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Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot Fm. Risky Business nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise is Joel Goodson. His dad has a Porsche
Speaker 1: nine eight. A couple of boys in daddy's car. Joel's
Speaker 1: just backed the silver coop out of the garage and
Speaker 1: is rolling through town doing high school senior things. He's
Speaker 1: the model kid. He's hoping to get into Princeton in
Speaker 1: the fall. He has no idea how sideways it's all
Speaker 1: about to go. Fast forward to the movie's second act.
Speaker 1: Joel is sitting with his girlfriend Lana played by Rebecca
Speaker 1: de Morney, on the hood of the Porsche overlooking the lake.
Speaker 1: I'm okay. They are soon to start their own little
Speaker 1: prostitution business. At the beginning of the scene, as Lana
Speaker 1: grabs her purse out of the nine twenty eight, she
Speaker 1: knocks the shift lever into neutral. When she gets up
Speaker 1: from the hood of the car to leave Joel, he
Speaker 1: takes off after her. Was something I said. The Porsche
Speaker 1: starts rolling down the dock toward the lake got side.
Speaker 1: Ye never has a car so perfectly embody the Hollywood storyline.
Speaker 1: Forget the gradual, forget the fast, and the furious. Risky
Speaker 1: business director Paul Brickman could have picked a better signifier
Speaker 1: for Joe's predicament. This is a car that's all about
Speaker 1: going in way too deep, getting a way out over
Speaker 1: your skis. This is the story of the Portion nine
Speaker 1: twenty eight, an elite car with tons of promise, but
Speaker 1: one that, metaphorically speaking, fell right into the lake. I'm
Speaker 1: Eddie Alterman, and this is Car Show. In this episode
Speaker 1: will examine how the nine twenty eight, this raging tour
Speaker 1: to force of styling, engineering and performance, failed to speak
Speaker 1: to the exact audience that should have loved it. But
Speaker 1: Portion soon to ask why we put so much performance
Speaker 1: in a luxury car, and lothers ask why we put
Speaker 1: so much luxury in a performance car. You'd think that
Speaker 1: in the eighties, a great and powerful continent cross for
Speaker 1: like the nine eight would have been an easy cell
Speaker 1: to Porsche's polo Cologne wearing sports car clientele. It was
Speaker 1: not excellence is expected, So how did this perfect Porsche
Speaker 1: become Porsche's pariah. The biggest issue with the nine twenty
Speaker 1: eight may have been the pre existence of the Portione
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. Porsche names its projects in running order.
Speaker 1: You can tell which came first because of the model numbers.
Speaker 1: The core model coupe started as the nine oh one,
Speaker 1: but became the nine to eleven after complaints from Pouchet
Speaker 1: the French. He said that Porsche can use the same
Speaker 1: number zero number naming convention. The point is that the
Speaker 1: nine twenty eight is a good dozen steps away from
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven, a world away. It turns out,
Speaker 1: while the nine to eleven has been scaling new heights
Speaker 1: of performance and desirability over the past forty years, nine
Speaker 1: twenty eight remained somewhat forgotten. People make fun of it.
Speaker 1: It's been labeled an eighties car, a cocaine cowboy, not
Speaker 1: the kind of Porsche Porsche people care about. But it
Speaker 1: was a car Porsche itself had lavished extraordinary care on.
Speaker 1: At the time, it wasn't veiled. It was the only Porsche,
Speaker 1: not somehow based on a Volkswagen product. It was all new,
Speaker 1: new VI eight engine, new suspension, new layout, Hence the problem.
Speaker 1: Most people didn't really know what to make of the
Speaker 1: nine twenty eighth when it came out in the late
Speaker 1: seventies or for a long time after that. That confusion
Speaker 1: curled into dismissal and eventually set for a while at
Speaker 1: least an antipathy why the car was groundbreaking, It was beautiful,
Speaker 1: and man was it fast? On it a nine twenty
Speaker 1: eight because it's weird mostly and it's like kind of
Speaker 1: like does doesn't he doesn't even like necessarily suit me
Speaker 1: or my personality, but just like like a weird a
Speaker 1: really weird car, really weird version of a portion of
Speaker 1: you know. This is Derek Burke. He's a Detroit musician
Speaker 1: and works in the film business. He co owns a
Speaker 1: nine twenty eight with his brother. It's his car will
Speaker 1: be abusing for this episode, and even he is conflicted
Speaker 1: about it. It's like I always pictured like a Miami
Speaker 1: Vice type person in one of these cars, you know,
Speaker 1: like like a really eighties kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: the person that that I'm not, but you hope to
Speaker 1: be one. Yeah. Yeah, I struggle with my personality while
Speaker 1: I'm driving it, you know, like you know, you get
Speaker 1: out at the gas pump, like, you know, like you
Speaker 1: have like identity problems. I feel like at least I do.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I like, like am I like a yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you? Yeah? Right? Like what what does it mean? Now?
