Luke Huxham of Maiham Media brings us the story of a very special Group C Porsche 962 in Japan. It was the second ever Porsche 962 built as a proof of concept and one of only a handful world wide registered for legal street use. The Group C endurance cars have a carbon monocoque frame and are actually reasonably comfortable on public roads according to the owner.
The Porsche Museum is located next to Porsche headquarters in Zuffenhausen, Germany. The 60 million Euro facility is a wonder of architectural design that holds around 300 exhibits. Fortunately for us but unfortunately for the museum, Porsche’s history and racing heritage is far too large to be contained in 300 exhibits. Porsche released this video showing off the museum’s satellite storage area on the outskirts of Stuttgart. Cars that are being rotated out of the main museum come to this storage area before being transported to different displays around the world. Many of the cars are also restored to working condition here. Two of the staff historians detail some of the more obscure and quirky cars that have come through the storage facility:
I’ve always thought the Porsche Panamera to be kind of the ugly duckling of the automotive world. Kudos for Porsche for venturing into a new market segment with a highly capable four wheel drive four door sedan, but did they really have to force the 911’s shape on it? It works on the short wheelbase sport coupe that is the 911, but it made the longer and larger Panamera look really bloated. Good thing it drives awesome and you can’t see the exterior from the behind the wheel. Now Porsche has decided to evolve the Panamera one step further with the e-hybrid Sport Turismo model that was debuted at this year’s Paris Auto Show. Sport Turismo is the flashy name they came up with for station wagon. The wagon has a frustrating soccer mom stigma here in the US, but in Europe high powered wagons are considered very cool. I’ve even heard it said that wagons are the mid-life crisis solution for European men. I love wagons, so it sounds like a fantastic tradition to me.
Something really interesting happened when Porsche’s designers set out to turn the Panamera into a wagon. Now that they had permission to deviate from the classic 911 shape, the Panamera started to fill out correct proportions and come into it’s own. The Sport Turismo looks absolutely fantastic. I think the it’s the car that the Panamera was meant to be. The ugly duckling has turned into the beautiful swan. Check out the video to see the designers work from clay models to the finished concept that was shown in Paris.
Angus Mackenzie of Motor Trend is back with another truly excellent episode of Epic Drives. This time around he takes us to the garden of Europe, Sicily. While the active volcano and food culture there are unique attractions, it’s the roads that we’re interested in. The island of Sicily played host to the Targa Florio, a legendary historic race run along side the Mille Miglia and Le Mans. I’ll let Angus walk you through the history of the event, but it’s important to note that Porsche won the Targa Florio a record 11 times with lightweight mid-engine open top race cars. Their agility and durability allowed them to win over higher horsepower prototype cars. Mackenzie brings Porsche’s latest agile mid-engine roadster, the incredible all-new Boxster, to Sicily to drive the Targa Florio course once again.
Porsche has really done a great job with the new 991 generation 911 and the all new Boxster. As Chris Harris pointed out in his review of the new Boxster, the performance gap between Porsche’s entry level car and their bread and butter 911 has become minutely small. The Boxster has sold well enough through the previous two generations that Porsche no longer blatantly neuters the car to protect 911 sales. That begs the question of exactly how large is the performance gap between the Boxster and the 911 now if it even still exists? Car and Driver’s European correspondent, Jethro Bovingdon, pits the two cars against each other. To make the comparison interesting, they test the fastest (S model with active suspension and torque vectoring differential) but still significantly cheaper Boxster vs. a bare bones 911 Carrera at the drag strip and at the very technical Landlow circuit. I won’t spoil the results, but the take away here is that Porsche is on the money with both cars having gained a massive performance boost with their redesigns.