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Stone Chips and Life Stories

Stone Chips and Life Stories

I’ve always been a bookworm. From seven or eight years old, I pored over every issue of the legendary ‘Motor’ magazine, relishing the data and reviews. As a car-obsessed kid on the west coast of Ireland, there was no one to share any of this geekery with, other than a handful of less obsessed schoolmates. But that didn’t stop me from soaking it up.

Unforgettable ‘Car’ reviews had brilliant photos with text from a lyrical genius. Whether it was Aussies Cropley or Nichols, Austria’s Kacher or the brilliant George Bishop, their work seemed effortless – the words just flowed out. When you do the right homework, that’s how it goes.

Stuck in a place where these dream-sequence pieces could never come true, I absorbed them like sunlight. Exacting attention to detail went into these features and that shone from the pages: the least I as a reader could do was give them my undivided attention.

If the laser-beam focus that we shot into the pages of the magazines of our youth was absorbed as raw spirit energy, then a solution to climate change is stacked all around me. I have thousands of old magazines on shelves and in boxes: decades of Autocar, piles of Car and Performance Car, the complete works of Street Machine, Custom Car and hundreds of Bike magazines. The energy contained within these pages must be pretty incredible.

Much as I love what these magazines encapsulate, most will be recycled at some stage. While I enjoy leafing through tokens of my well-spent youth, they are not a must-have reminder of my boyhood fascination with car reviews. Somewhere along the journey from young reader to driver, I realised that comparing one new car to another no longer mattered to me. The story mattered – it always does – but the actual product was less of a draw.

Nothing much interesting happens with cars until you drive them out of the showroom and into the world. It’s a bit like having kids: the delivery is special, then a few days of bright fascination, then the glow of strapping them into their child seat and heading home from the hospital. But then, the newness softens. Months go by where not very much happens. Of course you are bonding, but really it’s just clocking up the miles until they get interesting.

Then they start moving, and failing. Every fail is a thrill: fail, fail and succeed. Progress is swift – you learn fast when you fail. Their failure exposes vulnerability and brings out our empathy. As the days pass with small fails and small wins, thoughts of what life was like before this empathic connection starts to fade. It begins to feel like they have always been around. The energy pored into them begins to shine back. They tell part of your story and you contribute to theirs. Your part is a privilege.

As such a huge percentage of my emotional life has been wrapped in the romance of cars, I find distinct parallels in connection. Car stories worth telling have cracks in the windscreen. Memorable protagonists come with a back story. A life well-lived is defined by the stone chips and the stories I love come with this as the subtext.

Of course, second-hand stuff is not for everyone. Some people love the no-story of newness and, having owned and sold many new cars in my life, I get that. But newness is not my primary trigger. I like things that are scratched: the wear on a camera or the cracks in the leather. In the same way that I liked it when my kids would fall over, I take some pleasure when they ring me in tears: they are living a life and writing their story through authentic experience. When the question is new versus used or shiny versus scratched, there is simply no contest for me.

New Porsche Macan is a thriller

Used car admirers would be pretty stuck without new car obsessives, so hats off to them. New Macan is out and about and, as someone who has run 4×4 SUVs for decades and can see no impending end to that, of course I like it, but of course I would only buy used. The used Macan I would buy is still thirty grand and unlikely to fall into my price range anytime soon, so I scratch the vague itch vicariously, by chatting with friends who own them and watching Stuttgart’s Youtube content.

The latest Macan video wants to talk about thrilling. Printer paper and water coolers: they are not thrilling. A Macan at dawn on a twisty road: that’s what thrilling is like. But that viewpoint depends on the watcher.

Printer paper carrying the first draft of a book is thrilling. Rising from a long desk stint for a cool cup of water: also good. An empty Macan on a twisty road first thing in the morning feels like a bit of a waste. My early morning drives are all about taking the dog to the woods or heading out to collect yet more reclaimed architectural salvage. An early morning drive in a Macan with the dog in the boot and an empty trailer on the back? Now that would be cool.


Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog and engage with me in other ways, you can:

Sky’s the limit for Porsche Boeing Partnership

Sky’s the limit for Porsche Boeing Partnership

Porsche’s recent announcement of a collaboration with Boeing is part of a wider Boeing push for upbeat PR. In the aftermath of the tragic 737 Max air crashes that led to the death of more than 300 people, Boeing’s share price needs good-news stories to reverse recent losses and to remind its investors that the company is focused on the future.

Porsche investors also like a good news story. Stuttgart’s push towards defining electric vehicle mobility for the 1%, and the constant reminders that innovation is at the heart of ‘new Porsche’ made this year’s first flight of the electric aircraft under development by Boeing subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences, an ideal PR platform for both organisations.

Having signed a (non-binding) Memorandum of Understanding to develop a concept for a fully electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, the artist’s impressions of what a Porsche-Boeing flying car might look like is guaranteed to grab a few headlines, but there is a long way to go before we see flying cars. Both organisations have serious issues to resolve before high-flying Porsche buyers can reach for the skies.

