Impressions of Luftgekühlt Munich in 60 Seconds

Walking through Grand Central Station about a year ago, I stumbled across a Leica camera club. They were bedecked in Leica t-shirts, Leica hats, and Leica-branded camera-straps, and it seemed that half of what they were photographing was one another with their hilariously expensive cameras. It was disturbingly self-indulgent, and placed the product above the process. To take one of the most user-focused cameras on the market and reduce it to a trinket seemed tragic. Somehow when Posrche fanatics get together in mutual appreciation, it seems like a celebration rather than doing something shameful in public. Luftgekühlt may be the apogee of that idea; a joyous reflection on being an air-cooled Porsche fan. Like past Luftgekühlts, the Munich event seems to combine all that is great, good, and vivid about being a Porsche fan. 

From Porsche’s 57-second video clip, it looks like a large percentage of the cars on display come from my generation, the Rad generation. Given that I’m in my late-twenties and my dad just cracked fifty, this very literally appears to be “not my dad’s car show.”

The venue reinforces that impression; like Luft 5, the Munich event carries some of the gritty and artistic pop-up vibe. The venue is laden with cool street art and murals dressing up an otherwise industrial-looking venue. Perhaps it’s a reflection of German buying and customization preferences, but the cars on display show a slightly more restrained color pallet than the California shows.

The second Luft event outside the US seems to have been a hit, and we can only hope that there will be future Luftgekühlts (Lufts-gekühlt?) in many more locations globally.