Porsche

Luft 10

/ Jeff / 1 Comment

I’ve shared about our past experiences with Luftgekuhlt and how I’ve just fallen in love with the events, the brand and everything it represents. A highly curated selection of Porsche cars, artfully laid out in interesting back drops to create a perfect photo op around every corner. If you are a Porsche lover and a car photographer, there is no better event in the world.

This year, Luft 10 was being hosted in the Back Lot of Universal Studios in LA. Using all of the frequent flier miles that I’ve been earning with constant business travel, I secured me and Shep flights to LA and a few nights in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. I was just returning from a work trip to Bentonville. Landed home at 4, and Shep and I were back at the airport by 6. No rest for the wicked! We arrived late Friday evening, rented our stupid loud Shelby Mustang convertible, and made our way to the Roosevelt to get some sleep.

Alarms went off early the next morning. I had paid extra for early morning entry tickets to Luft, and we didn’t want to miss a second. We arrived to the Back Lot entrance by 8:30, and took a short shuttle ride to the event. We spent the next three hours exploring every inch of Universal Studios Back Lot where stunning car after car presented itself. Vintage race cars worth $10M+, early 911s, 912s, 914s and every variety in between. We had all the coffee and great food we needed onsite, and with early access, we avoided the crowds.

We took all the photos, we talked to friends from Seattle, we met Jeff Zwart who co-created Luft and we even saw a few celebrities. As we left Luft, we walked by what seemed like a mile long line of folks trying to get into the event at the regular opening time…I’m so glad we had early entry!

We doubled-down on the fun and decided to spend a few hours at Universal Studios theme park since we were already there. We rode all the rides, ate some junk but tapped out after about 3 hours. It was close to 90 degrees and Shep and I are cold weather Northwest boys, so after a full day in the sun, we headed back to the hotel for some pool time, rest and a great dinner.

The next morning, we woke up earlier than expected, so we decide to go out of our way for a huge Porsche cars and coffee being hosted by Porsche Santa Clarita. The drive out there was beautiful, the breakfast burritos were on point, there were tons of amazing cars and even a few more famous folks.

After a full weekend of Porsches, we enjoyed a nice top down drive back to the airport and I started looking for houses in LA…the car culture down there is world class!

Here are my favorite photos from the Luft event. All iPhotos because I’ve become a lazy photographer 😂

The only proof we made it to Universal Studios:

A few photos from the Cars & Coffee at Porsche Santa Clarity the next morning:

Enjoying some time by the hotel pool:

Porsche saves the day

/ Jeff / Leave a comment

I’ve spent the last two weeks waiting for Porsche North America to send a more detailed communication to the 190 US car buyers caught up in the engine recall I detailed in my last post. I’ve done lots of speculating and commiserating with other impacted folks on various forums, going through what-if scenarios and trying to decide what it would take for me to want to just walk away from the deal.

Porsche had committed to a second email with clarity two weeks from the first email which left me expecting something by Saturday at the latest. Those Germans are so precise…it was two weeks almost to the minute. I woke up early on Saturday and picked up my phone to see if anything had come through. There it was, an email titled “Important: Updated Information Regarding Your Porsche”. I was a little afraid to open it. Not after reading it. I was pleasantly surprised to see how comprehensive the communication was. They had specifics for the fix, compensation details and the timeline all nailed down. Here’s the summary:

  • A new factory built engine. All fears of a rebuilt engine are gone, Porsche will be building new engines in the factory and shipping them to be swapped at the dealership. It’s pretty common to have to remove a Porsche engine to work on it so I’m not worried about this job being done well. Phew…dodged a bullet.
  • Certificate of engine exchange to show it is a matching original engine provided new with the car by Porsche.
  • 8 year warranty for the engine (an extension of 4 years). This was a bonus I didn’t expect and certainly helps with peace of mind.
  • $4k discount on this Porsche or another.
  • $1k voucher for a Porsche Experience Center or Porsche Track Experience Day.

