1982 Porsche 928 on 2040-cars

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Luftgekuhlt is an incredible car show for air-cooled Porsches

Air-cooled Porsches: Three lousy words and four lousy syllables. String them together and you get an expensive, emotive cocktail. If you've always wanted to own one, you know that truth, as prices of vintage 356s, 911s, and even 914s have risen steadily and then recently, skyrocketed. That change in the economics of cars once considered workhorses has altered the zeitgeist around what Porsche means to different generations of fans. Back in the day, Porsche didn't strive to be as expensive or as untouchable as Ferrari's metal. As a result, you typically find Porsche owners able — and willing — to twist wrenches on their machines. For one thing, air-cooled cars from Zuffenhausen were relatively easy to maintain and drive in all four seasons. They weren't show ponies. But when cars become collectibles, the scene around them changes, and Porsche FIA World Endurance Championship racer Patrick Long and his longtime pal, designer Howie Idelson, were, as Long put it, sick of meets "at golf courses where you have to worry if your shoes match your pants." Long mixes fine in that world. He's the only American on Porsche's factory team and he's won in everything from ALMS to GT to Baja. That tends to put your loafers at plenty of tony cocktail parties. But Long and Idelson, both SoCal natives who met as kids racing karts, wanted to make something of the air-cooled Porsche car culture, not of the collecting culture. Hence the birth, less than three years ago, of Luftgeku hlt. "It's literally 'air-cooled' in German but has that nerdish, Instagram picture-trading offshoot of a kind of Porsche cult," Long says, noting he's less interested in defining the brand that now sells t-shirts and posters and more interested in keeping things loose. View 63 Photos "We had cars with original paint from guys who work their hands 'til they're bloody and we had 200 of the most collectible cars." As such, he was still floored by the recently convened Luftgekuhlt 3, the third party he and Idelson have put on and by far the largest. It was held in the shadow of the L.A. skyline at the headquarters of Modernica furniture. More than 400 air-cooled Porsches and their owners convened. The location was no afterthought. "We wanted people to come for the cars and then be blown away by the venue: It has to be interesting. It has to attract different kinds of people." To spur that, Long doesn't adhere to the strict fealty of precision that's a default at most collector rallies.

Porsche 911 R is made for the purist

Who wouldn't welcome a new version of the Porsche 911 with ultra-light weight, a GT3 RS motor, a stripper interior, and a core philosophy of driving fun over outright lap times? The iconic Porsche 911 has been getting larger and more complicated with each passing generation, and that hasn't sat well with every engineer at Porsche. So there's a ready market out there for 911 R, a limited-edition show stopper of just 911 cars, due to start production in Zuffenhausen, Germany, in May. It's a car that combines a unique version of the six-speed manual gearbox, plenty of raw, naturally aspirated flat-six power, and all the feel of a cut-price version of the 911 GT3 RS pseudo racer. Yes, Porsche is bringing the beloved six-speed stick back to the sharp end of the 911, even though the brand's quickest cars are now dominated by the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission (and the less loved seven-speed manual). Porsche insists that the RS is still the 911 to have if it's stopwatch-bashing you need to do. Instead, the 911 R developers focused on trying to give it the most driving purity it could cram in. The most traditional way for motorsport operations to do that has always been to rip out weight. And Porsche Motorsport didn't diverge from the plan. The 911's rear seats have been thrown out, along with a raft of other pieces Porsche Motorsport thought it could either do without completely, redesign to be lighter or stronger, or both. View 18 Photos The R cuts 110 pounds from the next-lightest 911 variant, hitting 3,020 pounds on the scales. The pound-cutting starts at the body and bores all the way into the 911 R's chassis components, though there are some obvious nods to the marketing department that survived the dietician's axe. There is a lot of 911 GT3 in the body, with a combination of a carbon fiber (bonnet and front guards), a magnesium roof, polycarbonate front and side "glass," and aluminum everywhere else. The R cuts 110 pounds from the next-lightest 911 variant, hitting 3,020 pounds on the scales. While the 911 R has lurid (and deletable) red or green racing stripes as standard, it's not supposed to be as wild looking as the GT3. Porsche replaced the GT3's adjustable, tall-standing rear spoiler with a more-subtle pop-up version, and the R uses a rear diffuser under the bumper to offset any loss of rear downforce. The rear seats are gone, and the two remaining seats use carbon fiber shells upholstered in tartan cloth (another nod to early 911s).

Porsche to develop new line of engines for next Panamera

When the second generation of the four-door Porsche Panamera launches, it will likely be riding a new platform, complete with an all-new family of V6 and V8 engines, according to a report coming out of the UK.
Autocar reports that the so-called MSB platform will likely underpin the Panamera, and it could be shared with Bentley, provided the Volkswagen-owned, British-built brand commits to the architecture. As for the engines, it's reported that they'll have a sportier character than the V6s and V8s being built for Volkswagen and Audi's vehicles.
"Porsche will have its own new V8 that will be common to the new MSB platform," Porsche's chief engineer, Wolfgang Hatz, said. "It's a family for the next 10 years of cars." Whether the V8 and V6 will be used outside of the Panamera line, though, remains unclear. There's also no mention of what place turbocharging would have with the new engines.