At the Porsche Luftgekühlt 8 Gathering, Hanging with the (Air) Cool(ed) Kids

Elana ScherrCar and Driver

Picture your favorite kind of car, and imagine gathering variants of it in every rare color and engine combination, some modified and modernized, others stock as the day they left the factory. Add in some rare prototypes and winning race versions, and place them with an artistic eye around a picturesque location, then invite all your friends to stroll around and admire your work. If your favorite car happens to be an air-cooled Porsche, then we’ve just described Luftgekühlt.

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Credit Porsche racer Patrick Long and art director Howie Idelson for starting Luftgekühlt in 2014. The original Luftgekühlt was a small air-cooled-Porsche gathering at a hip motorcycle shop in Venice, California. Since then, Luftgekühlt (literally air-cooled in German, metaphorically “Air-Cult” in practice) has grown in size and legend. For 2022, the show returned to the site of its fourth event, the dock warehouses-turned-brewery and craft fair in San Pedro, California.

The coolest of the (air) cooled were inside the show, but for those of us running liquid through our Porsches (including the very sporty 2022 Cayenne Turbo GT Coupe we happened to have over the weekend), there was an all-Porsche parking lot. We could have happily perused the rides in this lot and considered it an excellent display.

As one might expect from a show started with the help of folks such as famed Porsche enthusiast and photographer Jeff Zwart, Luftgekühlt is set up to look good through a camera lens. It’s also very kid-friendly, and we saw several younger photographers practicing their craft.

All right, photographers of all ages enjoy shooting at Luftgekühlt. Overheard: “Why bother building a real car when a dog in a toy gets all the attention?”

There was no shortage of famous racing Porsches on display, but we especially liked Bruce Canepa’s Pikes Peak special. The lightweight buggy is powered by a twin-turbocharged flat-six sourced from a 930. “It was so fast and so light, we just ran away from the heavier sprint cars,” Canepa told us. “So then Bobby Unser had it banned for the following year.”

Pikes Peak went to USAC rules, which required a heavier car. This buggy never returned to Pikes Peak, but Canepa did, setting a record in the opposite of a lightweight Porsche when managed a sub-14-minute run in a semi-truck in 2002.

What’s that, you ask? Were there any safari-style builds at Luftgekühlt 8? You could find one around every corner. Here’s a minty off-roader in its natural habitat.

And here’s a real working dog. Serifcan Ozcan runs this Rothmans-livery all-wheel-drive 911 in various rallies, including Baja’s vintage NORRA race. It came to Luftgekühlt straight from testing, still wearing desert dust.

Ozcan showed us several ways he modified the car for easier fixes on the trail. A spare belt is zip-tied up under the hood, while an oversize RV jack is held on with a spare lugnut. If he has to change a tire, he only needs to use one wrench, then he’s back in action.

At first glance, we thought this was a modified 914. We were wrong. It turns out this is a prototype 916, one of 10 wild builds Porsche’s head of design used to experiment with color and interior fabrics. Unfortunately, the window was up so we couldn’t get a good shot of the blue metallic paisley interior. It was groovy, baby.

If the fenders of this Rinspeed 969 aren’t stuffed full of cocaine, then someone isn’t fully committing to the bit.

For more modern tweaks, look to specialty builders, who can make a 911 Baja ready like this one by Russell Built. Around the corner was Singer, which brought out its first 911 build with fully exposed carbon fiber. Somehow we failed to get a photo of it, but maybe they’ll let us drive it someday.

Artist Kelly Telfer encourages Noah Acosta to lay down a coat of green. Telfer was housed in the Hagerty booth, capturing the bright shades of Luftgekühlt 8, with help from audience volunteers.

What type of car is this show about again?

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