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Porsche patent sketches show removable headrest wind deflector

While driving around in a convertible might seem glamorous, ask anyone with long hair and they'll likely tell you how it really is: the wind buffets, your hair goes everywhere and it's anything but glamorous. That's why you see so many convertibles driving with their tops up, their windows up or wind deflectors in place. But Porsche is apparently preparing to kick it up to the next level.
These patent drawings have leaked out, demonstrating what appears to be some new kind of wind-deflecting device being developed by Porsche. The mechanism is apparently fitted to the headrest itself and designed to keep the wind buffeting specifically around the head down to a minimum while allowing the car's occupants to enjoy the top-down driving experience.
No word on when it might hit the market, but we won't be surprised to see this kind of device appear on a future version of the Boxster or 911 Cabriolet. But nowhere else: despite the apparent leak, the patent drawings suggest that Porsche will be keeping this technology proprietary. Whether sister brands like Volkswagen, Bentley or Lamborghini will get their hands on it remains to be seen.

Lanzante building 11 Porsche 930 restomods with actual F1-raced engines

In " Casino Royale," James Bond gets a lesson in tailored clothing when Vesper Lynd gives him a new dinner jacket. Bond tell her he already has a jacket, and Lynd replies, "There are dinner jackets and dinner jackets. This one is the latter." News from Lanzante makes us paraphrase that line in saying, "There are 911 restomods and 911 restomods." Lanzante's is definitely the latter. The English engineering firm is building 11 Eighties-era Porsche 930s with genuine TAG-branded Porsche engines that the McLaren Formula One team used to win 25 races. From 1984 to 1987, Porsche built a 1.5-liter turbocharged V6, branded as the TAG-Porsche TTE P01, for the McLaren MP4/2 and MP4/3; if the naming seems odd to cover four years, it's because McLaren raced the MP4/2B and MP4/2C in 1985 and 1986. The engine produced more than 1,000 horsepower in qualifying trim, and 750 hp in race spec. In its first three years on the grid, the engine powered McLaren to two Constructor's Championships, and three Driver's Championships for Niki Lauda and Alain Prost. During that time, McLaren built a prototype Porsche 930 with that TAG engine, but kept it so far out of sight that people spoke of it as a rumor. The English carmaker finally proved the rumor true a few years ago when it put the prototype on display in the lobby of its Woking headquarters. Enter Lanzante, which has a history with McLaren going back to at least 1995, when it prepped the Veno Clinic McLaren F1 GTR that won Le Mans that year. More recently, it built road-legal P1 GTRs called the P1 GT, and a one-off P1 Longtail. McLaren sold Lanzante the 11 engines for this run of monstrously overpowered Porsche coupes, and Lanzante showed off the first example at the recent Rennsport Reunion at Laguna Seca — news that somehow got lost in the general Porsche overdose and Moby Dick revival. Built just like the original McLaren-Porsche prototype, no one will think anything's astray with the new version's white bodywork and RUF wheels. The camouflage continues inside, where a pair of upholstered racing buckets might offer a small clue. The instrument panel gives things away, containing a tachometer branded "TAG Turbo" with a 9,000-rpm redline, and a water temperature gauge. Cosworth is restoring the engines for the program, and each of the 11 examples gets a plaque in the engine bay listing its engine's race history.

1949 Gm?nd Porsche shows the birth of an icon

The Austrian village of Gmünd is more than just difficult to pronounce; it's also the birthplace of the Porsche brand. Before the company ever started building sports cars at its current home base near Stuttgart, the fledgling business completed several vehicles in the tiny town in Southern Austria. In this video, former Pikes Peak International Hill Climb champion Jeff Zwart takes a look at a 1949 Gmünd coupe to see how the company has evolved since its earliest days.
The thing to note about the Gmünd-built Porsches is their absolute design simplicity. The phrase "form follows function" gets bandied around a lot, but it really means something when you look at these early cars. However, the minimalism was partially out of necessity. The vehicles were meant to be sporty but certainly weren't rockets. Power came courtesy of a modified Volkswagen Beetle engine, and anything extraneous would have slowed the models down. Scroll down to watch Zwart go back in time to Porsche's beginnings.