453 South Spring St. Suite 1100.
Los Angeles, California 90013.
Sure, we’re biased. Incredibly biased even, but this installment had everything we look for in this air-cooled love affair, brilliant cars, brilliant friends, and an incredible attention to detail and art direction across the whole event. While we unfortunately couldn’t showcase Cameron’s 1975 911S “Jolene” again, as she is still in transport back from our recent trip out to the east coast we couldn’t miss the festivities and attended purely as spectators.
Entering into the backlot from the shuttle via 356 Alley (all the streets were named for the cars showcased – nice touch) we were immediately transported into the Luftgekühlt world of complete immersion to the point of almost blindness due to the overwhelming amount of eye candy showcased everywhere. We talked to a few friends throughout the day and the idea of how it’s quite difficult to take everything in came up repeatedly – this could easily have been a multi-day event and we’d still feel like we missed out on some of the details.
When it comes to the cars we just want to focus on one that summarizes the entire Luftgekühlt ethos and in our opinion what makes the Porsche culture so unique and special – the 1971 Martini Racing 917K on loan from Miles Collier Collection down in Florida. The unrestored Chassis 019 was the show’s highlight for us – brilliantly displayed and lit in Studio 34, the history and story behind this car, and the fact that it is still being displayed and run is everything we look for.
While the tastefully modified and perfectly maintained cars throughout the show are wonderful, they just don’t captivate us the way this race champion 917 does. Every little detail, scratch, dent, burn, and repair further draws you into its story. A story that is honestly a quite terrifying tale of a 4907cc flat-12 air-cooled, fuel-injected engine making 600+ HP in a car that weighs 1760 lbs pushed to its limits by Helmut Marko and Gijs van Lennep in 1971, filled with analog controls, warnings and systems – safety second? Maybe third? What an era.
Seeing these pieces of history in such a spectacular setting truly is what makes Luftgekühlt a must-see event for us. We’ll definitely see you at the next one, hopefully with some more C + T cars in the mix! Oh also – there were a bunch of great watches at the event. Photos below. #watchcontent
Photography by Hendrix Barr, Cameron Barr, Tyler Vanes and Chris Elkjar.
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