The EURO-928-2002 Meeting - Part 2

Ludwigsburg, Germany

STORY AND PHOTOS BY RICHARD ANDRADE

Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen

Saturday started off with another 928 convoy, a drive from Ludwigsburg to Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. We were offered the use of the “Frauenparkplatz” (women’s parking lot). It was quite a thrill to see the Zuffenhausen facility once again surrounded by the throaty rumble of these V8s.

Porsche’s Zuffenhausen assembly line is not designed to accommodate large groups, so there was an alternative plan. We would see Porsche’s Exclusive Auto Sales, factory body repair and restoration shops, maintenance shop, have lunch in their factory cafeteria, and then tour the museum and Porsche AG owned dealership. As the pictures show, there were many treats in store for us.

Porsche Zuffenhausen plant. Amicale 928 member Samuel Fournis’ Club Sport. Photo source Dan Bise. His transaxle was repaired just in time for the meeting

A view of 928 parking from the Porsche rooftop canteen.

Porsche is one of the few companies that will make a custom build well beyond just a selection of available options, external or interior colors. Porsche’s “Exclusive” auto sales group will paint your new Porsche any color you wish. Interior colors, types of leather, trim, seats, are all open to the customers. There were four exclusive autos for our inspection, a 996 Turbo, a Boxster S, a 996 Cabriolet and race trimmed 996.

An “Exclusive” 996 Turbo paint is Exclusive interior options included full Rolls Royce Green. leather trim with burl wood interior accent.

Rolf Sprenger, Porsche’s chief of maintenance and service, is also responsible for spare-parts. He too is a big fan of the 928. He said, “Porsche will do everything to supply vital spare-parts - this will be sometimes very difficult and could take some time because the supplier companies, for example Bosch with engine control computers, charge a lot of money for low quantity runs; they could be expensive. In this case Porsche’s customer prices wouldn’t be much higher then the prices Porsche pays.”

Rolf Springer displayed a new 928 dash pod and leather covered dash.

The factory service, body and restoration shop had some fine examples of Porsche’s craftsmanship.

Very rare Abarth-Carerra undergoing restoration. . The Abarth-Carrera is rare, but I spotted Less than twenty were built between 1960 and 1961. a second one in the service area.

Porsche model 718, introduced in mid-1957. Jay Kempf inspects the flawless restoration of this 550 Spyder.

Wow, five 959s in one photo. Only 230 were produced. The last 928 GTS with a five-speed transaxle.

An added treat was a “new” 1995 928 GTS. It was the last manual shift 928 to roll off the assembly line. Porsche decided to save it. The odometer read just 310 km. What a sight!

M 28/22 “Euro-928S” 4.7-liter 310 HP motor. M 28/50 928 GTS 5.4-liter 350 HP motor.

Porsche Museum

No trip to Porsche is complete without a visit to the Porsche Museum. It is relatively small museum. A portion of Porsche’s collection is often on display in other parts of the world. Furthermore, the display is rotated so the odds are you won’t see the same cars on display from year to year. Another good reason to keep coming back to Zuffenhausen.

Porsche’s racing history is outstanding, as a matter of fact their record for winning was so significant that most sports racing organizations kept rewriting the rules to either exclude Porsche, as was the case with Indianapolis 500, or to enable other participants to have a chance at winning.

“Pink Pig” 917/20 Coupe from 1971. It has a 5-liter twelve cylinder motor that produces 600 HP .

917/30 Spyder from 1973. It features a 5.4-liter twelve-cylinder turbo motor that made a whopping 1100 HP at 7800 RPM. This 917 triumphed in the Can-AM series.

Porsche number 1, type 356 Roadster.

The Porsche type 367 number one, the first car to bear the Porsche name. It was hand built in 1948 when Porsche was still in Gmünd, Austria. The 1131 cc modified Volkswagen motor produced 35 HP.

Saturday Afternoon

We had a few spare hours following the Zuffenhausen activities prior to the banquet event to continue mingling. We never knew what treats were waiting for us. I heard that Tony Lapine had arrived and I found him in the parking area. He is a great guy and loves to speak with Porsche enthusiasts. Many of us had the pleasure of obtaining Tony’s autograph in our Project 928 books

Amicale 928’s Sandrine Fournis and Serge Stoll with the Porsche 928 25th anniversary lithograph.

After chatting with Tony and getting his autographing, I found the Amicale 928 group displaying their 928 lithographs. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 928, Samuel Fournis of the Amicale 928 club commissioned a work by Mr. François Bruère, a well known artist who paints historical vehicles. Amicale only had 300 lithographs printed, so if you haven’t ordered yours, don’t wait too long.

