Luftgekühlt Teams with Mobil1 to Protect History

Protecting history is challenging. There’s no need to be ambiguous, virtually every museum, historical society and living history group struggles. I crewed a working museum ship, and though we sailed thousands of miles and hosted thousands of visitors, funding was always a question. Money doesn’t necessarily follow people’s interests in any appreciable quantity, and worth and the worthy aren’t often close bedfellows. The groundswell of support for Patrick Long’s Luftgekühlt, and the pocket of history it represents is heartening. Seeing people united by interest and a very pure form of enthusiasm, well, it gives you hope. Luftgekühlt isn’t just “weaponized FOMO” (Bradley Brownell’s words, not mine), it’s a great uniter. Alongside events like Rennsport Reunion, this is indicative of all that’s right in Porsche enthusiasm.

For Patrick Long, Luft was about reverse engineering his Porsche enthusiasm. He arrived at the deep-end of the Porsche world as a professional racing driver. From there he’s slowly worked backwards to figuring out what the rest of us love about the brand. From my perspective on the other side of the country, Luft seems to be equal parts world’s-greatest-cars-and-coffee and living museum. Where else are you going to see Vic Elford climb out of his 1968 1000km of Spa 908 in 2018? How often will you even see Mr. Elford alongside Patrick Long and Jeff Zwart?

While I’ve always viewed the world of air-cooled fanaticism as a somewhat pretentious one, Luft has every appearance of being the opposite. The cars aren’t guarded by velvet ropes and stancheons. There are no signboards telling the viewer why to care. The love of Porsches is a myth agreed upon, as much as an appreciation of quantifiable success.

Continuing the theme of making history accessible Luftgekühlt is offering a chance for a VIP trip to Rennsport Reunion in partnership with Mobil1. Details for this trip can be found at Protecting History’s website.