Month: May 2017

Luftgekühlt 4: An Iconic Car Show

Luftgekühlt 4: An Iconic Car Show

For those of you who haven’t heard of Luftgekühlt before, it’s time you get informed so that you don’t miss out on next year’s show. The term ‘Luftgekühlt’ is German for “air-cooled” – referring to a specific type of engine found in classic Porsche models. This year the 4th Luftgekühlt Car Show took place in the beautiful city of Los Angeles, California. Hosted by Porsche factory driver and Le Mans winner Patrick Long along with designer Howie Idelson, this event is one to mark on your calendar. Spaces are limited and work on a first come, first serve basis. Only pre-1998 air-cooled Porsches are accepted.

According to an interview from The Hundreds, Howie Idelson states that, “Patrick and I are close friends and we grew up racing go-karts. Well we were working on a project together. I was working on product design for Oakley in motorsports and he was consulting on it as an Oakley athlete. We were sitting one day at Deus ex Machina in Venice, he had his old Porsche there, and over coffee we brainstormed this idea of a gathering. Getting a group of air-cooled Porsche friends together and making a cool event. So many other car shows that we have gone to are very sterilized – there just isn’t a lot of access if you’re not “in the know,” then you’re just an outsider.

We wanted to create something LA-based and something that would be cool to come to that would be open to everybody. On the west side of LA, there is so much car culture and enthusiasm, but there is no place to hang.”

In case you missed out on the action here’s some amazing photos from Luftgekühlt 4:

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 “IT’S ABOUT CREATIVITY, ART, AND APPRECIATING A MARQUE.” – Howie Idelson

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For more information and photos from the event head over to Luftgekühlt and don’t forget to mark your calendar for the 2018 show!

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Trail Rated – Porsche 911 Safari Build

Trail Rated – Porsche 911 Safari Build

In the words of Kelly-Moss Motorsports: “The story goes, that a guy walked into my office one day with an unusual request. He said, ‘I know you guys build a lot of cool cars, can you build me a Porsche 911 that I can use for hunting and do some serious off-road duty?'”

We were lucky enough to get in contact with Michael Medearis, Body Shop manager over at Kelly-Moss Motorsports to ask him a few questions about their experience building this truly one of a kind 911.

Here’s what Michael had to say:

What were some of your initial thoughts when you were first asked to build a 911 that could be used for hunting and off-road excursions?

MM: Well, when Len Eder (car owner) came to us with a request this wild we could do nothing but smile ear to ear, outside the box is what we do here at KMR. His specific wants/needs were an older 911 built to withstand harsh off road conditions while being capable of highway driving to get to the off-roading sites as this build wasn’t going to be any type of trailer queen. He wanted a 911 to take hunting, camping and just general off-roading fun. So when talking to Len about his expectations from KMR and the proposed build we had a car in mind, a car that we actually rally raced in the past. This was a stripped down tub (shell) of a 1987 911 with a full roll cage already in place. Obviously the car would need virtually everything and the entire body reworked, but we were up for the task.”

Have you ever built something like this before?

MM: “Actually we have built rally cars and the such in the past we have even successfully competed in the Baja 1000 6 times. With building and or modifying our own Race Vehicles for the event so off-road is no stranger to the KMR crew.”

What was the biggest challenge you came across when working on this build?

MM: “I will start at the beginning of the build for this question. The chassis/tub/shell was an ex-rally car so it was pretty beat up and bent. We had to put the car up on the Celette Frame Bench and using the factory Porsche fixture locations we pulled and hammered away until the suspension and various important points around the chassis were back in factory alignment spec. This also brought us to performing quite a bit of hammer & dolly work to straighten out the floorpans, with this being the beginning of the body work we moved on to patching numerous access holes that were cut into the inner body throughout the years and fabricating a front firewall so we could install a factory wiper system. That we later covered up with one of our KMR custom Carbon Fiber dashes. While on the interior we sprayed in a sound deadening material and covered it with a lightweight carpet kit, installed Beard seats and modified the roll cage door bar for ease of access into the race buckets. We also brought the roll cage bars out into the front bucket/trunk area to tie into the strut towers and the front push bar top make everything as stout as possible. but even with all of this the largest hurdle we faced was the lack of parts, we started with a bare shell and had to bring an old used up race car back from the dead to be a capable off road beast with some of the creature comforts needed to daily drive the car if the owner so wished. So just sourcing parts and filling the gaps between race car and original street car was quite the challenge. Most cars are turned into a race car with no intent of ever returning to regular every day use so mounting tabs get cut off brackets get thrown away and at the time its all ok because its being turned into a purpose built track car and its not until someone like us wants to reinstall parts that are discarded on a regular basis (during this process) that it is realized it may be have gone to far into the track car life. But in the end we prevailed and successfully built a functional interior again.

Some of the mechanical aspects were a bit of a challenge as well with the shocks, control arms, steering and alignment. We actually built custom lower control arms so we could get the required camber with the added height. When we added the larger tires (the second time) we had to modify the fenders and give more clearance for the larger circumference as well as turning radius.”

We noticed you used some of our Rennline parts in the build. Do you mind telling us a little bit more about what parts you chose and why?

MM: “We chose a few of the Rennline interior parts because they really fit the theme of the car (purpose built and durable) we used the floor boards and perforated pedals because we knew they would get a beating and be easy to keep clean while standing the test and lasting.”

So, the big question we’ve all been waiting for: How does it drive?

MM: This car drives (I am going to quote our KMR Principal Owner Jeff Stone) ‘it drives like I’m on a magic carpet! Super smooth.’ The cars very first maiden voyage out of the shop in its newest configuration went down the railroad tracks and through a field (which seems to be the running theme with our rally/off-road builds) to put it through its paces right out of the gate. This thing is literally a blast to drive, everyone looks and stares. Whether they are looking in disgust or awe that is up to them but the main point is that they are looking it is drawing attention and most love it. Either way, love it or hate it KMR Off-Road cars are here to stay.”

 

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For more pictures of this incredible build head over the the Safari RS page on the KMR website.

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