Can a Porsche owner be a cheapscate/the $7 RS Door Pulls

Ok, existential query: I've had almost 2 dozen cars, plenty of those costing several times more than my beautiful new toy will probably ever be worth. I take a certain amount of pride in good ole' fashioned American engineering both on the point of getting something accomplished myself and paying as little as possible to leave my somewhat limited toy budget to stretch as far as it can. So now I own a Porsche, which in my head is a storied brand of car, with some incredible engineering. Can one bring such a special automobile back to what I expect it to be, look and perform like I want on a budget?

We shall see, but I've done some things I'm pretty proud of in much lesser cars so we shall see what I can do for this one.

So....my car came with a brand new set of RS door panels, but didn't come with arm rests, door pulls, or door pockets I'm very excited about refitting to my [beginning to come together] nice interior. The RS was a racing package and one thing it has (and some newer 911's and current Boxster Spyder) was a cool set of straps sticking out of the stripped down door panel that act as the unlock mechanism for the doors.

On-line you can source these for somewhere around $120. But for what these are that seemed kinda silly to me :D Not to mention I'm trying to use blue for my accent touches instead of the "standard issue" Red (I can't stand to be just like everyone else).

A trip to the hardware store got me a nice blue nylon strap for a grand total of $7. This was an overly simple project compared to most I've done and will do but it looks pretty cool and I was pleased with myself so it showed up here. If you want to replicate it yourself get a couple 10mm nuts and bolts and washers, cut off about 10" of strap, don't forget to burn the edges to stop fraying (and I burned the strap around the bolt too just in case). The pricey kit does come with a nice looking grommet for this which I don't have, I'm going to work on that and have a couple of ideas but I've made the smallest cut possible through the panel so I can go back later and work on a prettier pass through.

I need to get a pull-handle still, but that's yet another update.

I have the feeling this blog will be filled with plenty of these such little projects :) so if you are a purist, better look away soon. I'm a "resto-mod" guy. My goal is for this car to recall a '75 911 Carrera, having it's wider rear fenders but not updated to later models with all blacked out trim. I like the stainless Targa bar, the chrome headlight rings and plan to restore the polished aluminum trim.

I won't be "modernizing" the interior as I have nicely done in some of my past 60's and 70's cars as I like this car's classic feel. But I will be upgrading some systems along the way that are "behind the scenes".

Stay tuned :)