The Porsche 25th Anniversary Banquet Event

Tobias Eichle, President of the Porsche 928 Club Germany, welcomed the attendees. The club has over 230 members, the second largest classic car club after the 356ers. Frank Wiesner, a local broadcast celebrity, was the Master of Ceremonies. Volker Spannagel, Porsche Club-Coordinator, was also an honored guest.

Porsche Personalities, Left to right: Paul Hensler, Prof. Helmut Flegl, Manfred Krämer, Wolfhelm Gorissen, Dietmar Scherzer, Prof. Klaus Schellmann, Rainer List, Herbert Linge, Anatole Lapine, Dr. Heinz Rabe, Peter Falk.

Porsche’s 928 project management was first overseen by Wolfhem Gorrisen from 1971 to late 1975. Peter Falk and Professor Helmut Flegl then assumed control of the testing phase. Engine development was headed by Prof. Klaus Schellmann. Production was managed by Dietmar Schertzer.

The 928 project provided many successes for Porsche. It won the car of the year award upon its introduction at the March 1977 Geneva Salon, earning many glowing awards from international motor magazines. It achieved the number one sales for autos greater than 50,000 DM, thus beating out Mercedes from this top spot.

Wolfhelm Gorrisen, first project manager of the 928 from 1971 to 1975. Tony Lapine sketches the 928 design as part of his discussions.

- World requirements for active and passive security and safety grew from 60 to over 250 from 1960 to 1965 - Ferdinand Piëch pushed for a large engine - this was in the early going and emissions regulations were not yet very restrictive. At this time, the 917 race car was dominant. Thus there was a decision to move from 6 cylinders to a V8. - World regulations conspired to force the development of revised 928 specifications practically overnight, leading Porsche to also believe that the 911 might not be exportable in the future. The US imposed a 5 mph front and rear crash test requirement.

Tony Lapine joined Porsche in mid-1969 after working seventeen years at General Motors. He had worked in the U.S. in Bill Mitchell’s design team on projects such as the Q-Corvette and the Monza GT and SS. After moving to Opel, he was discovered by Porsche and replaced Ferry Porsche’s son Ferdinand “Butzi” as the chief stylist following Ferry’s decision to remove family members from the company’s management structure. During our parking lot discussion, Tony admitted that he chose Porsche because he wanted to work for a company where he would be recognized and could make a difference, GM was just too big for him. He worked on the 914, desiring to develop the successor to the VW Beetle with a mid-motor layout. Mr. Leiding of VW was behind the 914. Then came the VW Golf so that opportunity ended. Tony remembered Ferry Porsche as a soft spoken man that never raised his voice, even during lively discussions.

Tony told me that the picture in Project 928 where Tony with Ferry and Dorothy Porsche were celebrating the first design presentation with Champagne brought back a very fond memory. The full scale 928 model was made of clay and only the wheels were metal. After the toast, Ferry took Tony’s Champagne glass, bent over and broke it over the model’s wheel to christen the design.

Tony gives total credit for the 928 to his design team, Wolfgang Möbius and others. Tony feels the stability of the 928 is far superior to other cars of its time, the placement of the engine and transaxle provide for a high polar moment of inertia, ideal for smooth high speed driving. He likened the 911 to an arrow being shot backwards .. feathers to the front and lead to the rear, with credit to Porsche’s designers for its ability to work that way at all. But, if pushed to far it would revert to nature’s intended ways.

Tony explained that a deviation of 15 degrees is the maximum deviation for laminar air flow and even the short spoiler of the 928S was enough for this purpose. The minimalist 928S spoiler wasn’t Wolfgang Möbius’ preference. He stated that the 928 S4’s spoiler is a much more effective and aesthetically pleasing design.

Tony explained to the banquet audience that he was given the directive; “It (the 928) should look like a Porsche and have the Porsche silhouette.” He stated that Porsche decided to develop a water-cooled car and a major task was to cool a 300 HP motor, but without a big mouth. This resulted in a lot of discussions between the styling and engine group. The door shape came from occupant survivability requirements in the U.S. Roof compression was to equal 1.5 times the weight of the car. He said that Porsches should have large wheels, and the 928 had the largest of the time. The front and rear sections of the 928 were beveled to give the appearance of less width. Porsche management was very trusting of their teams. He had an agreement that management wouldn’t see the 928 until the design was completed. With the 928S model, a spoiler was added to the rear of original design to keep laminar flow from the roof and over the rear hatch.