Speaker 1: Does me? Now that I'm driving just a car? You
Speaker 1: kind of like it is an ostentatious German cud You
Speaker 1: can you can pull it off? Yeah. Derek Burks nine
Speaker 1: twenty eight is an original first year car from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. Let's examine the thing that confronted customers as
Speaker 1: they walked into Porsche's showrooms. So this is the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight first MABI year. So this is as pure
Speaker 1: a reflection of the concept as you're gonna get the
Speaker 1: first year as it came from the factory. And it's
Speaker 1: an amazing shape. It's really really beautiful. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's original point original paint. Yeah. Really from this angle,
Speaker 1: it is so evocative of the nine to eleven um
Speaker 1: just the roundness of it, the the placement of the
Speaker 1: lights is sort of updated nine to eleven rear end.
Speaker 1: You know, just kind of cat cast a couple decades
Speaker 1: into the future. Um, you know, it's amazing to me
Speaker 1: that it was so rejected by the Porsche cognischend It
Speaker 1: kind of still is right because what they were going
Speaker 1: for was really an evolution of the nine to eleven look.
Speaker 1: You know, it didn't have a front grill, and the
Speaker 1: idea was like, let's make it look like a Porsche.
Speaker 1: Roundhead lights pop up in this case, so like an
Speaker 1: evolution of the nine to eleven look, but smooth streamline hood,
Speaker 1: a rounded back. You know, from what I understand, and
Speaker 1: this might be apocryphal, Fairy Porsche, the guy in charge
Speaker 1: at the time loved the AMC Pacer. That's the the
Speaker 1: um the inspiration for the rear windows in the rear
Speaker 1: hats from the Pacer. I heard that exactly. The Pacer,
Speaker 1: if you don't remember, it was the car in Wayne's world.
Speaker 1: It was also the car Serial Killers drove. Make of
Speaker 1: that what you will. So you have one kind of
Speaker 1: main glass panel in the back of the back light,
Speaker 1: and then these two side windows on the side, and
Speaker 1: that's like a kind of a laid down version of
Speaker 1: the Pacer. Super super cool looking. And this was so
Speaker 1: avant garde. This is so ahead of its time. I mean,
Speaker 1: it still looks futuristic, looks futuristic. That's what's interesting about it.
Speaker 1: It looks like nothing else, you know, And that's just
Speaker 1: the exterior. The interior of the car. It looks like
Speaker 1: it came straight out of the day of a system
Speaker 1: the designers really swung for the outer reaches of the galaxy.
Speaker 1: They put a radio fader nod by the driver's doorsill
Speaker 1: and installed sun visors in the rear seat positions. And
Speaker 1: there are a couple really interesting seat options in this car.
Speaker 1: As I recall, there was the Pasha seed inserts, which
Speaker 1: were a fabric kind of a lure insert but in
Speaker 1: an op art pattern, so it looked like a rejected
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd album cover kind of thing. Yeah, and super trippy, yeah,
Speaker 1: but not not like um even you know, like really weird, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of stroving in and out. Yeah, Like it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the pattern you see when you rub your eyes,
Speaker 1: you know, right, it's real, real psychedelic. And it lent
Speaker 1: to this sense that this car was like kind of
Speaker 1: reverse engineered from alien spacecraft. You know, it was like
Speaker 1: totally new and just landed like a meteor. When Porscha
Speaker 1: created the nine twenty eight, they thought they were making
Speaker 1: something akin to an evolution of the nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: They thought they were bringing the ideas, an essence of
Speaker 1: the company forward into the modern era. Porsche didn't realize
Speaker 1: it was betraying the people who loved it most. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the nine twenty eighth styling or interior that irked them.
Speaker 1: It was the stuff under the skin that got so
Speaker 1: well under their skin. Let's start at the beginning. Porscha
Speaker 1: looms large in the hearts and minds of car enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: but it's really the ultimate father and son operation. The father,
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Porsche, designed the Volkswagen Beetle for Adolph Hitler. His
Speaker 1: son Fairy, turned that Beetle into a sports car. This
Speaker 1: became the first Porsche, the bathtub shaped three fifty six.
