by John Glynn | Jul 8, 2014 | Market & Prices, Porsche News
Porsche sales figures for the six months from January to June 2014 reveal some interesting data on demand for Porsche Panamera Hybrid. Year-on-year, Porsche has delivered eight percent more cars than at six months into 2013. Deliveries of new Panamera rose almost thirty percent, with ten percent of customers opting for the plug-in E-Hybrid model.
Porsche Panamera Hybrid Sales
Hybrid is an interesting car. The UK’s company car tax rules are set up to favour hybrid technology, but real world use is probably still not as effective as a decent diesel. Panamera Hybrid’s maximum 20-mile range on electric power mainly benefits urban users in big cities that offer concessions for low-carbon vehicles.
The What Car? Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid road test applauds the car (which costs almost £90,000 here in the UK) for a monthly liability of just £150 in company car tax for a 40% taxpayer. For those of you living outside the UK, car drivers who receive a car from their employer as part of their salary package pay Benefit-in-Kind tax on the perk, measured in how good the Treasury feels about the carbon emissions of said car. You don’t want to know the likely BIK tax on my Cayenne V8 (not run through a company, for obvious reasons).
Compare this to Texas, where a Panamera Hybrid with 1 mile on the clock will cost you $110,000, or £64,000. This is roughly the same as a Panamera Diesel here in Britain and, according to What Car’s top editor, the Panamera Diesel is the better real-world car. “It’s the best hybrid I’ve ever driven, but I’d rather have the diesel,” said Chas Hallett.
Porsche Panamera E-Hybrid Fuel Economy & Battery Range
Clarifying “best hybrid” as being the best in terms of how it managed the transition between power sources, Hallett noted an average of 32 mpg over 500 miles, while What Car’s testers got 30.7 miles in real world testing. That is per imperial gallon, not US gallon. What Car? data notes that Porsche claims 91 mpg: that gap is something else. What Car also managed just 11 miles on electric power.
Marked down to three out of five stars by What Car? for high running costs, lack of brake feel and overwhelming understeer unbecoming of a Porsche, this has not deterred the 1300 people who picked up plug-ins so far this year. Whether it was private buyers or dealers building up Hybrid stock, one in ten is a reasonable number. I remain a Hybrid fan – when the AC/DC Cayenne gets cheap, I’m there.
by John Glynn | Jul 6, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Modified Porsche Hot Rods, Project Cars
Many of you will probably wish there were different wheels on this Porsche 356 Outlaw, recently spotted at an EASY Porsche meet in San Francisco. I reckon they are covering a brake upgrade – especially given the drivetrain changes – but no doubt this is an interesting car.
Super smooth bodywork with some urban stealth touches: grey primer with wiper delete, and Michelin Pilot Sport Cup rubber wrapped around those twist rims, the pics came from my buddy John G up in northern California. JG recently picked up a dune buggy body, and the emails have been flying on plans for chassis and drivetrain.
Air-cooled is obviously the only way to go for power, and JG likes the flat-four seen here. “I think I found what I want for a dune buggy motor this morning. Type 4 VW with Webers and Porsche shroud and vertical fan. This one was a bus motor, taken out to 2.7-litres. But super clean, no wires showing, nothing but the good stuff. Very cool: me likey.”
Me likey too. Dune buggies have been a bit of a thread around here lately, with a big buggy rebuild project in progress alongside my Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 at Racing Restorations. Rob Campbell has built a complete safety roll cage with seat belts for the owners and his kids, and sorted a lot of original fabrication issues.
I had a chance to drive the dune buggy around the estate before it was picked up, and that was a tick on the bucket list. I’ve always had a thing for dune buggies. Now that the mid-life is in full swing, I’d sort of enjoy having one for the odd days of good weather we see in the UK, although I prefer the shorter wheelbase models.
Looking forward to having JG’s buggy sorted in California. No doubt it will be a project for many years yet, but that will be a laugh when it’s finished!
by John Glynn | Jul 6, 2014 | Race and Rally
Michelin has sent through another great “We Are Racers” video, featuring the Porsche Le Mans highlights from 2014. “We Are Racers” documents Michelin at Le Mans 2014 through a series of motorsports visions, shot with French flair and exploring the drama of race life in the pits, as a team.
Watching the video gave me pangs of withdrawal, and I’m just a Porsche enthusiast writer. Imagine what it’s like for a winning mechanic, a driver or car designer. What must their weeks without Le Mans be like?
I recently watched a great documentary on Gordon Murray: the South African-born racing designer, famous for Brabhams and winning McLarens. For all of his F1 wins (more than 50 in total), Murray maintains that Le Mans is many times more difficult than Formula One when you consider what the car has to go through: an entire F1 season in 24 hours. An old school F1 season, that is.
After 20 years in F1 engineering, Murray retired from the sport to seek out new challenges. Keen to keep Murray’s ability away from the competition, Ron Dennis agreed to Murray establishing the McLaren F1 road car programme. Based around drawings from Murray’s early career, the 1100-kilo, 630 bhp F1 was the ultimate supercar: a zero-compromise driving machine, embodying the design philosophy of individual.
“I said from day one that we should never consider the F1 as a racing car because that would compromise it,” Murray noted. “Inevitably, there were customers who wanted to change that, and the GTR was the result. On its first visit to Le Mans in 1995 it won a historic victory.”
I’ve been up close and personal with a number of McLaren F1s, and they are a very special motor cars. Murray tells how only one day was allowed in the wind tunnel to develop the aerodynamics for the Le Mans McLaren F1. An aero-kitted road car, he gives his only regret as not having driven the winning machine to Le Mans and back.