The downside is still the delay in getting my car. I should be driving it home next week but Porsche will be doing these engine swaps between June and September. Given COVID, chip shortages and supply disruptions, I have no reason to complain, they are moving as fast as they can. They are working in order of original planned delivery so I’m not sure where mine will land yet. I’ll likely miss most of the driving season this year but I still feel like Porsche has gone above and beyond to make up for the mistake. This is a great example of a customer first approach because they didn’t have to do anything other than apologize for the delay and fix the cars. I don’t know of any other car manufacturer that would be taking such a customer friendly approach. Thanks Porsche…now get me my damn car!!

Rain, snow and playing with models

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The weather in Seattle from late November to March is great for skiing and having fun in the Jeep off-road, but not so great for sports cars, mountain drives or car shows. So what is a 45 year old car enthusiast that still acts like a 12 year old suppose to do when not skiing…play with models of course!

First up is a 1:43 scale model of the 718 Spyder that I’ve ordered and other than the caliper color, it is a perfect match for my spec.

Next, Shep and I finally got around to building one of his Christmas presents, a complex 1700 piece Porsche RSR race car. We got a freak snowstorm with over a foot of snow so while the kids were playing and Meg was busy making a huge snow family, I had some fun taking photos of the model.

The last model was a Lego build as well, but this time I bought it for me! When it arrived, Shep got all excited thinking he got more Legos but he quickly learned that this one was all Dad’s. Okay, he got to help build it and helped me find some pieces along the way…my old eyes need the help. This lego build allowed you to create an early 911, either a 930 Turbo or the 911 Targa. The Targa build is a near perfect match for my first Porsche so the choice was obvious. The only struggle was whether I should buy two kits and build them both!

Photoshoot with @dm.lens

/ Jeff / Leave a comment

I love cars. I love the way they look, how they smell, the incredible sounds they make. I love old cars, new cars, American muscle, European exotic, old gas guzzlers and modern electrics. As long as it isn’t boring, I can find a reason to love it. That being said, what really makes this materialist obsession of mine truly rewarding is the people that I get to meet and the passion for cars we share. Car people are everywhere. Blogs. Forums. Facebook. Instagram. TV shows. You can’t go anywhere in the summer without running into some car themed event…we just can’t get enough! I learn so much from the people I meet and its nice knowing that I’m not alone in my obsession.

Pre-covid, at the Lake Washington Cars & Coffee event, I happened to meet Dallas (@dm.lens on Instagram). Data Analyst by day, car photographer by night. We talked about cars we’ve owned, cars we love, car photography and then connected on Instagram. We recently had the chance to meet up (masks on, 6 feet apart) for a photoshoot of my car and it was fun to watch him work. He found a very cool spot with a great mix of direct sun and shadow to play with and the late day light was perfect. At car shows I’m typically stuck taking pictures in the harsh mid-day sun and it was such a nice change of pace to be using early evening light which is so soft by comparison.

Here are some of my favorite shots from Dallas, I love the detailed shots and how he captured the last few rays of the sunlight:

Here are a few of mine as well. I like the warmer tones in his photos and it is a good reminder that I don’t always need to crop the car to be the only thing in the frame. His use of light and incorporating more of the surrounding environment is something that I’ll work on as well:

Cars & Coffee, the COVID edition

/ Jeff / Leave a comment

Summer brings so many wonderful things. Beach days…vacations…boating…BBQs or just lazy sunny days with the family. We have a pretty short summer in Seattle so we try to cram as much fun in as possible between July and mid-September. For me, summer is also car show season! Exotics at RTC, Lake Washington Cars & Coffee, PCA driving tours, XXX Root Beer Jeep day. There are usually so many car events that it can be hard to pick which ones to attend. This summer, not so much. Cancelled is the theme of 2020 for so many things (we should be in Africa right now) and car events are no exception.

I feel very fortunate that The Shop is still hosting small car events with Cocktails and Cars on Thursday nights and Cars and Coffee on Saturday mornings. Sure, they can’t actually give out free coffee anymore and we have to keep our distance from each other but car talk works just fine through a mask and I’m just happy to have a few events to get out and meet fellow gear heads. Stay safe and be smart out there everyone, we want to have a full return to normal in 2021!