Speaker 1: The three fifty six begat the nine to eleven. The
Speaker 1: latter a bit bigger, a bit more solid, a bit
Speaker 1: more refined than the three fifty six, but the fundamentals
Speaker 1: were the same. Engine hung way out back behind the rearacle.
Speaker 1: Really fun to drive, really hard to drive. Well. There's
Speaker 1: a driving style in Porsche Land called shushing, where you
Speaker 1: slide the car through a corner, ass out foot, heart
Speaker 1: on the gas, a plume of tire smoke trailing behind you.
Speaker 1: Essentially use the rear of the car to steer you
Speaker 1: through a turn rather than the front. It's fun, it
Speaker 1: looks crazy. It takes skill and nerve and an understanding
Speaker 1: of physics, and it is the essence of driving a
Speaker 1: rear engine portion. There's a glorious, like you know, animalistic
Speaker 1: element to this thing. Here I am at the wheel
Speaker 1: of a signal Red nineteen eighty five nine to eleven convertible.
Speaker 1: It's counterintuitive. In a normal car, like a front engine,
Speaker 1: front wheel drive car, a car starts to slide, you
Speaker 1: take your feet off the gas, and everything kind of
Speaker 1: corrects itself. In this car, you take your foot off
Speaker 1: the gas, it'll spin, go into a corner way too hot,
Speaker 1: lift off the throttle, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: no traction the back because instead of keeping the loads
Speaker 1: on the rear wheels so they could have traction, you
Speaker 1: unload the rear wheels. No traction anymore, and the thing spins.
Speaker 1: So you know, it really did take balls of steel
Speaker 1: to keep your foot in it. So to speak. I
Speaker 1: own one of the early nine elevens, a nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one Coop. It's one of the lightest, most sensitive road
Speaker 1: cars I've ever driven, and it rewards Driverley's skill. I
Speaker 1: can't shush it every time in every corner. When I
Speaker 1: get it right, it's like the heavens part and Jacob's
Speaker 1: ladder descends. Oh my god, it's just a tear sports car.
Speaker 1: They're cooled, making all kinds of weird noises. So unrefined
Speaker 1: but super refined at the same time, sportscar drivers and
Speaker 1: racers embraced the nine to eleven. When driven properly, it
Speaker 1: was just incredibly fast and effective relative to its par
Speaker 1: level and complexity. It hauled ass out of corners. Because
Speaker 1: it carried a majority of its mass over its rear wheels,
Speaker 1: it gave it a lot of traction under power. It
Speaker 1: was light and always seemed to punch above its weight,
Speaker 1: and so it kept evolving on the street and winning
Speaker 1: on the track. This little odd ball was cementing itself
Speaker 1: as the quintessential sporting machine with wins on grueling international
Speaker 1: rallies like Monte Carlo. The nine eleven Turbo or nine
Speaker 1: thirty came to the States in nineteen seventy six. It
Speaker 1: was the nine to eleven in a superhero costume, a
Speaker 1: fearsome and combustible mega coup with fat fenders and a
Speaker 1: huge fluke for a tail. The turbo was even harder
Speaker 1: to drive than the standard nine to eleven. Power delivery
Speaker 1: was all or nothing, and it gained a reputation as
Speaker 1: a dentist killer for the way it would spin off
Speaker 1: the road at the slightest provocation, like when it's unexpecting
Speaker 1: driver lifted off the throttle in a fast corner. It
Speaker 1: earned the nickname the widow Maker. The nine eleven was
Speaker 1: a car to respect. So if the nine O one
Speaker 1: was the nine to eleven and the nine thirty was
Speaker 1: the nine eleven Turbo, where does the nine twenty eight
Speaker 1: fit in? The nine twenty eight had actually been on
Speaker 1: Porsche's drawing board since nineteen seventy one, a mere seven
Speaker 1: years after the launch of the nine to eleven and
Speaker 1: before the nine thirty. Then the US was hit with
Speaker 1: an oil embargo in nineteen seventy three. This is NBC
Speaker 1: Nightly to use Wednesday, October seventeenth, Good Evening. The Middle
Speaker 1: East War produced developments all over the world today, the
Speaker 1: oil producing countries of the Arab world decided to use
Speaker 1: their oil as a political weapon. They will reduce oil
Speaker 1: production by the American automobile. For so long, the symbol
Speaker 1: of America's wealth and extravagance is dying. New cars and
Speaker 1: used cars stand like shining tombstones in the showrooms and
Speaker 1: parking lots of the nation's car dealers, unloved, unwanted, and unsold.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, it did not seem prudent about
Speaker 1: the future of the small family owned company on a
Speaker 1: V eight powered sports car like the nine twenty eight,
Speaker 1: it would have to wait. Maybe if there were no
Speaker 1: gas crises and the nine twenty eight came out in
Speaker 1: seventy four or seventy five, the nine to eleven wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had the time to endear itself so completely to
Speaker 1: the driving enthusiast. But by the nineteen seventy eight model year,
Speaker 1: the nine twenty eighth first drivers had clasped the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven tightly to their breasts. So why do the
Speaker 1: nine twenty eight at all? Well, it was a poorly
Speaker 1: kept secret that within the company itself, the nine eleven
Speaker 1: had been marked for death for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: The first was ambition. Doctor Ernst Furman was the successor
Speaker 1: to Ferry Porsche as company chairman. He was an engineer
Speaker 1: and an engine's signer. He thought the nine to eleven
Speaker 1: was on its last legs. But there was also certainly
Speaker 1: a part of him that had Mercedes envy. He wanted
Speaker 1: to build a car to compete with the absolute pinnacle
Speaker 1: of automaking, the guys who invented it all, Mercedes Benz
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy one. He wanted to show the
Speaker 1: world what a modern Porsche could be. Elegant, comfortable, sophisticated,
Speaker 1: real competition for the big BMW and Mercedes Benz coops.