Several hundred deceased 737 passengers and the row over Boeing engineers carrying out the US Federal Aviation Authority’s (FAA) safety approvals of the 737 MAX are not going to go away quickly.

Across the pond in Germany, the emissions cheating scandal continues to dog Volkswagen AG, with Brunswick public prosecutors recently bringing charges against Hans Dieter Pötsch (Porsche SE exec board chair), Dr. Herbert Diess (VW’s board of management chair) and the former Chairman of the VW Management Board, Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn.

With headlines like these dominating recent business pages, some flying car artwork will come as a blessed relief for the press departments. It will also lead to some people describing the idea as Porsche’s latest bid to keep tabs on Tesla’s challenge to become the high-end personal mobility brand of the future, but that is a whole other story.


Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:


Porsche Taycan: How It’s Made

Porsche Taycan: How It’s Made

I came back in from walking Ted the Jack Russell tonight and plonked myself down in front of the TV for an hour of Youtube education just as Porsche uploaded a pretty cool video following the Taycan down the production line. The feature is just how I like these things: no narration, just a nicely edited visual documentary that allows the unfolding story to breathe and invites the viewer to fill in the blanks. Scroll down to watch it.

How It’s Made: Old Guy TV

Judging by the success of channels such as MyMechanics (943k subscribers) and Rescue and Restore (725k subs), more than a few of us like this silent movie treatment with plenty of silent space to watch stuff being made and repaired. If you’re one of those people, then this Taycan video will be right up your street. It’s 29 minutes long and there is no audio soundtrack of any description. Just sit back, press play and enjoy.

A few thoughts came to mind while watching this film on what passes for a big screen around here.

Firstly, the volume is on, but the silence is golden. The robots are silent, there are not too many people around, the lack of ear defenders show this is a silent environment. The loudest nose is when the finished Taycan hits the dyno rollers for its first indoor road test and the tyres begin to roll. That silent film aspect is striking.

Secondly, this is clearly a brand new plant designed for the future. The lighting is impeccable, the surfaces are unmarked and the workers present themselves in robot-like perfection. One is struck by the inference that this car factory is a first: “it is like no car factory you have ever seen before, because what we’re building is 100% clean.” Yet it is built on the site of the first Porsche production line from seven decades ago. Progress in action.

The mix of workers is a little surprising: mostly young white males, all seemingly straight from the barber shop in the corner. I guess many of those shown are new to Porsche, so they have never built a petrol-engined car before and they perhaps never will. Will they ever even own a car? Living in a city with great transport links, I’m not sure I would bother.

The apparent lack of old hands amongst the workforce, implies that there is no “this is how we do it in the other workshop”. On the one hand, I like the feel of that freshness but, on the other, the joy of working with older mechanics was a big attraction when I started my apprenticeship in the mid-1980s. If the decision to keep the new car/new workforce separate was a deliberate one, that is interesting.

Finally, the big message is: LOOK AT THE CONTRAST. Gone are the grizzled welders in a darkened warehouse, gone the rows of German metalworkers beating the bodywork with hammer and dolly, gone are the painters, sent mad by solvent abuse, gone their crazy comrades, gluing vinyl and leather to the roof and side panels with industrial strength adhesive. Gone is the music of engines being fired up for the first time, gone are the fumes from the flat-six boxers, starting as they mean to go on. On the one hand, I like it. On the other, I still quite like it.


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Porsche Taycan: First Drive

Porsche Taycan: First Drive

DriveNation’s Andrew Frankel has just shared his impressions following an early open-road press drive in the pre-production Porsche Taycan. You can read his full review here, or scroll to the end. Here are some comments worth thinking about:

“You sit low: 911 low, which is odd in a four-door car weighing around 2.25 tonnes. Yes, it’s near silent but what you notice first is the ride quality. It is ridiculously good, the best of any Porsche I have driven.

“The acceleration is violent, even in the Turbo. The steering was a surprise: weighty, accurate, linear, way closer to a 911 than a Panamera. It is the best electric car I’ve driven and by a mile.”

Porsche gears up for Taycan

Taycan is part of Porsche’s €6 billion gamble on a 50% sales split between electrified and pure ICE vehicles by 2025. Taycan production has carbon neutral ambitions: the goal is a factory with no environmental impact.

Stuttgart’s first full electric production car will add 1,200 employees to the factory-within-a-factory in Zuffenhausen. “The Taycan is one of biggest creators of jobs in the history of Porsche,” said Andreas Haffner, head of HR and Social Affairs. Not all of these new employees will be producing the Taycan; they will also build two-door sports cars. Porsche wants a team blending experienced sports car builders and new staff. 

