I had an email a few weeks ago from the press department at Porsche here in the UK. They were putting a short but special one-day trip to Germany together, for a small group of UK Porsche enthusiasts who work in the media, and were wondering whether I might be interested? Silly question! The trip is tomorrow and promises to be a memorable event.
The day starts with a meet at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5, where we check in for our flight to Stuttgart. Upon arrival, we transfer direct to the Porsche Museum, for a behind-the-scenes tour of this wonderful facility. The visit includes a look at the archives, where some of the company’s most treasured historical information is housed. The Porsche museum’s opening hours show that the facility is closed on Mondays, so they are opening especially for us. Fabulous!
In mid-2008, Zuffenhaus US, based in Charlotte, North Carolina announced a new product, at that time being prototyped and set to enter the product development cycle.
The new arrival was a finned brake caliper which used all the stock internals of the Porsche 917 caliper in a new cast body, made to the same obsessive quality as the originals. The difference was that these new brakes would bolt straight on to stock 911 suspension, with no tricky/risky machining needed, as per the 930 brake conversion for standard-body 911s. The brake package would also fit under 15″ Fuchs wheels.
As my good friend Keith Walters of Zuffenhaus said, when he announced the package on Pelican in July 2008, “they are designed as a [...]
It’s been a busy week here at TwinSpark’s UK outpost. As the latest addition to the company furniture, I’ve been settling into my shareholder chair, and swapping Skype calls with my partners, looking at what we’ve got and considering what we’d like to have. Top of the want list is the same as any retailer: more customers.
Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft (a company whose founders are renowned for Porsche enthusiasm) once said: “We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There’s no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.”
Now, if you asked me as a long-term Microsoft user, was Windows 2000 in touch with customer needs and the [...]
