The Origin Of The Species. The latest 992.2 models are very comfortable and capable, but by ironing out the 911’s quirks to make it ‘better’, Porsche has eroded its unique character. GT3 excepted, the modern Neunelfer feels increasingly like a grand tourer, rather than a purebred sports car – at least until you reach speeds that are firmly in ‘German autobahn’ territory.
Back at the workshop, listening to the exhausts tick cool, I ask Hawley what comes next. “A lighter, more powerful Theon R model partly inspired by the original Porsche 911 ST,” he reveals. It seems Theon Design has come full-circle, back to where Hawley’s “perfect Porsche” dream began. My own perfect 911 would be different, of course, as would yours. Still, that’s the beauty of commissioning a truly bespoke car; you pay handsomely for it, but you get exactly what you want.
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