Speaker 1: So that was one motivating factor. The other reason had
Speaker 1: to do with this here that it's the signature worrying
Speaker 1: and churing of the air cooled nine to eleven. Isn't
Speaker 1: that a great sound? I mean, it is unmistakable. Nothing
Speaker 1: else sounds like this, man, that is a wild animal sound,
Speaker 1: or some day it sounds like nothing else, like it's
Speaker 1: straining against itself on the verge of imploding, sort of
Speaker 1: like how the rolling stones always sound like they're about
Speaker 1: to fall apart, but never do it's part of what
Speaker 1: keeps you engaged. You don't want to have the radio on.
Speaker 1: You need to be able to listen to that engine.
Speaker 1: But it's also not exactly modern sounding. The company fear
Speaker 1: that it's noise would get regulated out of existence. In
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven, all the noisemakers were in the back.
Speaker 1: The intake manifold the chortling air cooled flat six engine
Speaker 1: the flatulent exhaust system, So when the nine to eleven
Speaker 1: drove by the automotive noise regulators microphones, it created a
Speaker 1: big decibel spike at the of the car. Conventional cars,
Speaker 1: with their engines up front and exhaust in the back,
Speaker 1: spread that noise out across the length of the car
Speaker 1: for less of a sonic whack. But noise wasn't the
Speaker 1: only hurdle the nine to eleven was seen as ill
Speaker 1: equipped to clear. There were also safety and emissions concerns.
Speaker 1: Porsche figured that any replacement for the nine to eleven
Speaker 1: would have to be future proofed against all this change,
Speaker 1: and then a more conventional layout would be a better
Speaker 1: basis for development. There were safety in numbers, A quiet,
Speaker 1: liquid cooled engine in front like a more traditional sports
Speaker 1: car with room for more mufflers and catalysts in the back,
Speaker 1: better weight distribution front to rear thanks to a rear
Speaker 1: mounted transmission, a thoroughly modern sports car, a showcase of
Speaker 1: Porsche's engineering prowess. Perhaps most important both to the engineering
Speaker 1: aspirations of Porsche and to nine twenty eighth rejection by
Speaker 1: traditional Porsia owners was the newly designed rear axle. Seems
Speaker 1: like a small change, but it had huge implications for
Speaker 1: the car and for the argument I'm trying to make here.
Speaker 1: It was known as the weissok axel. It stabilized the
Speaker 1: rear of the car by towing in the rear wheels
Speaker 1: like a pigeon, and within nine twenty eighth there was
Speaker 1: far more balanced mass wise front to rear. That meant
Speaker 1: no more easy shushing. Porsche engineers thought this was a
Speaker 1: gigantic step forward, making the car far more stable in
Speaker 1: all conditions and thus more drivable for a wider group
Speaker 1: of people. But to the Porsche faithful it was a
Speaker 1: fun killer. Our friend Derek Burke is not one of
Speaker 1: the faithful, apparently. Yeah, people don't want to change what
Speaker 1: they love. Yeah, because there is like they had built
Speaker 1: up this skill and this proficiency in driving the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, and this thing was so easy to drive.
Speaker 1: They're like, what's the point, right, the car doesn't push back?