Years after winning Le Mans with a car of his design, Murray’s passion for La Sarthe remains highly intense. But that winning car never bore his own name. So imagine Ferdinand Porsche in 1970, winning with a car that did have his name. Imagine having a hand in that car’s success: success that would be followed by many more Porsche winners. This is the spirit of “We Are Racers”. Perhaps our next win will come in 2015 – Michelin’s video sets us up for that dream.
by John Glynn | Jul 4, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Modified Porsche Hot Rods, Project Cars
Happy 4th of July to all my friends in the USA! Hope you all have a great day. My last post was on Lewis Hauser’s Porsche 356 Sportolet. Lewis sent me a nice story afterwards of meeting Doctor Wolfgang Porsche with the 356, which is well worth sharing.
“I can’t believe I forgot to mention meeting Wolfgang Porsche! It was at the 50th Porsche Parade in Hershey, PA. We ran into some of the Porsche family members looking at the car. One of them was Wolfgang Porsche, who said he thought it was one of their original prototypes and that it was beautiful.
“Dr Porsche was a very nice man. He also talked with me about my ’55 coupe that was at the first Parade in 1956 and on display with the other historic Porsches that weekend. He liked it because he could tell that the car was driven regularly. He said that his father intended for Porsches to be driven, not scrubbed with Q-Tips.”
One man who is definitely not a Q-Tip scrubber is the Sportolet’s current owner: Rob Abbott in Maryland. Rob has a number of vintage Porsches, including the superb ST rep seen here. It was built by another pair of non-Q-Tippers, Dave B at TRE in Los Angeles and our hot rod hero, Hans Lapine at Kundensport.
“This project started with a very nice, original Signal Orange 1971 911T,” says Rob. “Having spent entire project budgets just sorting out previous rust-ridden 911s, we decided to start with a good car. The idea was not to build a perfect ST replica – no two were alike, in any case – but something that could have been ordered from the factory by someone with connections.
“All the bodywork was done at Kundensport. The car is mostly steel bodied including fenders (wings) and bumpers, which were cut and formed to the fenders, and slotted for the Carrera oil cooler. It has an aluminum rear deck lid and a factory-style balsa-reinforced fiberglass hood.”
The interior is super trick, and the engine is a hot rod 3.2 running PMOs. I’ve got some more build pics and detail shots from Rob to share later. For now, enjoy July 4th and the pics of this pair together on a Pacific coast drive during R Gruppe Treffen. Looking great!
by John Glynn | Jul 2, 2014 | Classic Porsche Blog, Modified Porsche Hot Rods
Having heard some nice reports from various sources about Lewis Hauser and his Karosserie restoration company in Fairfax, Virginia over the last few years, it was great to finally swap a few emails with Lewis this week, discussing one of his most fascinating Porsche projects to date: the 356 Sportolet.
Outlaw Porsche 356
I first came across the 356 Sportolet via a Google search, inspired by Facebook messages to Ferdinand Magazine’s page from a Pre-A owner restoring a car with Lewis. The Pre-A was one of the best I had seen, so I did some more searching and it led me to the Porsche Club of America’s Potomac Region magazine, Der Vorgänger, from June 2013.
In there was a piece on Lewis written by Jonathan Kinberg. It mentioned a 1953 356 Cabriolet restoration that Lewis completed for John Wood in 2008. I remembered a magazine feature on the car a few years ago and being blown away by the quality of the work. Another noted restoration (for Dick Brumme on a super rare 1950 Cabriolet) drew some interesting owner comments.
“I’ve known Lewis since the early 1980s,” said Dick. “He has worked on several of my cars including a ’72 Mercedes coupe, my ’61 roadster and the 1950 cab! He does excellent work and runs a great shop. Everything is done on time and with no surprises. He has a really weird sense of humor, but I like it. He is a good guy!”
My sense of humour often draws the same remarks, so we were off to a very good start. No doubt the Sportolet has drawn a few sideways glances too, so I asked Lewis how the project got started.
Outlaw Porsche 356 Coupe/Roadster Conversion
“The Sportolet started life as a ’56 Coupe. After doing so many of these cars, I thought it would be fun to make a coupe into an open unit. I had a Convertible D dash with cowl and two Roadster doors that I thought I would graft to the car. I also had a Convertible D rear lined up to complete the Roadster, but the guy sold that to someone else.
“After doing the door and dash cowl work, the project stalled for about 5 years. I had the car in my storage shed when a hurricane knocked the corner off the building, just missing the car. I took that as a sign that I needed to complete the project.
“Without the rear clip, I decided one day that the front cowl and hood off a ’62 parts car would look good as the back end of the car. The louvers on the rear cowl came from the inside of a Cabriolet deck lid. The louvers on the hood came from the inside of coupe deck lids. I made the mirror shell out of aluminum, just like the factory did with the Carreras.
“The engine is out of a 912. The seats came out of a GT Coupe. The interior has original door panels: everything else is wrapped with vintage vinyl, taken from various seats and things that I’ve been collecting for the last 30 years. The horns are very rare ‘fanfare’ horns that I took off a Pre-A.
“We finished the car just in time to display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s ‘America on the Move’ exhibit. The car was the first Outlaw to win Best of Show at the 30th anniversary 356 Registry Holiday in Williamsburg, Va. I have since sold the car to Rob Abbott: he keeps it in Southern California.”
What a superb story so far, and nice to know it lives with Rob, who has a great eye for classic Porsche. That means I’ll get to see it in person one day! I sent some of Lewis’ Sportolet pics to a couple of friends and the reception was mixed: seems you either get this or you don’t. Maybe it’s just like Lewis’ sense of humour. If this little Outlaw sums up the man, we should get along just fine.
