There are two theories for how a craftsman may improve his work. The first is that he should dedicate himself to a single pursuit, over and over, day in and day out, for months, years, decades, even the term of his natural life. Every day is the same: a repeat of the day before. Eventually, after many years he learns his trade so well that he discovers subtleties and nuances that less seasoned professionals could never detect. This is the concept of mastery.
The second theory is to embrace a diverse range of activities. This person tries everything. Flitting from one subject to the next, she dives in deeply, absorbing as much as she can in a short time, often applying what she’s learned from a completely different discipline, and then migrates to a new topic. By keeping a very wide perspective, she is able to connect seemingly disparate ideas to synthesize ideas that those too focused on the methods of the past could ever conceive of. This is also the concept of mastery.
In 1972, Porsche was exploring both of these avenues, and an intriguing example from that time—birthed in the newly awakened environmental consciousness—was the FLA. Right away the name clues you in that this is not a typical Porsche. The words, Forschungsprojekt Langzeit Auto, correspond roughly to Long-term auto research project.
Environmentalists of the day, known commonly as worry-warts, were predicting that the end of earth’s natural resources was nigh, and that we should think ahead a bit. Rather than shrug off the idea, Porsche chose to explore it. What kind of a car would exist in that age? What could it depend on? Could we depend on it?
The engineers began work on a highly-unsexy, performance-barren prototype, which can either be seen as a measure of how seriously they took their premise, or how laughable they thought its probability. The FLA was designed to operate without issue for 30 years on the assumption that mechanics would be impossible to find in a post-apocalyptic world.
Everything about the car was made to endure the roughest use possible without ever needing service. The engine, transmission, cooling system, chassis, suspension, gearbox—all of it was made so it could survive anything short of a nuclear blast and keep trundling along. Of course, this being a Porsche, it had to have a rear-mounted flat-six engine (a not-so subtle indication of what constitutes the platonic auto configuration).
Of course, with natural resources still abiding and customers still preferring their performance-centered, grievously mortal cars, the FLA would never find a market and instead now sits in the Porsche museum in Stuttgart. You can bet, however, that on the day when oil, trees, steel, coal and lithium finally do give out, whoever is CEO of Porsche at the time will smash through the museum’s glass in the FLA, flooring it with all 75 horsepower, making like the dickens for Bali.
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