Luftgekühlt is so much more than a car show. It’s a community gathering, not just for those of us with a “mildly” unhealthy obsession with air-cooled Porsches, but for also for anyone remotely curious about the history of the brand. Though experts and Porsche legends are in attendance, casual observers and “noobs” are equally as welcome. The only prerequisite is a passion for Porsche.
Pulling some of the rarest Porsches out of poorly lit museums and climate controlled garages and sticking them outside in a lumberyard might seem an odd choice, but Luft, as it’s called, is a stroke of genius. As they have done each year since the first gathering in the Deus parking lot in Venice Beach, event organizers Patrick Long, Howie Idleson and Jeff Zwart outdid themselves.
This year’s Luft 5 was the largest of these shows yet, both in crowd size (some 3,500 tickets were sold and an estimated 4,500 people attended) and in venue size. Newly opened 18-acre Ganahl Lumber in Torrance, California, played host to the event — an appropriate pairing for sure. The Ganahl Lumber Company was founded by Austrian immigrant Christian Ganahl in 1904 and the foundation of Porsche as we know it today was laid on the grounds of a re-purposed sawmill in Gmund, Austria between 1944 and 1949. There, the first 53 Porsche 356s were built among the wood and sawdust, so it was quite special to see one of the last “Gmund coupes” in its element once again, especially alongside a smattering of later-model 356s that can also trace their roots back to that sawmill.
Zwart said, “Venue was central to everything — to keep things fresh, especially with all the various cars.” When chatting with Long about his favorite thing about the show in general his face lit up and he answered, “The people who cut their own path, stuff that’s painted the wrong color… I love it. Originality.”
Andrew Maness