Speaker 1: You know the designer Raymond Loewy. Right, if you've seen
Speaker 1: air Force one, the aircraft, not the Harrison Forn movie,
Speaker 1: you know his work. Lowie was America's foremost industrial designer
Speaker 1: and an age when design was just starting to matter.
Speaker 1: He redesigned the coke bottle, He did the Lucky Strike
Speaker 1: cigarette pack. He even designed studebakers. Lowie expressed his core
Speaker 1: designed philosophy as the acronym MAYA m A y a
Speaker 1: most advanced yet acceptable. The idea was that for a
Speaker 1: new design to succeed, there needed to be something familiar
Speaker 1: about it, something that linked it to the past. The
Speaker 1: logo he drew for x On, for example, was built
Speaker 1: off the cross. It looks like the cross of the
Speaker 1: Knights Templar. Look at the two xes in it. Some
Speaker 1: time we could do a whole episode on Raymond Loewie,
Speaker 1: but I bring him up here briefly because in the
Speaker 1: case of the nine twenty eight, his otherwise successful MAYA
Speaker 1: philosophy didn't quite apply. You have to understand Porsche's value
Speaker 1: is experimentation. Because it is so closely associated with one car,
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven, many people think that it's a
Speaker 1: risk averse operation. One visit to the company's museum in
Speaker 1: the Zuffenhausen district of Stuttgart, Germany will dispel that notion.
Speaker 1: They are arrayed on the floors and pinned to the
Speaker 1: walls like exotic butterflies. Is Porsche's riot of ideas. Four
Speaker 1: door nine elevens, the nine seventeen racing cars with their
Speaker 1: pressurized two frames and mechanical guts hanging out. Crazy concepts
Speaker 1: such as the froggy and toy like Panamericana, green and
Speaker 1: White German police nine elevens, the wild and the wacky abound.
Speaker 1: In this context, the nine twenty eight seems gently progressive,
Speaker 1: and to Porsche it was, even though it was the
Speaker 1: first Porsche designed entirely from scratch, with aluminum bodywork and
Speaker 1: an all NUVI eight. The company intended for it to
Speaker 1: be Maya in the extreme, most advanced yet acceptable but
Speaker 1: loyal Porsche buyers, the very targets for the nine twenty
Speaker 1: eight saw a betrayal under the car's curves. It's just different.
Speaker 1: It's smoother, it's so much more refined sounding. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have that weird mechanical kind of coarseness that the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven has. But you kind of love about the
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. This is just yeah, it's like the
Speaker 1: best German corvette that's ever been right. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a weird German muscle car. Yeah, totally. It feels like
Speaker 1: it wants to go in a straight line really fast
Speaker 1: and not really turn with the kind of precision like
Speaker 1: when you're coming out of a corner here. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have that kind of snapback, added Tode that the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven is where a nine to eleven you come
Speaker 1: out of a corner and it's like a great smallow skier.
Speaker 1: The transitional behavior is like the thing writes itself immediately
Speaker 1: and sets you up for the next turn. This car
Speaker 1: is a lot lazier feeling. It's like, yeah, I'll get
Speaker 1: to it when I get to it, right. I feel
Speaker 1: like I could drive across the country in it, like
Speaker 1: on the highway though that that like, I think that's
Speaker 1: what it was for. Very different than the nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: Everything is has like that that little layer of insulation.
Speaker 1: It's much more of a luxury car, much more of
Speaker 1: a GT. It feels much heavier in the hand. As
Speaker 1: they say, it's a vastly different driving experience than the
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. The nine to eleven is real, kind
Speaker 1: of direct and percussive and like always on, whereas this thing,
Speaker 1: it's like you can kind of drive it with a pinky,
Speaker 1: you know, you know what the front wheels are always doing,
Speaker 1: you know what the chassis's doing. It gives you a
Speaker 1: lot of information. But it does have that kind of
Speaker 1: creaminess that the nine to eleven doesn't have. But this
Speaker 1: is more stable. This has killed fewer dentists. Well, the
Speaker 1: dentists always come. I don't know, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: there's something about the kind of people who are attracted
Speaker 1: to nine to elevens technically minded, who work with their
Speaker 1: hands at a very high level, you know, like a dentist,
Speaker 1: like an architect. Tom Wolfe talks about that in From
Speaker 1: bau House to Our House, that architects always wanted to
Speaker 1: have the nine to eleven. The nine to eleven embodies
Speaker 1: like a real philosophy of how to build a car,
Speaker 1: and it's totally different than anything else. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons This wasn't as embraced is because
Speaker 1: it was a more commodified vision. You know, it was
Speaker 1: one that was built to conform to regulations and built
Speaker 1: to conform to you know, the kind of style of
Speaker 1: other cars. It seemed like a threat to a belief
Speaker 1: system in a way. The faithful didn't want to see
Speaker 1: Porsche turn into just another car company. They to understand
Speaker 1: kind of the the weirdness of the American customer. The
Speaker 1: American Porsche guy was buying that car out of a
Speaker 1: kind of iconoclasm because he didn't want to be lumped
Speaker 1: in with the Corvette guys or the Triumph guys of
Speaker 1: the MG guys. The Porsche was different, and it said
Speaker 1: something different about you. It said that you were maybe
Speaker 1: a more skilled driver, or that you had some connection
Speaker 1: to the racing heritage of the brand, and that you
Speaker 1: were one of those hairy armed heroes of motorsport. But
Speaker 1: just you know, your day job was a dentist. Nine
Speaker 1: twenty job was to supplant the nine to eleven to
Speaker 1: be so captivating and cool as to wipe it from memory.
