Christopher Lee was just three years old when his father brought home a brand-new 911S Targa. Purchased at Circle Porsche in Long Beach, California, the silver Targa cost more than $15,000 in 1975—about $93,500 today—no small sum at the time, but clearly a wise indulgence. The car captivated young Christopher immediately. He remembers sitting in a back jump seat with the roof panel removed, standing up to feel the wind on his face as his father drove along the Pacific Coast Highway.
By the early 1980s, the stock 2.7-liter flat-six needed a rebuild. Christopher’s father was mechanically inclined but had never tackled an engine. He enrolled in a Porsche flat-six rebuild class and dove in. Unfortunately, he followed some misguided advice to replace the chain tensioners with solid tensioner rods. The chain snapped, the engine failed, and the damage was catastrophic.
“I remember exactly when the engine blew—we were together in the car when it happened,” Christopher recalls. “We had to knock on a stranger’s door to call a tow truck.” A Culver City independent Porsche shop, Porschop, later sourced and installed a 3.0-liter engine from a 1979 911 3.0 SC. The extra 15 horsepower and eight lb-ft of torque, though small, were noticeable. At Palos Verdes High School, where the parking lot brimmed with BMWs and Mercedes driven by the children of affluent parents, a teenage Christopher was tempted by the status those cars represented.
Christopher with his pride and joy in 1994.
“As a naïve kid, I wanted one too,” he admits. “Within the Asian community, academics are held to a very high standard. If you excelled, your parents were willing to give you things you wanted. My mom told me that if I made the Academic Decathlon team, she’d get me a car.”
He joined the team the next day. He dreamed of a new Nissan Z32 300ZX or a used BMW E30 M3, though the more realistic options were a Maxima or a 240SX. But with a 13-year-old 911S Targa already available to him, he chose the Porsche—saving the money for future college expenses and modifications.
“It sounds pretentious now, but in the late ’80s, a 13-year-old car seemed ancient,” he says. “But it’s when I really fell in love with Porsche.”
Christopher’s father behind the wheel after the first re-paint in 2015.
He began obsessively caring for the 911S, cleaning and polishing it, fixing small issues, studying parts catalogs, devouring car magazines, and attending car shows. Before he even had a driver’s license, he secretly rolled the Porsche out of the garage in Palos Verdes when his parents weren’t home.
He had never driven a car with a manual transmission, but his father had explained the basics, and that was enough for him to try. He pushed the car harder than he should have, even attempting to imitate a scene from a movie where the car steps out in lift-throttle oversteer. He and the car survived unscathed, though the experience shook him.
On his 16th birthday, newly licensed, he was pulled over for speeding within hours. The officer took pity on a teenager still carrying a warm-off-the-printer driver’s license and let him off with a warning.
Around that time, the car received servicing at Edelweiss Porsche in Torrance, run by Adrian Gang and Tony Callas. One day, Christopher stopped by and found the shop closed for good. Only years later did he learn Adrian had been hired to oversee Jerry Seinfeld’s Porsche collection. Not long afterward, he noticed a new Porsche repair shop opening in Torrance and stopped in—only to find Tony Callas starting what would become Callas Rennsport. The shop began near the Pacific Coast Highway before later moving down Hawthorne Boulevard.
Throughout college, Christopher drove the 911 whenever he could and joined the Porsche Owners Club. Track days and time trials drew him deeper into the community. He bought Simpson six-point harnesses from Simpson’s Torrance storefront, pairing them with a Stable Energies harness bar and custom bushings machined at Ollie’s in Lawndale so he could still use the stock three-point belts. Callas track-prepped the car with early heat exchangers and a Bursch muffler, adding about 20 horsepower and a fierce growl.
He shared the track with Kevin Buckley, Dave Bouzaglou of TRE Motorsports, and Martin Snow—whose long-hood 911 evolved into a 935 Turbo race car. Through the POC scene, Christopher watched the Snow family’s Porsche lineage grow, including future IMSA driver Madison Snow.
After graduating from UCLA, he spent two years working before medical school, commuting daily in the 911 through Los Angeles traffic on the 405. He continued driving it during medical school, though less often. When he moved to New York for residency, the Porsche was put into deep storage under a car cover for roughly 13 years.
Once he completed his training and moved to Walnut Creek, he had the car shipped from his parents’ home and, around 2015, attempted to revive it with the help of Tom Amon, who ran a unique mobile Porsche service. Amon got the engine to fire, but cracked head studs meant a rebuild was unavoidable.
Having read Bruce Anderson’s Porsche 911 Performance Handbook countless times, Christopher knew he wouldn’t settle for a standard SC rebuild; he wanted a 3.2-liter short-stroke engine. He initially wanted individual throttle bodies, but let Amon talk him out of it in favor of reliability and decent fuel economy. “I don’t regret it,” Christopher says. “I get 25 mpg on the highway, it starts every time, and I hear horror stories about keeping carbs or ITBs dialed in. It dyno’d just over 200 horsepower—around 235 at the crank—which is plenty in a 2,600-pound car.”
