Titanium Edition on 2040-cars

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First-ever Porsche headed home to company museum

About 30 years before Ferdinand Porsche designed the Volkswagen Beetle, he created the Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, C.2 Phaeton model - or simply, the P1 - you see above. This was the first vehicle created by Porsche, and the car gets its nickname from the fact that he had stamped "P1" on many of the parts marking it as the first Porsche... sorry, 356 No. 1.
Now while you'd think that such an important piece of Porsche heritage has been in a museum or even the automaker's not-so-secret lair, it has actually been sitting at a warehouse for the last 112 years. Thankfully, that's all about to change as Porsche has recovered P1, and the car will soon be on "permanent display" at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart.
The P1 has a 3 horsepower motor capable of delivering a top speed of 21 miles per hour and a driving range of 49 miles, and, like many vehicles in Porsche's history, the motor is positioned at the rear of the vehicle. According to the press release posted below, the P1 finished first in a 24-mile electric vehicle race in Berlin in 1899, but it has been sitting since 1902.

Porsche Fire and Ice is chilling art born of flames

Porsche held a contest inviting ten filmmakers to riff on the tagline for the Panamera, "Thrilling Contradictions," in a 60-second film. The winner was an entry called Fire and Ice by director Ross Cohen, a concept that uses just those two elements in a premise as simple as it is rewarding. For his efforts, Cohen will receive a trip to the Chicago International Film Festival, and you might see the short in the pre-movie advertisements in a theater served by Spotlight Cinema Networks.
Porsche did this kind of thing just two years ago, when it asked filmmakers to illustrate the idea of "Everyday Magic". The winner of that contest, Michael Korbel's It's a Magical Life, followed the journey of a young man to husband and father from the perspective of the trunk of a 911. You'll find that video as well as Fire and Ice below.

Why won't automakers slap on a turbo badge anymore?

Where have all the turbos gone? Not the actual pieces that go in the engine, mind you, those are everywhere these days as automakers downsize cylinder counts and boost efficiency and CO2 claims. But the turbo badges and fanfare are missing. Back when turbos were something to get excited about there was "turbo-driven," "turbonium," and "The Turbo Zone," among other silly lines. But now that basically every car is getting some sort of boost even on the lowliest trims, automakers are almost sliding in the turbos under the radar. Or if you look at some of the nomenclature, pretending they don't exist at all. The 911 Turbo badge shows where the car goes from being sane to lunatic. It's an important border. The latest automaker to hide that it has boosted the turbo presence is Porsche with the 2017 911 lineup. Even the standard Carrera models now get turbocharged flat-six engines, meaning the 911 Turbo models aren't quite as special as they once were. Porsche is in a sticky situation with this. The 911 Turbo, after all, signifies where the 911 family takes off from being a sports car and becomes the Ferrari fighter. The 911 Turbo badge shows where the car goes from being sane to lunatic. It's an important border, but now Porsche has crossed it and is trying to downplay the fact. There are a lot of exaggerations with displacement badges today, with claims the 2.0-liter turbo four in a Mercedes C Class equates to a naturally aspirated 3.0-liter six to make a C300. Volvo is pretty far up there, too, saying an XC90 T8 means V8 power, even though it's a 2.0-liter turbocharged and supercharged four with electric assist. I don't know why BMW can't just call the car a 330i Turbo, rather than inflating the numbers up to 340i. Saab tried all of this back in the '90s when it decided to turbocharge its entire lineup, from light pressure units all the way up to models actually called "Saab 9-3 HOT" (for high-output turbo). But then the brand deleted any external reference to the turbo under the hood and people wondered why they were buying a $42,000 four-cylinder convertible. And that didn't turn out well. Even though these turbo replacements often make more power than their naturally aspirated predecessors, they're very different engines. People knew something changed when they exchanged their leased 328i with a 3.0-liter six for a 328i with a 2.0-liter turbo four.