Speaker 1: It did not do that. It couldn't. The nine eleven
Speaker 1: had a kind of destiny to persist after the break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear about the governor's pardon that extended the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven's life. I'm Eddie Alterman, and this is Car Show.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, the nine to eleven got a
Speaker 1: miraculous green mile reprieve. Porsche brought in a new CEO,
Speaker 1: a German American named Peter Schutz, whose parents fled the
Speaker 1: Third Rife and settled in Chicago. Schutz was an engineer
Speaker 1: and an industrialist. He had stints at Caterpillar and Cummins
Speaker 1: Diesel under his belt. When he got to Porsche, the
Speaker 1: nine eleven was just getting strapped into the electric chair.
Speaker 1: He noticed how glum everyone at the company seemed more
Speaker 1: than just the usual Teutonic stoic gloominess. Porsche's employees were
Speaker 1: visibly upset that the company was going to cancel the
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. So Shutz heads down to a meeting
Speaker 1: with Porsche's chief engineer at the time, how Bot. Schutz
Speaker 1: notices that Bot has one of those big charts on
Speaker 1: his office wall, with the lifespans and development cycles of
Speaker 1: all Porsche products stretching out into the future. The line
Speaker 1: for the nine to eleven stops dead in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: So Schotz goes over to the chart, picks up a marker,
Speaker 1: and extends the nine elevens line off the paper, onto
Speaker 1: the wall and out the door of Bot's office. In
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, Shoultz wrote this for Road and Track. While
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven could be temperamental at times, at
Speaker 1: least it had character. That's what people loved most about it.
Speaker 1: You had to remain vigilant with your inputs. But for
Speaker 1: those who could, those of training with skill who could
Speaker 1: catch it in a slide and bring it back into line,
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven was king. It was the only
Speaker 1: car worth driving because it was the only car that
Speaker 1: would push back in its way. Eight only cemented the
Speaker 1: nine eleven as the Porsche icon, but why? In many ways,
Speaker 1: the nine twenty eight was the natural logical progression from
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven, much more sophisticated, highly capable, and
Speaker 1: easier to drive, building certify real competition for Mercedes, Benz
Speaker 1: and BMW. It was future proofed yet familiar. No front
Speaker 1: grill just like the nine eleven, arounded rump just like
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven, and comfortable like the nine to
Speaker 1: eleven On the face of it. The nine twenty eight,
Speaker 1: hued closely to Lois maya maxim should have been a layup.
Speaker 1: Many people blame the nine twenty eighth price of twenty
Speaker 1: eight thousand, five hundred dollars or over one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars today for the chilly reception it received,
Speaker 1: But the nine twenty eight was launched on the cusp
Speaker 1: of the eighties to the me generation, to yuppies. That
Speaker 1: audience was all about big ticket statements like the nine
Speaker 1: twenty eight. And besides, sports cars are Vevlan items, status
Speaker 1: and bols. The higher the price, the more highly they're prized. No,
Speaker 1: it was something deeper about the relationship between Porsche coops
Speaker 1: new and old. Back to that bright red eighty five
Speaker 1: nine eleven I was driving earlier in the episode. This
Speaker 1: is a lot more raw, and so you can see
Speaker 1: how the person who is used to this car, you
Speaker 1: know in the eighties, who loved the feeling of that
Speaker 1: engine behind them, loved the sound of the engine behind them,
Speaker 1: love the fact that they needed to know how to
Speaker 1: drive it. You can see how they get in and
Speaker 1: be like, if I wanted to Corvette, I'd buy a Corvette.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no personality that car doesn't push back.
