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Still a 911 Guy… But Curious I try not to be a 911 snob, but like most long-time Porsche owners, the rear engine, air-cooled 911 is – and always has been – “Top of the Pops” for me. Other makes and models invariably come up short. Certainly, the car has...
In 1977, Porsche’s “improvised” Type 936/77 took on the full-court press of four Renaults at Le Mans. Retirements and technical troubles suggested that winning was out of the question. But neither its drivers nor Porsche number 4 believed that. Against strong opposition from Alpine-Renault and Alfa Romeo, Porsche took the...
A New Era for Porsche Performance “We are in the GT business,” said Porsche racing engineer Norbert Singer, “so we will make one.” That was in the summer of 1995 when Porsche responded to the revival of interest in GT-class racing and the challenge of the McLaren F1 by starting...
Le Mans 24 Hours, 31 May-1 June 1986: Start of the race – Porsches dominate the lead group In Part 1, Stories from Le Mans – with a Porsche flavour, our intrepid scribbler who hails from that beautiful part of South Africa, the Western Cape, shares with us some hilarious...
Anatole Lapine, 1973 Anatole Lapine who was in charge of styling at Porsche under two disparate CEOs, Fuhrmann and Schutz, looks back on quite a CV: Chevrolet Corvette, Opel GT, Porsche 928, Porsche 964. But there is a lot more to this designer whose career spans two continents and most...
Arno Bohn at Weissach with the 968 Cabriolet (1991) Arno Bohn was managing director of Porsche from 1990-92. An outsider who came from the computer industry, he arrived at a company seared by falling sales and riven by internal division about future direction. He left a Porsche which though still...
Best Porsche Under $25K: Affordable Thrills on a Budget Dreaming of owning a Porsche but working with a budget of $25,000? You’re in luck! While Porsche is often associated with high-end luxury and performance, there are still great options that offer the brand’s signature driving experience without breaking the bank....
Porsche 911 997.1 (2005 - 2007) – Service Schedule
Best Porsche Under $50K: Performance and Prestige on a Budget A budget of $50,000 opens the door to an exciting range of Porsches, blending performance, luxury, and timeless design. Whether you’re searching for a mid-engine sports car, a high-performance coupe, or even a capable SUV, there are plenty of options...
Porsche 718 Cayman T
Best Porsche Under $75K: Unlocking High-Performance Excellence With a budget of $75,000, you’re stepping into serious Porsche territory. This price range offers access to some of the brand’s most thrilling sports cars, including high-performance 911s, mid-engine Caymans, and even track-ready models. Whether you’re after a modern Porsche with cutting-edge technology...
Best Porsche Under $100K: High-Performance Icons Within Reach With a budget of $100,000, you enter the realm of truly exceptional Porsches. This price range unlocks access to high-performance 911s, track-focused Caymans, and even some modern luxury grand tourers. Whether you’re looking for a raw, analog driving experience or cutting-edge performance...
718 cayman gt4
Best Porsche Under $150K: Supercar Performance Without the Supercar Price A budget of $150,000 brings you into the realm of true Porsche excellence. At this price point, you can access high-performance 911 models, track-ready GT cars, and even lightly used supercar-level machines. Whether you’re after a thrilling weekend toy, a...
Best Porsche Under $250K: The Ultimate Performance Machines With a budget of $250,000, you gain access to some of the most desirable Porsches ever built. From high-performance 911 GT models to rare, limited-production supercars, this price range opens the door to an elite level of driving excitement. Whether you’re looking...
Dr. Ulrich Bez (1988) Hailing from the Bad Cannstatt district of Stuttgart, Ulrich Bez, who as Porsche Technical supremo hatched the 993, had two significant stints at Porsche. During the 1970s he worked in research and was responsible for establishing Porsche’s crash test programme; in the 1980s, he followed Porsche’s...
Four originals: Dr. Wolfgang Porsche, his son Ferdinand, and two Porsche 550 Spyders on the Großglockner High Alpine Road – a mountain that figures prominently in Porsche family lore. What a panorama: At an altitude of 2,571 meters, the Edelweißspitze offers a magnificent view of the Großglockner, Austria’s highest peak....
Obviously these two attractive models from the lingerie manufacturer Triumph (München) like this Porsche 914/6 – Rutesheim Athletics Club, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (1969) Very different from previous production Porsches, the 914 was an attempt by Zuffenhausen to introduce a lower cost model. Commercially it was only a moderate success, but it’s...
