Dawn On The Lawn: David Soares on Monterey 2009
I have always had an aversion to driving on the lawn and I won’t spin my tires
on your golf course if you promise not to hit your little balls at my car. I’ve
been just about the only driver keeping off the grass this past week as the
mobs have once again descended on the emerald fairways of the Monterey
Peninsula to celebrate the cult of the automobile. Beside the big lawn shows
all over town, the Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races at Mazda
Raceway Laguna Seca selected sportscar stalwart Porsche to be celebrated
for the third time as the weekend’s featured marque.
For the better part of my half-century Porsches have stood for “more from
less.” In a venue which now features a $400-per-person combination car
show, food, wine, and deluxe gluttony festival, this maxim was ignored nearly
everywhere, as new leviathan saloon cars from Bentley, Jaguar, and Rolls-
Royce pounded the pavements and lawns of Pebble Beach and the 17-mile
Drive. Not to be outdone, Porsche took advantage of the hubbub to introduce
a limousine of their own, the Panamera, to the North American market. A
few dozen new cars were airlifted from Leipzig on Lufthansa so that they
might bask in the hype and flash which has become the new ethos of the
Monterey Weekend.
Bright lights, little city
The bright lights at Porsche Cars North America appear to have recognized
the huge burden that the factory has placed upon them to shift the new car in
the American market and invitations were sent out offering a select group of
Porsche Club of America members the opportunity to be the first civilians to
drive the car here in the U.S. While SCP didn’t rate a press car just yet
(requests have been made for the fall), my card-carrying membership in the
PCA identified me as a potential client and netted me a morning test drive in
the new car on a route through the bucolic oaks of the Carmel Valley.
Because we’re all hard-wired to the Internet these days, we’ve become
obsessed with spy photos and peeks at new cars. This has created a
tendency in all of us to render opinions about new vehicles while still ignorant
of the driving experience and utility of a new car. The Panamera’s looks have
been subject to much controversy in the run-up to the introduction.
Porsche’s chief stylist Michael Mauer was press-ganged onto a flight to Quail
Lodge and tasked with an attempt at explaining to the faithful how the design
was intended to somehow invoke the 356 and 911 while doubling their mass
and volume. Whatever. Love it or hate it, like the 928 of the 1970’s, there’s
nothing else out there like it. After seeing Panameras for four days all over
the Peninsula, driving up and down the Carmel Valley, pacing the Historics
and the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, and on static display at various
venues, I got used to it. Eventually I even began to find the car muscular and
ruggedly handsome in a similar vein to the Porsche countryman we
Californians elected to be our governor a few years back.
Once behind the wheel, I was quite impressed with the new Panamera. I had
just returned from a four-up 1200-mile jaunt to Portland and back in my BMW
X3 3.0i and expected more of the same driving the similar mass of the Vier-
Türen Porsche. Wrong. The seating position is very 997 and the tall center
console is quite beautiful, even in the 400 hp base Panamera S I drove. In
Normal mode the steering is a bit over-boosted at low speeds and the car is
as muffled as a bank’s basement, but once on rural Carmel Valley Road my
spokesmodel/minder depressed the Sport-Plus button and invited me to
“punch it.” The Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe (PDK) gearbox proved to
be prescient, dropping down several cogs simultaneous to the flexing of my
right ankle and the roomy limousine simply leapt forward in the manner of a
proper Porsche, not bothering to gather up her skirts like a torque-converted
Bentley or a Mercedes must do (“are you sure about this, sir?”),
accompanied by a distant V-8 roar. This supremely competent transmission
makes the car, in my opinion. The brakes proved similarly adept at reining
things in as PDK had been at hurling us down the road, and our rear-seat
passenger under-estimated our apparent velocity by a good 50%. I can’t wait
until these things start coming off lease fully depreciated…
Rennzwart
We were provided with beautiful posters showing the Panamera on a dry lake
bed (are ad agencies now completely out of ideas?) leading a pack of
Porsche heritage entitled “Believe.” In the pack were Al Holbert’s Löwenbrau
962, Mark Donohue’s 917/30, a werks Mobil GT1, and other Porsche racing
icons of the Twentieth Century. Remembering Porsche’s 50th anniversary at
the Monterey Historics in 1998 and the Porsche Rennsport Reunions, I could
hardly wait to see what sort of heritage would be on display for the roll-out of
a new premium model in an entirely new market segment. After all, PCNA
had spent a tidy sum airfreighting 31 Panameras to Quail Lodge for the
launch.