Speaker 1: You know, it's too good. The nine eleven was so
Speaker 1: appealing because it was such a handful. It was small,
Speaker 1: it was noisy, and it would bite. It took skill
Speaker 1: to drive well, and everyone knew it. You elicited respect
Speaker 1: from other drivers. You are a local version of those
Speaker 1: d dragon slayers who drove nine to elevens on racetracks
Speaker 1: around the world. The superior handling and performance of the
Speaker 1: nine twenty eight was a disadvantage in many Porsche file's eyes.
Speaker 1: The nine twenty eight was Tana Ta NA two advanced,
Speaker 1: not acceptable, too stable, too comfortable, too conformists. So it's
Speaker 1: ironic that the nine twenty eight was the non conforming
Speaker 1: model at Porsche for the entirety of its run. Even
Speaker 1: if it sold decently for a while and ran for
Speaker 1: a long eighteen years, nine twenty eight was always misunderstood
Speaker 1: by drivers and by the media. It was mixed. It
Speaker 1: was mixed. You know how the media sometimes can be,
Speaker 1: you know, they look down on new things that no oh,
Speaker 1: of course, every once in a a while. Tom McDonald was
Speaker 1: the head of public relations for Audi, VW and Porsche
Speaker 1: when the nine twenty eight was released in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: He was there for the car's first media drive. It
Speaker 1: was a mixed reaction because you had some media who
Speaker 1: were biased towards racles rear engine cars. But I mean
Speaker 1: the nine twenty eight was such a unique It wasn't
Speaker 1: an evolutionary car. It was a revolutionary car. And they
Speaker 1: had interesting characters around it. Again, a guy like Tony Lapine.
Speaker 1: I think he someone asked him, why are the headlights
Speaker 1: the pop up headlights? Why aren't they covered? And he says,
Speaker 1: because we want to look up to the sky to God.
Speaker 1: I mean, so it was always pedal to the metal
Speaker 1: for a lot of the media guys, and it was
Speaker 1: all about the numbers. Ken Porsche pull it off and
Speaker 1: it's this the way that Porsche's gonna go forward now,
Speaker 1: I tell you. There was also a little bit of
Speaker 1: a pushback from the Porsche Club. Tom's talking about the PCA,
Speaker 1: the Porsche Club of America. PCA members are Porsche's greatest
Speaker 1: allies and they can also be their greatest nemesis. And
Speaker 1: I used to liaise with the Porsche Club. That was
Speaker 1: part of my job as to hold hands to the
Speaker 1: Porsche Club and we had issues. I had issues going
Speaker 1: back to nineteen seventy when the nine fourteen came whether
Speaker 1: or not that was a real Porsche and was that
Speaker 1: going to be accepted by the Porsche files as a
Speaker 1: real Porsche. And then when the Porsche nine twenty four
Speaker 1: came out, we had the same you know, pushed back
Speaker 1: by some people. But they had spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time getting to know the nine to eleven, learning how
Speaker 1: to drive it. They took pride in being able to
Speaker 1: handle that car. I have a very interesting little piece
Speaker 1: of paper that I keep right here, and it's a quote.
Speaker 1: It says a Porsche owner is not necessarily a Porsche driver.
Speaker 1: Think about it. Pia really made Porsche in this country.
Speaker 1: I mean going back way before my time, back in
Speaker 1: the in the fifties and sixties. They were the backbone,
Speaker 1: if you will, of the Porsche enthusiast. Today, they are
Speaker 1: still i'd say influential. I mean, Porsche really reaches out
Speaker 1: to them making sure that they were on board with
Speaker 1: new products. So are they are Porsche people on board
Speaker 1: with the vehicle's Porsche is making now or are its
Speaker 1: owners still fixated on the nine to eleven. Well, it's complicated.