The engine features 98 mm (3.9 in.) J&E pistons inside 95 mm (3.7 in.) Mahle cylinders bored to 98 mm, 964 cams, an RSR lightweight flywheel, a Lemke Turbotrol fender cooler, a secondary Setrab front valence cooler, SSI heat exchangers feeding an M&K two-in/one-out sport muffler, and a single-plug MSD 6 ignition. A Wevo coupler and short shifter sharpen the gear changes.
The suspension setup put together by Amon includes 21 mm (0.8 in.) front and 27 mm (1.1 in.) rear torsion bars, Bilstein B6 Sport dampers, Tarret Engineering hollow anti-roll bars with reinforced mounts, a Stable Energies strut brace, PolyBronze bushings, Sway-Away adjustable spring plates, and Turbo tie rods, and rack spacers. Braking is handled by the original aluminum S calipers, drilled rotors, and stainless steel lines.
By late 2016, the mechanical side was sorted, but the repaint done earlier had issues. After receiving a partial refund, Christopher sought out renowned restorer Freddie Hernandez of Vintage Sports Cars and Restoration, who was newly relocated to Phoenix, Oregon. Hernandez had once been local to Martinez, California and had built a reputation for thoughtful Porsche work. He visited Christopher’s home during a trip to the Bay Area for the Super Bowl to evaluate the car. Christopher wanted someone who understood not just the car, but the vision for it, and Hernandez was that person.
The sympathetic cosmetic restoration took two years. When Freddie asked what color to paint it, Christopher reflexively said, “Silver.” A few days later, Hernandez asked if he was certain, and that pause nudged Christopher to explore alternatives. He had always admired the Graphite Blue of the 991 and discovered that Aquamarine (5707), a 356 color, was a close match. He went with Aquamarine, and Hernandez agreed wholeheartedly.
With the new exterior color came thoughts about the interior. Black was practical but uninspiring, so Christopher chose 356-era red square-weave carpet and custom CarBone floor mats woven with red, grey, and blue threads. The stock tombstone seats didn’t excite him, so he opted for Le Mans R-Type T15R seats in leatherette and houndstooth from Roger Pujol of Classic Touring Seats in San Francisco.
Additional details included a 380 mm (15 in.) Momo Prototipo wheel with a custom deep-red leather horn button, a DTW Engineering flip-out ashtray, a MagSafe mount, and a Porsche Classic radio. A Tag Heuer-inspired theme carried through the matching wing decals, side script, and a Tag Heuer-logo clock built by North Hollywood Speedometer.
Exterior touches include a Getty Design ducktail with original 911S script, Euro bumperettes, Euro-spec front rubber in place of U.S. side markers, and color-matched PORSCHE script side decals. A playful detail is the red leather fuel-filler flap embossed with “Zero Fuchs Given.” The 7×16 (front) and 8×16 (rear) Fuchs with 951 offset wear 205/50-16 and 215/50-16 Dunlop Direzza Z1 tires, filling out the mid-year body gracefully.
But Christopher’s favorite element—the pièce de résistance—is the custom front valence oil-cooler opening Freddie Hernandez fabricated. “The idea goes back to my early twenties,” he explains. “At Willow Springs and the EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operation Center) facility in San Bernardino, my oil temps would spike in the desert heat. The single fender cooler wasn’t enough. I even removed the passenger headlight and carved out the bucket with a Dremel, using mesh and a sugar-scoop ring to force more air to the cooler. It helped, but not enough.”
He experimented back then by taping cardboard mock-ups onto the valence, imagining a cleaner, more integrated solution. Aftermarket versions from Getty and MA Shaw existed, but they were Ruf-style or IROC bumpers—too heavy visually for a Targa. Not until the 2016 restoration did he have the means to pursue the idea he had. Using an authentic 1973 911 RS grille as inspiration, Hernandez crafted a one-off metal opening. With the added Setrab cooler, oil temps rarely exceed 180°F, and only reach about 210°F in the hottest stop-and-go traffic.
The finished result is a striking yet restrained Targa, full of thoughtful details executed with craftsmanship and purpose. At Rennsport Reunion VII, the car returned to Laguna Seca for parade laps—29 years after its first laps there in 1994—a meaningful moment for Christopher.
And at the 2025 Werks Reunion, after many years of participating without expectation, he was stunned to find a ribbon on his windshield. “That’s not why I go,” he says. “I go to park among great cars, talk to Porsche friends, and enjoy the atmosphere. But seeing that ribbon—especially in the year of the Targa—was a wonderful surprise.”