Autograph card signed by Jürgen Barth (ca. 1980) More books have been written about Porsche than any other car company so the publication in English of another tome is hardly headline news until you realise that the author, exceptionally, is a Porsche insider, but not just any insider. Jürgen Barth...
Lightweight racer is born During the 1960s, Ferdinand Piëch, the head of Porsche Research and Development, spearheaded the development of a new generation of lightweight race cars. By utilizing advanced materials and taking advantage of regulation changes, Piëch’s team created race cars with tubular frames and unstressed fiberglass bodies, offering...
With the obligatory shift away from ICE, the 911 60th anniversary model, the 992 S/T may well come to be seen as the pinnacle of the internal combustion sports car. The 2023 911 S/T is likely to serve as a salutary reminder of the exemplary automotive engineering that society has...
History  In contrast to the American norm where the big three car makers would restyle their ranges every couple of years, the Porsche 911 remained essentially the same for most of its first decade. There were minor visual changes – chrome disappeared gradually, the wheelbase was lengthened by two inches...
History & Tech The 991 Range   In modern manufacturing, car makers generally reckon to get a maximum of two model generations from platform as they are now called. Chassis and engineering improvements and above all the continued march of safety legislation mean that after a decade, the next generation will...
History & Tech More significant to North Americans is that the street version of the 2003 second-generation GT3 met EPA norms making it the first ‘hot’ 911 to be allowed officially in the US since the Carrera 2.4 S of 1972.  When Porsche began making sports cars in the late...
As has been observed before, the advent of the 996 was a revolution at Porsche. If the longest-running sports car model in history was to have a future beyond the 1990s, it would require a comprehensive retranslation for the twenty-first century. The outcome was the radical new 996, which at...
Porsche 987 Cayman R
The 987 Cayman and its immediate successor the 981 Cayman model represented  Porsche’s first volume production mid-engined coupé. Using naturally aspirated flat six  engines, it ran for a little over a decade until a turbocharged flat four changed the character  of the car. Subtly differentiated from the Boxster from which...
1993 Porsche 964 Carrera RS America
Background & Tech In the late 1960s, as California’s new anti-smog legislation became operative, it was apparent that highly tuned cars like the Porsche 911 would be affected. Breathing through carburettors and running on premium fuel, the 911 was soon in difficulty with traffic authorities. The S was even withdrawn...
John Starkey, Sandra, and Mauro Borella
My first “real” racing car was a Porsche RS/R, which I bought in the mid-1980s. Previously, I had done quite a lot of Hillclimbs in England with, first of all, a variety of Jaguar XK120s and then a 1974 Porsche RS 3.0, (911 460 9034), which was followed up by...
Overview of the Porsche 718 Revealed in 2016, the Porsche 718 was the third generation Boxster/Cayman. Strictly speaking, it was the fourth generation Boxster, the first being the 996-based 986 models of 1997-2004. The Cayman was presented in 2005 and it, and an updated Boxster, shared the 997 chassis. To...
1967 Porsche Type 910/6 Coupé. Corporate Archives Porsche AG
By the time the mid-1960s arrived, Ferdinand Piëch had got his hooks well and truly into Porsche’s motorsport programme. With the 904, introduced in 1964, Porsche showed that it could mix it with the top runners even if overall victories were out of reach. With its successor, the 906, the...
Porsche 911 GT3 991 & 992 parked next to each other
Porsche 911 GT3 Buyer’s Guide (991 & 992) Over the past 2 decades, the Porsche 911 GT3 models—and their variants, such as the RS and Speedster—have gone on to establish a reputation as the world’s quintessential sportscars. The lengths to which the GT3 has blurred the lines between street car...
A front three-quarter view of the No. 16 Porsche 917/10 chassis #005 taken in Porsche’s secret bunker in Stuttgart, May 2017. Virtual Motorpix/Glen Smale
Images by: Virtual Motorpix/Glen Smale and Corporate Archives Porsche AG  The Porsche 917 was the culmination of a line of race cars produced by the Stuttgart manufacturer during possibly the busiest decade, from 1964 to 1973, of its (by then) short existence. Just 21 short years after Porsche opened its...
Story by Glen Smale. All images courtesy of © Porter Press Int. Porsche’s Type 956, 962 and 962C is the world’s most successful prototype race car ever produced. Developed specifically for the Group C class that ran between 1982 and 1992, and the IMSA series in the USA, these three versions...
THE HISTORY The Porsche 963 follows on from a long line of successful cars and racing successes. Porsche 963 , #7 at Daytona during the ROAR test session entering Daytona Turn 6. Photo: Copyright Martin Raffauf Ferdinand Porsche started the company bearing his name in 1949. Almost immediately they started...
