The Making of the Stop Motion Porsche Engine Tear Down Video

Like so many of you who saw last week’s stop motion video of the Porsche engine being torn down we wanted to know who was behind it and how it was done. Here’s what we found out.

If you watch the credits closely you’ll notice a website for hoeingmotoren.de. This is a Porsche specialty shop in Hamburg, Germany. The owner, Matthias Höing has a very strong reputation as a Porsche expert and the background to prove it.

• 1998-2001: Working on Porsches almost exclusively since 1998, Matthias was part of the team that developed Porsche 993 GT2 Evo motors for Konrad Motorsport, Porsche Motorsport and Roock Racing to use in international GT events.
• 2002-2008: Worked for Porsche Motorsports North America (PMNA) building Porsche GT3 engines in for use in the American Le Mans Series, the 24 Hours of LeMans, Grand-Am Series and the Porsche brand trophy. He took a break from PMNA in 2005 to gain the title of Automotive Master Technician from a school in Hamburg, Germany and then returned to take responsibility for motor testing at PMNA
• 2009-2011: Worked independently
• 2011: Founded Höing Sportmotoren focusing on Porsche six-cylinder boxer engines from 1964 to today

Making of the Stop Motion Porsche Engine Tear Down Film

We reached out to Matthias to let him know how much we enjoyed the film and ask about the story behind it. He told us that one of his customers discovered the engine in a corner of the paint and body shop where he had his 911 restored. Apparently, the owner of the shop had bought a Porsche on the cheap about ten years ago to fix it up for himself. As he started working on it, he found the tub to be heavily rotted out in the crucial areas and decided to scrap the restoration and the tub. He kept the engine, with the transmission bolted to it, in a garage next to his shop (where, judging by the acorns found, a squirrel made himself at home) until Mattias learned about it and picked it up.

Matthias plans to use the engine as part of an upcoming project. Not content to simply restore and rebuild, it will undergo a displacement increase and tuning to add “well over a hundred extra horsepower.”

To create the video itself, Matthias, and his buddies from Filmkooperation, took 4000 pictures documenting the engine tear down over three days in April. When they first compiled the pictures into a stop motion film, it was nearly 8 minutes in length. Concerned the length might turn off some viewers they distilled things down to just under 3 minutes by using 1500 of the original 4000 photos.

Once they had the right photos, and the length down to where they wanted, it was time for editing. That took two days of work. At the same time one of Matthias’ friends composed the music (another two days) and his wife drew the animated squirrel. However, due to scheduling conflicts and the fact that this was a side project for everyone involved, the video took almost three months to reach final completion. Well worth the wait in our opinion.

The only mistake they made, in our minds, is the length. While we would be the first to agree that online attention span is short, the stop motion action just sucks you in; 8 minutes would just fly by. Regardless, they did a wonderful job and the video has already been seen nearly 70,000 times.

The next iteration (the rebuild and tuning) will take place in August and the new video will go online in September. Matthias promised to keep us in the loop and we’ll be sure to post any new info as we get it.

UPDATE: The sequel is coming. Here’s the trailer.

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Go Behind the Scenes of a Porsche Photo Shoot with FlatSixes

[Pictures via Matthias Höing and Magnus Walker]