In a programme carried out at last year’s Geneva Motor Show, Porsche apparently measured more than 20,000 people worldwide who were interested in buying a Taycan. Buyers were invited to place a deposit before adding their names to an options programme list. Porsche upgraded its production plans off the back of that information.

The drip feeding of performance data and feedback echoing Frankel’s opinions from first press drives ahead of next month’s launch will no doubt be getting some wallets flapping. Pre-production cars have already been shown at Shanghai, Goodwood Festival of Speed and Formula E season finale in New York to build interest amongst the target demographic.

Taycan covers 2,000 miles in 24 hours

Endurance testing at Porsche’s Nardo facility recently allowed a pre-production Taycan to cover 3,425 kilometres (2128 miles) in 24 hours, stopping only for quick charging and driver changes. Speed tests at Nardo have shown the Taycan to be capable of going from 0-200 km/h (124 mph) 26 times in a row, taking an average of under 10 seconds each time.

The latest testing at the Nürburgring set a new lap record for a four-door electric car of 7 minutes 42 seconds around the 20.6 kilometre Nordschleife lap record circuit. That’s a minute slower than a Porsche 911 GT2 RS, but Taycan used no petrol to do that lap time and the only noises heard came from the tyres and the guy with the stopwatch at the finish line.

Despite owning a Prius for several years and fully appreciating what Porsche is working towards, I’m not an electric car evangelist. I would rather cut my miles and try to drive smarter than pour money into something that is marketed as a zero emissions car but in fact takes substantial energy to produce and needs charging via the national grid every day of its life. There is still financial sense in running efficient petrol engines.

My main thought when I read about the efforts going in to electric cars is that every minute spent developing one thing is a minute that is not spent developing another, which may still have much to contribute. But such is life. Taycan production slots will be released towards the end of 2019, so expect a deluge of press once the kids go back to school. You lucky people!

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Thoughts on Keyless Alarm Systems

Thoughts on Keyless Alarm Systems

I spent most of today in a car salvage yard, inspecting a classic Porsche as part of a total loss claim. Being invited to inspect the vehicle for a report I am compiling offered an excellent opportunity to consult with one of the UK’s most experienced insurance investigators on several issues, one of which was keyless security and the part it has played in an alarming rise in vehicle theft across the UK.

Home Office data shows a sharp rise in vehicle thefts in recent years, from the worrying total of 75,300 cars stolen in 2013/14 to a staggering 112,000 cars in 2017/18. Police forces including Manchester and West Midlands Police attribute the epidemic to the vulnerabilities present in many keyless entry systems, where keyfob signals remain active even when the owner is not and permit techniques such as relaying.

Relaying usually involves two people working together. One stands by the targeted vehicle, while the other stands near the house with a device that can pick up a signal from the key fob indoors: some devices will find a signal from over 100 metres away. The device then relays the key fob’s signal directly to the car, allowing the thieves to get in and drive away immediately. The vehicle is only re-immobilised when the ignition is turned off.

Porsche Macan Keyless System Rating

Porsche’s keyless entry systems made the news this week, after the Porsche Macan was upgraded from a ‘Poor’ rating by Thatcham Research for the performance of its keyless system to a ‘Superior’ rating, after Porsche supplied Thatcham with clarifications on system operation. Richard Billyeald, Chief Technical Officer at Thatcham Research, noted that “vehicle manufacturers are beginning to offer solutions and fixes to Keyless Entry/Start vulnerabilities, with Audi, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes and Porsche really taking a lead. We expect others to follow suit quickly.”

With approximately 320,000 UK registered cars now using keyless technology (Fleet News estimates), thieves still have plenty of targets. They are also employing more direct tactics. I recently wrote an ad for a friend who was selling his Tornado Red Golf GTD privately and within three days he had become a victim of driveway theft. A potential purchaser turned up to see the car, was given the keys to start it on the driveway and instantly locked the doors, stuck in it reverse and drove off with the owner desperately clinging to the bonnet. My friend fell off and ended up in hospital: his insurers now say they will not pay the claim for theft.

My discussion with the insurer’s man today shed some light on what the industry is doing to fight back against the £270 million paid out on UK car thefts last year. His team also carries out deep investigations into claims fraud and does some of the basic checks that traffic police used to routinely carry out when more resources were available.

I passed three red Golfs in police motorway stops around Birmingham over several days last week and wondered how many of those stops would involve a VIN check, to see if the car was running on cloned registration plates, as the stolen Golf GTD may be. The insurance man told me how he had visited a car park in London last week and found three stolen cars on cloned plates: ANPR systems only looking at registration plates rather than VIN numbers can never tell the full story of what is actually moving around.

For every car that is stolen, a vehicle manufacturer will likely sell another one, so there is a certain amount of inertia around increasing the security of keyless systems. Thatcham’s decision to rate the vulnerability of keyless systems to easy theft methods (which can lead to some thefts taking place in less than a minute) has not been well received by manufacturers, but it’s one way to accelerate progress in making things harder for car thieves.