Cars & Coffee – Exotics Day

Cars & Coffee – Porsche Day (bright day, not great for photos)

Cars & Coffee – Japanese Day

Lake Washington Blvd is a gold mine for car photography

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On Sunday, before we went into mostly full time home self-quarantine, I was able to go on a long drive in search of great spots to take some car photos. I started off by checking out the Lake Washington Cars and Coffee, not knowing that it would draw such a big crowd. It was cold but the sun was shining and if it wasn’t for the COVID-19 scare, it would have been the perfect day for a car show. There were plenty of great cars, I met some new fellow gear heads and everyone was really diligent about respecting the 8 foot rule…no handshakes or first bumps in sight.

I saw another photographer (@dm.lens) getting creative with my car and some spring blossoms so I tried the same. His was better!

Lake Washington turned out to be fertile ground for great car photo spots. It’s hard to find a place with a beautiful setting, where you can take your time and where there aren’t big crowds. I found a place every 100 feet it seemed. I’m done messing around with Alki…to crowded and no legal place to stage the car…Lake Washington is where its at!

I’m struggling to decide if I like this series better in color or black and white…but this is my blog so I don’t have to decide 🙂

Video Review of DSC Sport Controller

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I love almost everything about my 2011 Turbo but I knew going into it that the suspension wasn’t going to be as good as my more modern 2016 991 series Targa was. After some seat time in and around Seattle, I have to agree. Even in normal mode, the 997 series is harsh on the crappy Seattle roads and sport mode is unusable on anything other than perfectly smooth asphalt. While my car is equipped with the Porsche Adaptive Suspension Management (PASM), the software that controls it is almost a decade old.

In comes the DSC Sport Controller. I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money and didn’t want to screw with the shocks or springs. Given I can barely get out of my garage without scraping the front spoiler, I certainly didn’t want to lower the car at all. I had read nothing but great reviews of the DSC Sport Controller and liked the idea of a simple controller/software swap to jump to 2020 software technology. The controller more intelligently manages the adjustable shocks and also improves the software for the dynamic engine mounts on the car resulting in a more compliant ride on bad roads as well as improved high speed handling and cornering. At least that’s the sales pitch and I decided to try it out myself.

I ran some test before the swap, plugged I the new DSC controller and drove the same streets back to back. To me, it was an immediate and obvious difference. In normal mode my 997 feels just like my 991 did and feels like it handles rough roads so much better. I was even able to put it in sport suspension mode and leave it there for most of the day. It too felt like my 991 in sport mode…much firmer but I’m not taking kidney shots with every bump. The limited high speed cornering I have been able to do tells me that it is working just fine at speed as well but I’m far from being a pro and I’m not taking my car close to the limit. My verdict is that this inexpensive and easy DIY upgrade made an immediate difference for the problem I was trying to solve. I love the car even more now.

I decided to try my hand at making a review video, mostly so I can play around with some fun camera tech. I’m no videographer and likely belong behind the camera but it was fun to do:

Some fun photos I took while out and about doing the testing and filming the video:

PNWR Tech-Ed Seminar on Radar Detectors

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My 2011 Turbo came with a high end fully integrated radar detector / laser jammer, the Escort 9500ci. It was state of the art back in 2011. The benefit of a fully integrated system is that you can’t tell its there…no ugly device stuck to your windshield. The drawback is that unless the manufacturer supports an upgrade path, it ages quickly. When I saw that my local PCA chapter, the Pacific Northwest Region, was putting on a TechEd session all about radar detectors I just had to go.

PNWR arranged to have Ariel Bravy from Vortex Radar lead the class and it was informative and fun. This was my first TechEd session but if they are all this well put together, it won’t be my last. We started with some classroom sessions to learn all about the equipment, the options and how radar and laser works in general. There were some off-duty and retired police officers there to lend their perspective as well. Then we went outside and got to test some cars and guns to see how they held up. Mine did okay shifting the laser hit but it was able to punch through eventually. The clear winner to beat laser is the AL Priority system which also issues frequent updates. Escort has never and will never update the older 9500 system. While having a radar detector is fun to play with, my outdated tech isn’t going to keep me out of trouble against modern laser guns so I’ll stick to Waze and save the really heavy foot for the track.