Porsche launches Martini Racing website

To the uninitiated, the famous light blue, dark blue and red colours of Martini Racing look like go-faster stripes. Attractive go-faster stripes; but go-faster stripes nonetheless. To those with a passion for Porsche and for motor sport, the colours of Martini Racing signify something much greater indeed.

Now, to celebrate the relationship between Porsche and Martini Racing, Porsche has devoted a section of its website to the partnership. There is a diverse selection of classic Martini Racing and Porsche motor sport images that are available for download, sourced exclusively from the Porsche Archive in Stuttgart, Germany. There are also a variety of video movie clips — that can also be downloaded — which clearly demonstrate the power, and striking graphic liveries, of these iconic race cars in their heyday. Porsche Design have also created a range of clothing, accessories and model cars that reflect the dramatic style of the renowned racing cars from the 1960s and 1970s.

Porsche and Martini Racing — a brief history

The Italian drinks empire of Martini & Rossi was one of the first sponsors unrelated to the car industry to take advantage of the end of advertising restrictions in motor racing prior to 1968. Martini were quick to react and at a sports car race at Hockenheim in 1968 in exchange for bearing Martini Racing decals on their vehicles, the drivers were given promotional items such as racing jackets. Today, original Martini racewear commands a huge premium among collectors of motor sport memorabilia.

From these modest beginnings in 1968, Martini Racing forged a relationship with racing — and in particular Porsche — by purchasing two 907 sports cars for the 1967 season. Proudly displaying the famous ‘Ball and Bar’ Martini logo, the pair of Porsche 907 racers competed at Spa, Brands Hatch and Monza, topping off a strong first year with a sixth place finish in the gruelling Targa Florio race in Sicily.

With racing success and public interest gaining momentum, Martini Racing supported a total of eight cars in 1969 before announcing an unprecedented sponsorship arrangement with one of three Porsche privateer teams, German Racing, the following year. Competing with the sensational flat-8, air-cooled Porsche 908 sports car, the ‘International Martini Racing Team’ (as it was known) proudly displayed the two wide stripes that would eventually morph into the famous and widely recognised Martini Racing colours.

Click here to visit the Porsche/Martini Racing website

Porsche Museum ready to open

In the new Porsche Museum, the final preparations are being made for the opening on Saturday, 31 January 2009. At last, now that the scaffolding has been removed, it is possible to see the full extent of the architecture of the building, opposite the head office premises of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG in Zuffenhausen; the suburb of Stuttgart, in Germany, that has since 1950 been the home of Porsche. The 5,600 square metres of exhibition space are supported on just three cores of reinforced concrete — hence the building appears to hover in free-space. Inside, the majority of approximately 80 exhibits are already in place.

During construction of the new Porsche Museum, the vehicles have been stored in an off-premises warehouse in Zwingenberg am Neckar until required. The first exhibits that will go on display in the museum include, among others, a 356 Cabriolet, an original ‘11’ model and the first prototype of the 924.

“In the last few weeks, we have comprehensively restored all the vehicles and polished them up for their use in the museum,” explains Klaus Bischof, head of the ‘Rolling Museum’. In addition to the exhibition vehicles, the small exhibits and show cabinets have also already been put in place. This means that work can now begin on the lighting of the exhibition as the next step.

As virtually all museum vehicles are also used on the road, it is intended that they will be continuously replaced by other exhibits. As a result, the Porsche Museum will constantly change its appearance, and this will enable visitors in future to discover different Porsche rarities in the new museum on a regular basis.

In the other areas of the new building — amongst them the museum workshops, the museum shop, the Porsche archive, an exclusive restaurant, a bistro and the capacious event areas — a team of experts is busy applying the finishing touches. Three days after the ceremonial opening, which takes place on Wednesday, 28 January 2009, the doors of the new Porsche Museum will be officially opened to welcome the first visitors.

The new museum and its range of catering facilities offer additional capacity for conferences, company and private events in exceptional surroundings. Interested parties can get more detailed information from the internet on www.porsche.com/museum.

