Theon Design Porsche 911
We met Theon Design’s Adam Hawley at the 2024 London Concours where they were showing two of their beautiful bespoke 911s (964).
The team at Peterson Instrument Co. have worked on various styles of Porsche gauges throughout the last few years and we knew we could offer Theon Design a bespoke instrument set not already available on the market.
It was time to go big or go home!
Theon Design offer a ‘restored and enhanced’ 911 using the Porsche 964 base. The Porsche 964 is often considered ‘the best’ by many enthusiasts because this model represented a perfect blend of a classic 911 drive, but with modern, for the time, technology. In terms of instruments, they were also the first 911 model to be produced with backlit, rather than traditional flood-lit gauges.
While the majority of custom 911 gauges use the original (and often troublesome) 964 gauges, it was clear when speaking with the Theon Design team that manufacturing new instruments would be the best approach as it would give some creative freedom to the overall look and finish and be truly bespoke along with each of their 911s.
Functionally, this method also saves wiring weight and time to finished product, which means multiple sets can be manufactured without waiting for a base set of gauges from the project car.
As most die-hard fans will know, the 911 instrument panel has a symmetrical 80mm-100mm-115mm-100mm-80mm gauge size arrangement with the famous central Tachometer taking pride of place. It’s a functional design, with two auxiliary shrouded gauges being 80mm and 100mm in size to the left.
Working closely with the team at Theon Design, it was clear our alignment on balance and symmetry was well matched and a clean sheet design allowed us to further improve on the symmetry of the instrument cluster. We offered to move the clock towards the centre, so that the three most central gauges were all full-face dials, increasing the clocks size to 100mm. The right shrouded auxiliary gauge was then moved to the far right to replace the clock, in symmetry with the other shrouded auxiliary gauge far left.
For print design, Theon Design chose traditional Porsche green coloured numbers and markings with central Chrome rings and billet machined centres, which gives a classic-modern hybrid backlit style. For the central Tachometer face there are a range of colour choices, as well as choices for outer bezel finishes, depending on the overall colour scheme of the vehicle itself.
The original gauges had more pronounced warning lights, which can look quite ‘90s’, so we opted for more subtle hidden-until-lit (HUL) warning lights for all the major functions and added a few additional ones like ‘suspension nose lift’. There’s a total of 14 warning lights, which are hidden in the Clock, Speedometer and Tachometer to help give an array of warning functionality without the cluster looking overly cluttered.
Despite our experience with Porsche instruments, this was Peterson Instrument Co.’s first new-build 911 set and the first time we designed our own illuminated pointers. In typical Peterson style, we went the extra mile and added the ability to change the pointer brightness independently of the dial backlight brightness, to offer a certain level of customer choice.
These illuminated pointers and backlit dial faces help to retain the original 964 feel, while giving a backdated visual style that comes with chrome centres and depth to the auxiliary gauges. With our innovative technology, the full Theon Design instrument cluster is communicating via CANbus and is set-up with our proprietary PC software for easy installation.
Photos courtesy of Theon Design
