One of the biggest questions we get is why Porsche owners are so fanatical about the brand. Aside from upper echelon models of the 911 and 918, Porsches don’t have the horsepower and torque numbers that many people use to judge a car. Porsches use smaller engines, typically eschewing the power and size of a V8 for a flat and/or boxer six cylinders. To answer this question, we recommend a lovely piece written by Jalopnik’s Raphael Orlove.
The article, titled “I Drove A Vintage Porsche And I Get It Now” goes even further into what makes a Porsche a Porsche by reaching back into history when cars were a lot less developed than they are today. Today’s Porsches are not only fantastic at driving around areas like Raleigh. They also have a level of refinement and luxury that makes their interior fit and finish yet another hurdle that competitors must think about when engineering their best attempts at second place. Early Porsches were much more stark and honed around a single focus: driving.
Orlove’s central thesis is that the car, a 1969 911T, so often maligned for having the engine in the wrong place and for emphasizing beautiful, timeless form over the more relevant aspect of function has to be driven to be appreciated. All of the counterintuitive features that trigger warning signs to the brain—easy-flooding carburetors, long gearshifts, thin body panels, narrow pedals, front placement of the gas tank—all become clear when you start driving the car as it’s mean to be. Here’s Orlove:
“In the 911, though the curves, it’s like there isn’t any car at all. No steering wheel, no tires. You yourself go down the road. You don’t hear the engine; you’re the one shouting up the revs.”
We think of cars as self-contained things, as solid and corporeal as a bar of soap, or a box of Kleenex, or a pencil. This paradigm trips people up with a vintage Porsche because it seems like something is missing from its design: maybe a higher roof or a thicker A-pillar, but something nonetheless. It’s when people drive it that they realize the element missing is you: the driver. Your weight, your input and your control are all the missing pieces. Far from just being a thing to carry you from one place to another, a vintage Porsche is meant to be an extension of your body. Seen any other way, it just doesn’t make sense.
“The thing about a Porsche 911 is that it doesn’t even feel like a car. It feels like an instrument. A tool for extracting speed out of a road. Not so much something you drive as it is something you operate.”
Check out Orlove’s piece then report back if it seems consistent with your experience. Better yet, find an old Porsche yourself and take some time on the back roads of Raleigh, Wake Forest, Durham or Cary. We want to know what you find out.
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