First Europe, then North America The 991.1 GTS was the second 911 offered as a GTS sub-brand. The first was the 997.2 in 2009 after Porsche tried it successfully on the Cayenne. The GTS concept was a clever idea: based on the S but priced above it, the GTS version...
When it was launched in Europe in late 1993, the appropriately numbered 911 993 would be the last of the air-cooled Porsches. Indeed, the decision had already been made by Porsche. By the time the second generation 993 emerged in 1995, the coming demise of the 911 as enthusiasts, indeed...
The Type 997 GT3 family, from left to right: GT3 Cup Race Car, GT3, GT3 RS, and GT3 RSR Endurance Race Car
Overview The GT3s are the low volume 911s, road-going production cars homologated for what was Group 3 competition. The original homologated 911 was of course the famous RS 2.7 in 1972. After that Porsche concentrated on the higher Groups for which the 930 Turbo served as the homologation model. In...
Background Since the 1960s, Porsche has been optimizing the aerodynamics of future racing and production vehicles in the wind tunnel with the help of special miniature models. The example of the legendary Porsche 935/78 shows how this works. Model vehicles feature in many a display case as diminutive dream cars....
Black and white photo of Ed Cole standing in front of Chevrolet Corvair
People usually recall the Chevrolet Corvair as the car that was “unsafe at any speed” which is rather unfair because the Corvair itself occupied barely a chapter in Ralph Nader’s infamous book. Indeed, amongst others, the VW Beetle also received a pasting—and Mr. Nader thought the VW Microbus was too...
Porsche 356 Cabriolet competing at an aerodrome race in the USA, ca. 1952/1953 America has for decades been Porsche’s biggest market, and this was important for the young and growing company. In some ways, the importance of this market even influenced the development of certain models. In this feature, Porsche...
Porsche Cayman 981
Once the Boxster was established, it was only a matter of time before a coupé version appeared. When the Cayman was launched in 2005, it was clearly a hardtop Boxster, but by pricing it slightly higher and endowing it with fractionally more power, Porsche pitched it as an intermediate model...
Corsica Rally, 1967: Vic Elford and David Stone driving a Porsche 911 2.0 R Not a company to stand still for long, Porsche was constantly looking for ways to improve its engines in the ‘60s. Somehow the Type 916 twin-cam 6-cylinder engine always seemed to miss the limelight…not anymore! The...
Porsche: The Carrera Dynasty by Glen Smale © Glen Smale A Spanish noun, ‘carrera’ can mean road, track or race and since the 1970s ‘Carrera’ has been a model name synonymous with Porsche. In fact, and as the author explains, Porsche had been using the name ‘Carrera’ since 1954 to...
Whether aerodynamics, connectivity, range, or driving dynamics, the innovations in the new Macan are setting benchmarks. At the same time, Porsche is working toward a strategic milestone with full electrification of this popular series. No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started...
After what felt like an eternity for Porsche enthusiasts, the seventh “family affair” of monumental proportions kicked off on the Monterey Peninsula, California on September 28th. Rennsport Reunion 7 includes a spectacular array of everything from vintage 356s to the new Mission X all-electric Hypercar which is on display for...
Background While Porsche has long since been revered as a European sports car company, “Supercar” has not been part of their vocabulary. That changed with the Porsche 959, introduced in 1986, which many consider the first German supercar. Designed as a technological marvel, it featured advanced all-wheel drive, a 2.85L...
When discussing breakthroughs in sportscar technology, the Porsche 959 merits its own chapter, if not a book. Introduced in the mid-1980s, this genuine supercar emerged as a spearhead of innovation, vastly surpassing the technology Porsche had developed to date. While the standard 911 was not short on performance or prestige,...
Rallye Paris-Dakar 1984: Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2 4×4 (Type 953) – driven by (from L-R) #175 Jacky Ickx, #176 René Metge, #177 Roland Kussmaul For many years, the éminence grise of Porsche’s competition department, but now in retirement, Roland Kussmaul seems busier than ever. He left Porsche officially at the...
Mont Ventoux, 18 June 1967 – Rolf Stommelen won this hillclimb driving a Porsche 910/8 Bergspyder Rolf Stommelen was one of Germany’s leading racing drivers for over a decade and if as the title (above) of his biography implies, he could drive anything anywhere, this was largely true. Although his...
One of the most colorful episodes in the history of Porsche was their 13th Le Mans victory in 1994 with the racing version of a road car derived from a racing car. This hubris served the car company well and less so a participant. This was the car that Porsche...