New Porsche Exhibit Focuses on People Who Made the Cars Cool

There are a lot of Porsche exhibits that focus on all the wonderful wagens to come out of Weissach, and those exhibits are certainly nice to see. After all, who doesn’t love Porsches?

The new exhibit opening April 16 at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles has plenty of cool Porsches—40 on the second floor alone, with more scattered throughout the museum. Right when you come into the building you see a 962 and an LMP car there in the lobby, but the heart of the exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum is the people behind those Porsches.

“We decided that, rather than build it around the cars, we would build it around the people, especially those in Southern California that really made Porsche Porsche,” said Museum Director Terry Karges, himself a Porsche driver since high school.

The exhibit, called “We Are Porsche,” focuses not only on the people but specifically the Americans who made the marque mighty. America was always a big part of not only Porsche sales, accounting for over half of all sales at points in the 1950s and ‘60s, but it was Americans who helped make Porsches cool.

Think James Dean in his early racing 356s, Steve McQueen in the movie Le Mans, Patrick Dempsey at the real Le Mans, Patrick Long at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and even Tom Cruise riding in Kelly McGillis’ Speedster in the original Top Gun, or posing with his new love interest next to her silver 911 in Top Gun Maverick.

“It’s a fascinating journey to look at all of the people who, without knowing it, just by loving the cars, driving them, and racing them, made them cool,” said Karges. “It’s really a great story.”

Right when you enter the exhibit off the elevator on the second floor, you are introduced to Max Hoffman, for instance. Hoffman was a true visionary. In a 1950s America that favored monster land yachts and towering tailfins, Hoffman saw the potential for somewhat funky BMWs, Mercedes, Alfa Romeos, and even Volkswagens. He first saw a picture of a Porsche 356 and knew there would be customers here who would embrace its light weight and nimble handling.

Next to him in the exhibit is a tribute to John von Neumann, who got his start as a kid hanging around Max Hoffman’s showrooms in New York. Soon he was living in LA and selling Porsches—and Ferraris—by racing them and winning in them. He chopped the top off one of the Gmünd 356s and a photo of it got back to Germany, where Porsche decided to make Speedsters. That’s one version of the story, anyway.

Then, on the same wall as Hoffman and von Neumann is Vasek Polak, another racer operator who sold Porsches that could win races. Polak got his start because he was the only guy in America who could tune the complicated four-cam engines in Porsche 550A Spyders. His success led to a dealer franchise, continued racing, continued winning, and still more sales.

Around the corner from those three is Steve McQueen, whose coolness is beyond reproach. McQueen’s 1976 911 Turbo is parked there, while video interviews of his son Chad McQueen and Chad’s son are played. That’s followed by the 911 of racer/actor Patrick Dempsey; the 996 GT3 RSR of racer and Luftgekuhlt founder Patrick Long; a placard of Ken Miles about his racing 550s in California; and a nice mention of our own Denise McCluggage in various 550s she “borrowed.”

The 917/30 that Mark Donahue helped make famous is there, parked in front of a video looping two minutes of Patrick Long and Hurley Haywood. Did you know Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash loves Porsches? One of the cars he ordered through Porsche’s Sonderwunsch, or special request, is in the exhibit. Rod Emory is there, too, with one of his 356 recreations. Tuner Bisi Ezerioha brought a 911 he had rebodied to look like a 935 and powered completely by electricity.

“From what I gather, when Ferdinand Porsche was with us, he was a very innovative engineer,” said Ezerioha. “I love innovation, so I see that merging.”

Those are just a few of the Porsches in the exhibit. It’s a fresh look at a subject that has been picked over for 75 years, since the first Gmünd Porsche came out of the sawmill in Austria.

“We wanted something different,” said Bryan Stevens, director of exhibitions at the Petersen. “With the 75th anniversary of Porsche upon us, we knew there were a lot of people doing a simple chronology of the company’s history. We wanted to look at the people behind the cars.”

They are interesting people, for sure.

The exhibit runs for the next 13 months, so you have until May of 2024 to see it. But that will come quicker than you think, just as the first 75 years of Porsche came and went. So don’t waste time—go!