He Wants His Car Back, and He’s Offering a Stealer Incentive

Try telling Chris Burks that it’s only a car.

He’s been mourning his fire-engine red 1989 Porsche 911 turbo slant-nose convertible for nearly a month.

The rare sports car vanished from Burks’ secluded driveway in the oak-shaded hills of La Canada Flintridge on June 2.

Burks, 32, likens the loss of his wheels -- inextricably linked in his mind to his dead parents -- to “losing a child.”

So he hasn’t been content to wait for the insurance settlement or let detectives hunt unaided. He’s put out a $25,000 bounty for information leading to the car’s return -- whether it shows up stripped clean or perfectly buffed and still capable of hitting speeds of well over 100 mph.

Burks says he has no interest in prosecuting anyone and is willing to fork over a check to the thief himself.

“Just help me get my car back home and you get paid!!!” pleads his website, www.stolenporsche911turbo.com, which sports vanity shots of the vehicle from the front, rear and side.

Even by the standards of car-crazy Los Angeles and its Porsche-obsessed subset, Burks’ recovery effort has been extreme -- already costing more than the reward.

In the June 20 issue of Autoweek, he bought a full-page ad with a red headline blaring: “$25,000 Reward.” He’s advertised the reward in Excellence, a magazine devoted to Porsche aficionados, as well as in several Southern California trade and news publications.

He’s hired private detectives and others to scout for clues. Exactly how many, he won’t say.

“I have a tremendous number of people working on it,” said Burks, who runs a successful marketing company founded by his parents. “I’ve hired many private people. The FBI is involved. We are on the hunt.”

He’s also put out word to the Porsche “world” of dealers and owners -- there are 140 Porsche clubs in three countries -- asking to watch for used 911 parts that might be from his car. Porsche replacement parts have always been expensive, particularly those on models no longer in production, which is why stealing cars for parts can be so lucrative.

“You place your order with Midnight Auto and bolt the parts onto your old sled,” says an L.A. Porsche dealer, explaining the illicit market.

Just 88 Porsche 911 turbo slant-nose convertibles were made in 1989, Burks said, the last year before a larger 911 chassis was introduced.

It isn’t clear how much Burks’ used Porsche, which the dealer estimated would have cost $120,000 in 1989, would fetch today.

The Porsche heist appears to be the work of professional thieves. La Canada Flintridge, located between Altadena and Glendale, is hardly a car-theft hot spot.

Even older-model Porsches, which don’t have the transponders found on most expensive cars today, are difficult to break into, says Don Hamre, an Oakland engineer hired by insurance companies to investigate how -- and whether -- found vehicles were stolen. A $500 kit would have been necessary to break in, and only a professional thief would likely have it, he said.

Hamre suspects that the car probably is in some other part of the country by now.

Burks speculated that the thief may have loaded the car onto a flatbed truck or towed it while he and his girlfriend were at a natural-history auction preview in Hollywood, where they bid on a prehistoric meteorite.

Though plenty of people have called the number in Burks’ ad, most of the tips have led nowhere.

For Burks, who owns other automobiles, getting his Porsche back has nothing to do with its monetary value. “Sentimentally, it’s worth 10 times what it’s worth on the open market,” he said.

Burks said the car was a gift from his parents, who had remained very much in love until their late 50s, when they died within six months of each other in 1998. Burks was their only child. They made him research the various modifications on the car; it became his “first real exotic project.”

Thus, if all Burks gets back is the chassis, he’ll send it to Porsche headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, to rebuild.

“I don’t care if it’s underwater, upside down and stripped,” Burks said. “I’d be joyful.

“To everyone else, this is just a car, a mode of transportation,” Burks said. “But to me, this is a real, prized family heirloom.”