1987 Porsche 944 Turbo Racecar 959 on 2040-cars

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Noted Porsche collector Magnus Walker learns what a TED Talk is firsthand

Porsche collector Magnus Walker has the name and looks of a Viking, but once he starts talking about his life story and what drives him, he's an absolutely fascinating guy. Walker recently gave a Ted Talk at a Tedx conference at UCLA and claimed he didn't really understand the idea behind the speeches. You would never know it, though. Walker is as gifted a speaker as he is a talented restorer of some seriously cool Porsches.
Walker's talk is titled "Go with Your Gut Feeling," and it amounts to his autobiography. He recounts his birth in England, dropping out of school at 15 and moving to the US at 19. Once in Los Angeles, he started selling second-hand clothes and grew it into a fashion business.
Of course, what makes him interesting to us is his passion for Porsches. He fell in love with them when he saw a white 911 as a child at the Earl's Court Motor Show in England, but Walker waited until the '90s to buy his first one. From there he started racing and eventually restoring them. Since the documentary Urban Outlaw about him was released, Magnus has become famous for the love of the brand.

Consumer Reports selling its road-tested roadsters [w/video]

Here's a chance to acquire a celebrity-owned vehicles, and this time at a discount instead of a premium. So the celebrity in this case is Consumer Reports, that magazine that could be equally adored and abhored by car enthusiasts. CR buys all of its test vehicles and usually finds willing second owners within its own ranks, but its opening its small used-car lot to the public. On the forecourt are four roadsters: an automatic 2012 Audi TT 2.0 TFSI Quattro S-Tronic with 6,600 miles for $36,500, a manual 2012 BMW Z4 sDrive28i with 8,400 miles for $45,000, a manual 2012 Mercedes-Benz SLK250 for $39,500 and a manual 2013 Porsche Boxster with 7,000 miles for $48,000.
Those numbers mean a savings of $9,000 to $10,000 before haggling - each car is listed with an "Asking price" so there could be some wiggle room if you show up with pockets full of dough and eyes full of serious intent. Since the money CR earns from the sales go back into the magazine's budget to buy more test cars, however, it probably won't take any oddball trades, so you can forget about getting any purchasing help from that track-day AMC Javelin project on blocks in the back yard.
The vehicles have been taken care of and spiffed up for sale; buyers will take delivery at the CR test track in East Haddam, Connecticut and get a tour of the facilities. While you're there they'll even take you on a lap around the track so you can feel how your car handles when driven by one of its testers. They will probably not help you with advice on which toaster and dehumidifier to buy - you'll still need to get a subscription for that. Have a look at the video below to see a day in the life of a CR test car.

Are you the Porsche Pajun?

The prospect of Porsche building a smaller version of the Panamera has been an on-again, off-again proposition as the German automaker seems to go back and forth on the project. Last we heard, Porsche had pushed back the so-called Pajun (shorthand for Panamera Junior) until 2019 at the earliest, but we could be looking at it right here.
The automaker's everything-but-automotive division Porsche Design is working on a luxury condo complex called (simply enough) Porsche Design Tower. It's been three years in the making and will take at least another year or two to complete, but the gist of it is that the 57-floor building will include 132 apartments, each with its own en-suite garage in which the residents' cars will be parked thanks to giant elevators.
Porsche Design released a series of renderings showing what the property will look like once complete. Most of the renderings feature Porsches, of course - production models you can find in any of the brand's showrooms, like the one just 23 miles away in Coral Gables. But one of the renderings of the giant glass elevators shows something rather unusual.