PGO Hemera – classic good looks

Little-known French automaker PGO has just released the details of its newest car named the Hemera, which actually looks a lot like an old car. PGO could be forgiven for copying another auotmaker’s styling, as the Porsche Speedster that the Hemera derives its good looks from happens to be one of the most classic car designs ever. The Hemera looks more like a modernised 356 than any current Porsche does, and that’s a good thing. Like the Speedster the Hemera is light-weight so it achieves its sporty performance in much the same way that Lotus does, meaning that the Hemera’s natural gas-fed, Peugeot-sourced, mid-mounted powerplant that makes all of 140 horsepower is sufficient to accelerate the car to 100kph in under 7 seconds.

Looks like a well-styled fun car, but unfortunately its only for the European market at this stage and not us here in NZ.

Porsche named as feature marque for Monterey Historic

Following on from this year’s 35th anniversary of the Monterey Historic Automobile Race, the event organisers have announced the dates for the 2009 event. The 36th annual running of the historic races and auto expo will take place on August 14-16, 2009, at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, California, USA .

Each year, a featured marque is chosen to commemorate the event. This annual celebration of a specific manufacturer usually intrigues thousands of enthusiasts from around the world. In 2009, the featured marque will be Porsche.

“We are extremely excited to honor Porsche and its incredible racing heritage at the 36th Rolex Monterey Historics,” said Steve Earle, founder of the event. “With great cars from the early Speedsters, and Spyders, to the 917′s and the Group C cars, this event will be an auto enthusiasts dream, and we look forward to seeing these vehicles on the track.”

If you’re a Porsche nut start making your travel plans for next August.

Will Supercars Become Extinct?

Like the dinosaur, European supercars are in danger of becoming extinct. Currently, Europe’s auto manufacturers are locked in a deadly battle with environmentalists who point out that, with their massively powerful engines, supercars are pumping out as much as 2-3 times as much carbon dioxide as more standard cars.
These spoil sports — sorry, environmentalists — reckon that there is no place for the supercar in a world battling untoward emissions and climate change.
Manufacturers such as Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini are experiencing an uphill fight as they argue that the cars they produce are iconic vehicles that combine classic design with state-of-the-art technology — technology that could even help to save the environment in the long term. Either way, very few so-called supercars are pressed into service as daily drivers, so their overall contribution to CO2 emissions is very small.
However, the EU proposes to legislate for a decrease in CO2 emissions from cars to an average of 120g @ km by 2012 — currently the average is 160 grams.
This is potentially going to harm many supercars, most of which can squirt out as much as 200-500 grams a kilometre.
For smaller manufacturers there is some relief — those that produce less than 10,000 vehicles a year will be allowed to negotiate their own targets with the EU big-wigs. That lets smaller niche manufacturers  — such as Lotus and Morgan — off the hook and would also throw a life-line to newly independent Aston Martin.
However, that won’t be much help to Porsche, Maserati, Ferrari and Lamborghini as they are all part of larger auto groups — so, for instance, Ferrari wouldn’t have the opportunity to set their own emission standards as they’d be lumped in with the much larger volume of vehicles produced by their parent company, Fiat.
What does the future hold for the supercar? Electric power? An electrically powered Ferrari would be a bit hard to swallow — the whirr of electric motors isn’t going to stir the blood quite as efficiently as the howl of a petrol-powered V12 at full noise!
In the meantime, the German and Italian auto makers are arguing strongly against these new proposals — let’s just hope that common sense prevails. It would be a less interesting world without Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini and Maserati sports cars — we can’t all afford to own one, but we can at least admire them from a distance.
Of course, there is another solution if the worse comes to the worse — ship all the world’s supercars to New Zealand. We’ll look after them for all those well-heeled, supercar-owning Euros — then they can nip down here for a few days every year and thrash them around one of our race-tracks before heading off home. It’s not such a daft idea, ‘supercar resorts’ already exist in the US and Spain for just such activities — so why not here?

The world would be a poorer place without cars like the Ferrari Enzo