With the Porsche Club.

The cool mornings here in Scottsdale see me mounting the old steed for a desert run to procure the morning croissant. My gas cost exceeds that of the French delicacy and with the mercury at 44F this morning the old leather jacket with a Thinsulate liner was indicated. GoreTex may be just the thing for breathability, but it does not cut through the cold on an unfaired machine.

As luck would have it the local Porsche Club was having a get together at the grocery store of choice and when I pulled up on the old Airhead conversation naturally ensued. We share a heritage of horizontally opposed air cooled engines, although the cooling air for the bike is naturally provided to the protruding fins on the cylinder heads, that for the 356/911 set is courtesy of a massive fan mounted on a vertical axis in the engine compartment out back.

My 1975 BMW R90/6 at a recent old bike show.

BMW bikes and Porsche cars abandoned air cooling for the most part in the ’90s in the face of rising horse power demands and efficiency, and most serious Porsche and BMW bike men maintain that the world pretty much ended about that time.

There was a nice study in contrasts in this part of the parking lot.

2019 GT3 and 1965 356.

The $200k 911 is worth less …. Lots of nice P cars in the background.
And yes, the ‘bra’ on the 356 is an abomination.

The green GT3 is the last normally aspirated 911 available. All the others from the regular model through to the Turbo use twin turbos to keep pollution down, which also takes out the gorgeous sound of the normally aspirated six. Porsche (and BMW) have traded charisma for competence. Turbocharged engines run so much quieter that Porsche now pipes artificial sound into the cabin to reassure the poor schnook at the wheel that he is driving the real thing. This is engineering?