Frank Wiesner, moderator, brought up topics that brought chuckles to the audience and set-up a lively exchange between Tony and Wolfhelm. It seems that later in the project, several problems discovered. Tony Lapine remembered that management was critical of the car’s width, issuing a mandate “reduce it by 15 cm.” This lead to the solution to chamfer the corners to reduce the apparent width. The 928 was wide, actually the initial design was too wide to fit the Waschstrasse (German car wash). Wolfhelm Gorrisen said “No, Tony was too pessimistic, it was only narrowed by 7 cm (nearly 3 inches).” The design team also forgot to accommodate the wide automatic transmission torque converter, so a quick redesign of the rear section and rear seats had to be made. Seat belts were added and that also required design changes.

Professor Helmut Flegl (left) and Tony Lapine (right).

Peter Falk demonstrates the Weissach axle principal.

The developers of the engine, Paul Hensler and Prof. Klaus Schellmann spoke of their contributions to the development.

The two big challenges were to produce an engine a cylinder block only made of aluminum without working surfaces mated with another material, such as steel cylinder liners, and to utilize hydraulic valve lifters. Others had used the Reynolds 390 alloy and failed. Porsche developed the flattest V8 engine of the time, 90 degrees, to support the low hood line. The California requirements of 4.5% carbon monoxide at idle required Porsche to develop measurement tools, they didn’t exist at that time. They worried that the 911 couldn’t meet the export requirements.

Porsche needed an emissions test area, and the only available space was Ferry Porsche’s home garage. He graciously gave away that space until facilities were later built at Weissach. The engineers created a banner for Ferry’s garage, calling the space the California Circus.

Porsche is proud of their ability to meet emissions, as a matter of fact today’s 911 Turbo is Porsche’s lowest emission engine.

The original 928 engine plans were for a 5.0-liter 270 HP motor. Then in October of 1973 the energy crisis occurred. It was a crisis for Porsche in 1974 as sales plummeted. Discussions were to reduce the engine displacement, marketing pushed for only 3.8-liters with only 180 HP. There was a big fight, because the engineers felt that acceleration would be much too low for an automobile to carry the Porsche name. The initial compromise was a 4.0-liter displacement that was projected to provide acceleration rate for zero to 100 kph in 8.5 sec. Later after the crisis eased, it was agreed to introduce the car with 4.5-liters and 240 HP.

The 928’s weight target was 1370 kg (3020 lbs.). Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann employed "walkaround" management and remind the design team of weight goals during his tours of Weissach. They worked very hard to keep the weight down, for example 34 kg (75 lbs.) were reduced by using aluminum, which was 60% of the weight reduction. The 928’s final weight was 1450 kg (3197 lbs.) at introduction.

Dietmar Scherzer commented on quality - workers were responsible for repairing defects discovered. Porsche utilized a non-punitive management style. Production focus was towards the people, giving them the proper goals and keeping the proper spirit. The production rate was as high as fifteen cars per day, and by the end of the model life dropped to less than two per day. Rarely were two similar cars built per month, they were very individualized.

The 928 achieved some racing records, such as a world record 24 hours at 250 kph (155 mph) including fuel stops and tire changes. To achieve this record the car averaged 285 kph (177 mph) when moving.

Peter Falk (left) and Herbert Linge (right). Tony Lapine Autographs the Author’s 25th Anniversary Lithograph.

Herbert Linge, factory race driver and test driver, stated that Porsche never tried to use the 928 as a racer, the 911 was Porsche’s production auto focused to racing. However, the 928 was the “company car.” Their 928s were used drive to and from the track. Drivers wouldn’t give them back! Also 928s were used for the security and fire cars. They could drive the Nürburgring in 8 minutes and reach 250 to 280 kph.

The world famous race driver Jackie Stewart and Hans Stuck owned 928s. Wolfhelm Gorrisen recalled Jackie Stewart proclaiming “I love it! The best high speed car in the world.”

Ludwigsburg Castle Residenzschloss

Following breakfast, the Sunday morning activity was a walk down the Königsalle pedestrian walkway to the Ludwigsburg Castle where the group was treated to a guided tour.

Ludwigsburg Castle

Ludwigsburg was founded in 1704 by Württemburg Duke Eberhard Ludwig as a summer and hunting residence. Following almost 30 years of construction, the Ludwigsburg Residenz Palace became one of the largest baroque palaces in Germany.

Ludwigsburg Castle Courtyard

After the tour, Euro-928-2002 was completed. Participants began packing their GT cruisers for their drives home. We made many new friends and left Ludwigsburg with new appreciation for the technology that makes the 928!

Thilo Corts says Goodbye! The side of Thilo’s 928 S4 that most people see,the “BAD Y 928” side. Note that Thilo is also sporting a Nürburgring decal in the center, under the hatch lock.

Continued on page 36