Screenshot: @rodemory on Instagram
It seems like off-road Porsches are all the rage these days. We’ve seen totally rad Cayennes from E-Motion Engineering, awesome off-roading in Moab, and even Porsche themselves are getting in on the Cayenne craze. And that’s to say nothing of the safari 911 trend that has been blowing up in this community for the last decade. The next logical progression for Porsche fanatics looking to get deep into the dirt is to start fiddling with Macans. The compact crossover Porsche is by far the sportiest in the segment, but they actually have some pretty good off-road chops too! I drove a stock Macan off road when they first launched in 2014, and it was surprisingly capable for a street car on street tires.
With all of that in mind, take a look at this recent Instagram post from Rod Emory. Not only is he taking a Macan off road, he’s building one of the most hard core Macans we’ve ever seen. While you might know Rod for his exacting restorations, race prep of extremely rare vintage Porsches, or outlaw special 356s and 911s, you may not know that his family has been involved in hot rodding dating back to the early days of the LA custom scene, and it was an Emory who first chopped the front end off of a Volkswagen Beetle to create the Baja Bug style that is still so prevalent today.
The Emorys have been so influential in car culture that what was once an “outlaw” is now well accepted in the community by pretty much everyone but the most staunch purists. We love a good hot rodded Porsche as much as the next guy, and this Macan is no exception. The Macan has always been a strange halfway point between sports car and SUV, and in order to build a properly good one you need to disregard one to make it better at the other. As much as a lowered track-day Macan would appeal to us, doing the opposite and jacking up the entry-level Porsche SUV for some proper desert shenanigans is equally appealing.
According to Emory, this is an idea he’s had poking around in his head for around five years now, and he’s finally in a position to make it happen. It always seems when Rod posts stuff like this, the cars eventually come to fruition, as happened with his 356 RSR idea a few years ago. The guy is totally a visionary, so seeing some of this process happen while he’s in the middle of making it happen is a cool window into his world. The rendering is incredibly cool, and I can’t wait to see this thing make its debut when it’s finished.
If you had an opportunity to take this totally badass Macan off road, where would you take it? I think I might take it to the far frozen north of Scandinavia for some winter time ice sliding. That might be the opposite of the desert environment it was built to tackle, but it would be fun all the same.