Speaker 1: The nine to eleven is still the white hot center
Speaker 1: of the Porsche universe, with a staggering twenty four variants,
Speaker 1: everything from the basic rear wild drive coupe to the
Speaker 1: bewinged track gobbling GT three. But encircling the icon is
Speaker 1: a vast array of vehicles that, at first glance seemed
Speaker 1: just as offensive to the core nine eleven person as
Speaker 1: the nine twenty eight was the mccan Mini suv, the
Speaker 1: heavy hatchbacked Panamera Sedan, the Panamera Wagon, the Cayenne Suv,
Speaker 1: the Tychon electric vehicle. Only the seven eighteen Boxer and
Speaker 1: Cayman sports cars seemed to hew closely to the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven in concept. The Cayenne started this Cambrian explosion
Speaker 1: of models twenty five years after the nine twenty eight,
Speaker 1: so let's use that as our example. The Cayenne was
Speaker 1: the first five door, five passenger Porsche, a high riding
Speaker 1: front engine, all wheel drive beast. It was heavy, but
Speaker 1: it was faster and better to drive than the SUVs
Speaker 1: of the day. There was some Porsche fire in it,
Speaker 1: and it was hilariously overbuilt for the carpool lane, surprisingly
Speaker 1: good on the racetrack, and very competent off row, truly
Speaker 1: flexible in spirit, much like the original nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: It referenced to nine to eleven shape in its headlights
Speaker 1: and its hood, and it channeled a tiny hint of
Speaker 1: the spirit of those special nine elevens, the nine five
Speaker 1: threes and nine five nins that raced in such gruing
Speaker 1: off road trials as the Peris Dakar Rally. To many,
Speaker 1: it looked like complete heresy, a misunderstood nine twenty eight
Speaker 1: by another name, But people bottom lots of them. Perhaps
Speaker 1: because more people in two thousand and three had more
Speaker 1: money and more access to money than ever it allowed
Speaker 1: non traditional, a typical Porsche buyers to enter the fold.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps because people wanted an suv so they could
Speaker 1: see eye to eye with all the other SUVs on
Speaker 1: the road, or perhaps because many of the Porsche faithful
Speaker 1: wanted that suv to be a Porsche, not a BMW
Speaker 1: or Mercedes Benz, and on and on. But here's what
Speaker 1: I think. The real reason the nine twenty eight failed
Speaker 1: where the Chayenne didn't is this nine eight was created
Speaker 1: to kill the nine to eleven. The Chyenne came along
Speaker 1: to exalt it, to make its essence more widely accessible
Speaker 1: to take some of the Porsche vibe to the somnambulent
Speaker 1: suv category, whereas the nine twenty eight was an existential
Speaker 1: threat the Porsche of faithful. Those iconoclasts who wanted their
Speaker 1: engine in the back and their rear end sliding resented
Speaker 1: the nine twenty eight for its maturity, for its price,
Speaker 1: and for its non portionists, whatever that meant at the time,
Speaker 1: whereas these same people, no doubt tenderized a bit by
Speaker 1: the nine twenty eight, embraced the Cayenne because it's celebrated
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven. Honor your heroes, don't try to
Speaker 1: replace them. You didn't think I forgot about Joel Goodson,
Speaker 1: did you? His redemption came at the end of risky business.
Speaker 1: Do you have something to tell me? No, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I just got off the telephone with Bill Rutherford.
Speaker 1: Apparently you two had quite a meeting. Princeton can use
Speaker 1: a guy like Joel. What Princeton can use a guy
Speaker 1: like Joel? His exact words, it's unbelievable. You're as good
Speaker 1: as in. Redemption is also coming slowly to the nine
Speaker 1: twenty eight. Collectible prices are up, haters are down. And
Speaker 1: if you look at most high end sports cars now,
Speaker 1: they're much closer in spirit to the nine twenty eight
Speaker 1: than the nine to eleven. Very refined and easy to
Speaker 1: drive every day, capable of long cross continent stints. Grand
Speaker 1: tours are the order of the day now. Aston Martin's
Speaker 1: Mercedes SLS and even some Ferraris owe a debt to
Speaker 1: the nine twenty eight. Hell, some even suggest that the
Speaker 1: current nine to eleven is so grown up that it's
Speaker 1: really now just a nine twenty eight with its engine
Speaker 1: in the back. It's the hero's journey, the mono myth,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate that, but I'm still an old nine
Speaker 1: to eleven. Guy Welle is really special and it was
Speaker 1: so ahead of its time that it's really where a
Speaker 1: lot of sports cars went. And that's great, you know,
Speaker 1: and it really did advance the species. But man, give
Speaker 1: me one of these every day of the week. Car
Speaker 1: Show is written and hosted by me Eddie Alterman. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Sam Dingman, Jacob Smith and Amy Gaines. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Jen Guera. Original music and mastering by Ben Taliday.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Mia Loebell. Our show art was
Speaker 1: designed by Sean Karney and Airbrushed by Greg with Fever.
Speaker 1: Our patron saints are Lee, Tom Mallad and Justine Lane,
Speaker 1: and thank you to Derek Burke for the abuse of
Speaker 1: your Car. Car Show is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries,
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