I’ve got my Orange Crush…
When I got to Laguna I could not have been more crushed. Klaus Bischof
had been tasked at the eleventh-hour to bring four cars from Porsche’s rolling
museum, which were parked in a too-large stretch of empty asphalt next to
the superb Rolex “Moments in Time” exhibition tent. Only one of them was a
car of a type ever raced in North America, the GT1-98. A few privately-owned
cars were strewn in the open area in front of the Porsche trailer, fortunately
including Dr. Julio Palmaz’s beautiful Le Mans-winning 1970 Porsche-
Salzburg 917K.
I have long associated Porsches with my home track at Laguna Seca. My
first experience there was of Siffert in the day-glow STP orange 917/10 Can-
Am, followed by Follmer and Donohue in the Penske L&M turbo 917/10’s,
and then Donohue’s brilliant come-from-behind walk-over, in the Sunoco
917/30, passing the 917/10’s of Follmer, Kemp, Scheckter, Redman, and
Haywood. Then came the Camel GT and Trans Am years, followed by
IMSA’s GTP. None of these icons of Laguna Seca and American Porsche-
dom were represented in the patch of blacktop set aside as Porsche’s court
of honor, despite the fact that most of them are currently in the U.S. and even
though many of them were photographed and filmed in Southern California by
Jeff Zwart earlier this year for the poster being given out in support of the
Panamera launch. Brumos kept the sole 917/10 present over at their
transporter, while the 917/30 was represented by a bitsa built up from parts
long after the Can-Am had disappeared.
Porsche Cars North America’s disconnect was further emphasized by Paul
Ritchie’s Porsche Motorsport North America group being housed in a garage
a football field away displaying some of their current projects, ironically
including an ex Siffert Gulf 917 rolling chassis that Editor Morse is overseeing
the restoration of.
Twilight Double Leader
Fortunately the event was saved by the efforts of several private collectors of
Porsche racing cars, including Ranson Webster, James Edwards, Jerry
Seinfeld, and Bruce Canepa, who brought (and mostly raced) a beautiful field
of cars over the weekend. Canepa put on a great show in his gorgeous and
fresh Gulf 917-015 trying to catch Brian Redman’s better-suited-to-Laguna
Collier Collection Gulf 908/3 on Saturday afternoon. The 1981-1990 IMSA
GTP and FIA cars also put on a terrific speed exhibition with about 20
956/962/K3/March Porsches spitting flames on the over-run during their 10-
lap exhibition. Sunday’s ’73-’80 IMSA group boasted a field chock-full of
935’s and sprinkled with Dekon Monzas, Greenwood Corvettes, RSR’s, a Le
Mans class winning 934 and a BMW CSL (I don’t know what Kevin Buckler’s
2003 Daytona-winning GT3 RSR was doing there, but who am I to ask…).
Hundreds of Porsche-owners (including myself) filled the lake bed with one of
the better-attended marque corrals in memory. All-in-all a fitting send-off to
Steve Earle, who is stepping-down from the Monterey Historics after 36
editions.
Porsche has been at the center of the sportscar universe for 60 years. Their
lavish expenditure on the roll-out of a new sedan while snubbing their racing
heritage was truly disconcerting. One can only hope that rumors of Porsche
becoming an exclusively GT outfit are simply pessimism driven by the times
and that the Prodigal Nephew’s return to Zuffenhausen will also be a return to
past glories. The Panamera surprised me with its competence. Hopefully
the new management will as well.
David Soares
August 2009
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