The 7 Best Cars From the Air
Luftgekühlt stoked the air-cooled Porsche craze when the Teutonically named car show launched in a parking lot in Orange County, Calif., circa 2014. “Luft,” as it’s referred to by enthusiasts, has since drawn a cult following itself, inspiring its founders to experiment with a broader, more inclusive event. The idea behind Air | Water was explored as an extra day added to Luft 9 in 2023, and saw its inaugural full-scale execution last year at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.
“We knew it would work as a standalone event based on the response of that Sunday,” cofounder Jeff Zwart tells Robb Report. “We chose Orange County because it is arguably the epicenter for Porsche in the U.S.,” he says.
Cofounder Patrick Long adds, “I think there’s also a need for a versatile sort of Swiss Army knife for Porsche-enthusiast events. There’s a lack of predictability in the DNA of Luft; it keeps you on your toes . . . it’s a little bit cryptic and it’s very visual. I think Air | Water is that second act. I tell people, ‘If your favorite restaurant—let’s use Nobu as an example—was doing a noodle bar in 15 cities across the country, how could you have the same quality product and user experience but offer a whole different product?”
As for the vibe and vehicles showcased at the Air | Water exhibition, Zwart says, “We’ve always loved our philosophy of kids and families and dogs; this event lets us highlight the cars that are somewhat forgotten in Porsche’s history, but that’s the great thing about Porsche. There’s always a link to the past that explains the future. Conceptually, no matter what they’ve gone after, it’s still the Porsche philosophy, engineering, and ultimately driving experience.”
The versatility of the venue speaks to the broader variety of Porsches that were featured at Air | Water’s second installment. From a dirt oval track highlighting offroad models such as the Dakar 911 and overland-kitted Cayennes to a literal barn paying homage to barn-find examples, the expansive fairgrounds accommodated nearly triple the 300 or so cars typically featured at a Luft show.
The curated cars were also more encompassing, including everything from liquid-cooled transaxle Porsches—including examples of the 924, 944, and 928—to race cars like Alain Prost’s Porsche-powered McLaren TAG MP4/21985 that helped him secure the 1985 Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship.
Though rainy weather wasn’t on the bingo card for this year’s SoCal attendees, that didn’t dampen spirits around what is arguably one of the most eclectic Porsche shows on the calendar. Here are our favorites from the field.
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1955 Porsche Mikafa Tempo Sport Camper
The German marque is synonymous with slope-tailed 911s and all manner of race cars, which is exactly why this ultrarare Porsche Sport Camper captured our imagination. Produced under Porsche licensing by Mikafa (and officially referred to as the Porsche Mikafa Tempo Sport Camper/Wohnmobil Kult), this one-of-three creation features a tiny bathroom, as well as a kitchenette equipped with a stove, a sink, and an Electrolux fridge—quite novel for 1955. Perhaps more noteworthy to gearheads is Porsche’s 356 flat-four power plant on display in the rear of the vehicle’s passenger compartment, which rounds out this curiosity with an iconic identifier.
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1977 Porsche/Bisimoto 935 Moby X
This custom-built one-off from Bisimoto Engineering is just the sort of wild card we love at car shows. Though its swoopy lines recall the evocative silhouette of the dominating Porsche 935, one of which won outright at the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans, it is in fact powered by an electric motor producing close to 700 hp. “It was a handful driving it here,” says company founder Bisi Ezerioha about the early morning drive, which required piloting it on rain-dampened roads with the car on racing slicks. EV-hating Porsche fans had other Bisimoto alternatives: the car builder also featured air-cooled and liquid-cooled customs at the show.
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1988 Havoline-Sponsored Porsche 962C
While the fearsome 917 made history in 1970 by being the first Porsche to become the overall winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the marque’s 956 and its successor, the 962, went on to compete in endurance racing with notable success, garnering numerous manufacturer and driver championships throughout the 1980s. This particular 962C features a water-cooled flat-six engine producing an estimated 700 hp, a remarkable figure for its era. This example was campaigned by Klaus Ludwig, Bob Wollek, Jochen Mass, and James Weaver, achieving a third-place finishes at both Sebring and Daytona.
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1993 Porsche 964, Modified by Joshua Vides
While plenty of entries at Air | Water featured bold graphics and remarkable finishes, none embraced such a striking visual as that found with artist Joshua Vides’ Porsche 911–based art car. Originally a part of his pop-up show entitled Check Engine Light, this opaquely upholstered 964 presents an optical illusion, making a three-dimensional Porsche appear to be two-dimensional. Its black-and-white scheme adds to the deception, recalling lo-fi printing techniques and the high-key sunlight familiar to Southern California residents. While his pop-up’s original three-car collection included other 1990s classics in the form of a Mercedes-Benz SL500 and a Honda EF hatchback, the wrapped 911 was the perfect exclamation point to Air | Water’s already-eclectic array.
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Vern Schuppan’s Porsche 962C–Inspired Racer
Austrian racer Vern Schuppan was so smitten by the Porsche 956 he piloted to victory at the 1983 24 Hours of Le Mans (and co-drove with Hurley Haywood and Al Holbert) that he aimed to build an ultra-limited run of street-legal cars derived from the 962 (a subsequent sports-prototype racer) in the early 1990s. The Japanese-funded project involved a Schuppan-designed carbon-fiber chassis developed in conjunction with Porsche and assembled in the U.K. Its price in 1994, estimated between $1.5 million and $2 million, made it one of the most expensive Porsches to date, and also cut short its intended run of six examples to only two.
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2000 Lola B2K/10
While Porsche’s own race cars have been a force to be reckoned with, the manufacturer has also suppled engines to other nameplates in motorsport, such as this Lola B2K/10 Le Mans Prototype. The car is equipped with a twin-turbo flat-six derived from the power plant found in Porsche’s winning 962/GT1 racers, making it the only B2K/10 driven by a Porsche engine. Although competing twice at the 24 Hours of Daytona under the Champion Racing banner, and dressed in wild bodywork that makes it look fast standing still, this Lola struggled with reliability due to heat-management issues from the body’s tight packaging.
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Meyers Manx Carrera GT
Meyers Manx’s distinctive dune buggies are inherently linked to Volkswagen’s Beetle platform, which has direct ties to the revolutionary Porsche 356. This imaginative one-off, commissioned by Road Scholars and built in 2024, begs the hypothetical question of what the late Porsche-racing legend Vasek Polak might have built had he tapped into his stash of rare 356 GT and Spyder racing parts. The result is the four-cam-powered Meyers Manx Carrera GT, an open-cockpit buggy that blends the best of these disparate, but intrinsically related worlds.
