Some people go to the races and come back with the souvenir program, the T-shirt, the diecast model car and the key chain. When we went to Porsche Rennsport IV, we came back with something different.
There were some cool pictures, which you can see in an InsideLine picture gallery . There was a really cool video from Porsche, which you can see on the following page. And of course there was the empty wallet and sunburn.
But mostly we came back with the stories told by the people we met – stories that sometimes give you a clue about what makes a Porsche guy different from an ordinary, well-adjusted, socially acceptable, functioning human being. Here are the stories told to us by the people we saw (only the ones we talked to personally, of course).
Joerg Bergmeister, the Porsche contract driver, was eating at the Crown and Anchor when he recognized our photographer Rex Tokeshi-Torres, who takes a lot of pictures of the 911s raced by Flying Lizard Motorsports . The next day Bergmeister gave Rex a diecast model of the Flying Lizards car just to say thanks.
Bruce Brown drove up from L.A. with a bunch of pals from the Grand Prix Region of the PCA in an old van. He’s owned about a dozen used Porsches in his life, from 356s to 911s, and never lost an engine on any of them. Not one.
Virginia and Jack Case were founding members of the Porsche Club of America in 1955. They drove to the Porsche Parade this year, just like always, only this time they had to go all the way from their home near San Diego to Savannah, Georgia. We waved to them near Santa Barbara as they were driving to the Reunion. They are in their mid-80s.
Walter Gerber was a longtime crew chief in IMSA racing. Now he’s running Corvettes for a guy but says said he’s looking for a Porsche 962 to buy. We told him we’d check our garage and get back to him.
Gregg Hardman might be younger than 40 (and a Nissan engineer besides), but he drove his 1970 911S to the first Rennsport Reunion at Lime Rock Park and one of the two reunions at Daytona, so maybe it’s no surprise that he flew out from Nashville for this one. He scheduled his arrival so he could make the famous monthly gathering of early 911s at the Baja Cantina on Carmel Valley Road. Some nice cars there.
Frank Honsowetz showed up to cater to the needs of some of his clients at Ed Pink Racing Engines , and he said every 935 made him want to stop and stare. As a former racer in IMSA’s GTU class in the 1970s, he had been passed at one time or another by most of them.
Kevin Koch of TruSpeed Motorsports showed us the outlaw Porsche 356 that he’s going to begin selling soon. He says that when the propeller-head 356 guys find out that it has a fiberglass body, they start to walk away, but then come back again when he tells them that it costs $40,000, not the $80,000 an outlaw 356 usually commands.
Patrick Long came back to track where he had clinched the World Challenge GT Championship and won the GT class in the ALMS six-hour endurance race just a couple weeks before. He says most of his fellow Porsche-contracted racing drivers choose either a 911 GT3 or a Cayenne diesel as their personal transport, but since he’s an L.A. guy, he has a “murdered-out” (all-black) Panamera.
Pete Lyons was selling his books and photographs in the long, long row of tents in the infield, and who should walk in but Vasek Polak, Jr., the son of the famous Czech-born Porsche dealer and race team owner in Los Angeles. He told us a funny story about his father Vasek Polak and Otto Zipper, another famous Porsche mechanic turned race team owner, wrangling after a race on weekend when their drivers Milt Minter (Polak) and Scooter Patrick (Zipper) rubbed fenders in their 911s.
Tom Malloy was driving his ex-Leyton House Porsche 962 and a Porsche 356 that had done the modern-day Carrera Panamericana a few times. He says the drivers in the two classes might be Porsche guys, but they don’t really have anything else in common.
Chuck Miller, the Disney imaginer who is a principal in the Early 911S Registry, came into view on the road that comes out of the mountains from Coalinga. If there’s a cool Porsche event, Miller is always there.
Kurt Niebuhr of Edmunds InsideLine was on site to take pictures, and he was thinking about his life might have been different if his father had let him buy that ray, lime-green Porsche 914. It had AstroTurf on the cockpit floor and the interior smelled like dog food.
Scott Oldman, Editor in Chief of Edmunds.com, remember being four years old and asking his father, automotive journalist Joe Oldham, what was the fastest car in the world. His father had a stack of pictures on his desk and tossed him a photograph of the Porsche 917/10 with L&M Cigarette sponsorship that George Follmer had just driven to the 1972 Cam-Am championship for Roger Penske.
Lee Rice of Rice’s Performance Porsches couldn’t be there, but he asked us to look for the 1993 Porsche 911 Turbo S Le Mans GT, an obscure Porsche factory car with the last racing iteration of the air-cooled Porsche 911 engine. Wanted a picture of the engine cases, no less.
Alois Ruf brought a couple of Ruf 911s to sell, as these are his people. Plenty of people still talk about the 200-mph Yellowbird.
Judy Stropus became famous as the official timing and scoring person for Penske Racing back in the days before any race team employed such a person and proved that women would be on top of the pit wall, not just behind it. She was holding the watches when Mark Donohue drove the Porsche 917-30
Betty Jo Turner told us about the way she came to run Panamera, the monthly PCA magazine that goes out to 60,000 people every month with its winning formula of hardware, travel, the names of your friends, great advertising by specialty suppliers and of course the famous classified ads for used Porsches.
Jeff Zwart, the well-known photographer and video director who has raced factory-supported Porsche 911s at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb for a number of years, was there with his 906 Carrera as well as four other Porsches. We made a rude gesture to him as usual and he laughed in return as usual.
Photos by Rex Tokeshi-Torres
Michael Jordan, Executive Editor, Edmunds.com
cjasis says:
03:01 PM, 10/21/11
Great post. Thanks.