2002 Porsche 911 Targa on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Meet the man that discovered and restored the oldest existing Porsche

Luciano Rupolo is an absolutely fascinating gentleman. He was born in France but spent nearly his entire life in Italy as an auto mechanic running his own shop. His grandfather and father instilled a love of sports cars in him that he carried on by historic racing in Italy for decades. He saw his life-long automotive passion repaid when he found and restored the car that might have been the first Porsche registered for the road.
You can spot in his garage a split-window Corvette, Ferrari 250 GTE and other exotics, but Rupolo's most interesting automotive story concerns his Iso Grifo Competizione (pictured above). The sports coupe was found in the Canary Islands as little more than a shell, but Rupolo got help from a prestigious source for its restoration. The result is a motoring masterpiece.
Rupolo is a fantastic storyteller with a captivating, tale to tell. Settle in, scroll down and watch the bittersweet documentary about his life with one of the first Porsches.

2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S

A Wicked-Fast Street Legal Multi-Tool
Walter Röhrl was carving up the circuit in the Porsche 911 Turbo S like a skilled Jedi Master - and I was sitting next to him, mesmerized by the breathtaking show. I had strapped myself securely into the front passenger bucket of the all-new coupe less than a minute earlier, expecting nothing more than a few quick laps around a track at the hands of another celebrated race driver. Been there, done that. Many times, actually.
Yet this was different. Röhrl was not only calculated and methodical in his approach, but his rally-tuned cerebrum appeared to be actively reading available grip levels while effortlessly tossing the all-wheel-drive Porsche into each corner at gut-wrenching speeds. His hands were moving rapidly, sending tiny steering corrections to the front tires, and he was using every inch of the track to extract more speed. We launched over a curb, dropped a wheel in the dirt and then drifted around a wide off-camber turn. His human precision and focus was astounding, and the performance he was extracting from the machine was just short of breathtaking.

Porsche's Mauer recalls the history of the 918 Spyder, hints about next-gen 911

The night before Porsche handed me the keys to its 2015 Macan to drive on both road and track, the company threw together a great dinner for the assembled media in Leipzig. Hosted in Porsche's spaceship-shaped customer delivery center in the eastern German town, I'll admit that I spent the bulk of my night grabbing hors d'oeuvres from passing waiters (they do a nice tuna sashimi), milling around a collection of historic and interesting vehicles on the top floor and gulping down Warsteiner.
In an era of mega car companies, the story of how the 918 came to be was really refreshing.
Before the evening was over, however, Porsche design chief Michael Mauer stopped by my table to exchange pleasantries and thank us all for coming out to drive the Macan. My fellow diners and I passed a pleasant half-hour or more picking the brain of the forthcoming Mauer, and somehow or another, the topic turned to Porsche's newest supercar, the 918 Spyder. In an era of mega car companies (the Volkswagen Group included) and massive development teams, the story of how the 918 came to be is really refreshing.