
Tempest
Genau, Dissendem Designer des 928 gesprochen hat - ich muss Dir das ganze mal persönlich in Ruhe erzählen, waren ein paar schöne Anekdoten dabei .
Zitat aus der Porsche Post (PCGB Clubzeitschrift) Sommer 1999, wiedergegeben in dem 928Register Buch des PCGB (einer meiner Vorbesitzre war da mal drinIn 1967 I searched ¨Exchange and Mart¨ for interesting motor cars around £250 range. I had just graduated from the Royal College of Art London in Industrial Design. Peter Stevens, who was later to achieve fame at Lotus and McLaren, and I, had been offered the first two places in a new postgraduate course in transportation design at the Royal College, sponsored by Ford.
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In 1969 Peter and I, on completion of our postgraduate course, were offered employment by Ford at the design centre at Dunton, Essex. There followed the two most dismal years of my career.
I was puzzled when the chief designer suggested I should park my car (Porsche 356 Speedster) at the rear of the building. Apparently it did not fit the company stereotype. I replied that in his position I would be delighted to have enthusiastic people working for me. I clearly had no future at Ford.
I decided I had to work for a company whose products I respected. I wrote Porsche a letter enclosing some examples of my work. To my delight they replied, in German (I did French at school of course!), inviting me to an interview. I flew to Stuttgart, had a day of interviews and before flying home, I had signed a contract.
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Lapine was chief of Style Porsche. Butzi Porsche was still to be seen in the studio, but was shortly to leave as was Ferdinand Piech. Dr Fuhrmann arrived to take over the company. Lapine was as colourful, charismatic and unpredictable as Fuhrmann was not. There was some distrust at the start when Fuhrmann insisted that Styling were no longer to be allowed to generate their own concepts, but provide design support to concepts originating from engineering. Lapine had a plan to take the whole studio to VW which came to nothing. The first job I was involved in was the impact bumper face lift for the 911. The three spoke steering wheel was my first design to go into production. We started working on two new concepts. One was for Porsche and intended to replace the 911. It was front-ended V8 with a transaxle. It was not really the car we wanted to do - we wanted to do an aircooled midengined fflat 6 but it was better than working on the second concept which was front engine 4 cylinder with transaxle for VW. I moved from concept studio to interior studio, did one concept interior for the VW before becoming part of the 928 interior team.
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There is always a debate as to who really designed what, but I would say the 928 exterior was 100% Wolfgang Mobius, the instrument panel was Hans Braun although I contributed at the concept stage. The rest of the interior was mainly my effort, doors, seats-front and rear. However one should not underestimate the contributions of the clay modellers who were led by Peter Reisinger. The 928 front wing is a work of genius. Tony Lapine has to get the blame for the bizarre trim fabric that the first cars had. We were also supported by a team of studio engineers. I mustn´t give the impression that the project was smoothness and harmony.
There were disagreements and shouting matches - I have seldom seen anyone who could get as angry as Lapine! It was a small multinational team of hard drinking young artistic people. We had Austrian, Czech, German, American, English, Dutch and a Scot, but we all shared enthusiasm for the company and I think we were very aware of the company philosophy. That meant anything we designed had potentially to look good for many years.