The Petersen Automotive Museum recently unveiled a new exhibit in partnership with Luftgekühlt celebrating the Group C-era Porsche 956 and 962 racecars. Set in a tiny room downstairs next to the museum's service facility—and somewhat contained within The Vault—this new display follows another Luft-organized show featuring a handful of spectacular Ruf builds, including an example of the iconic CTR known as the "Yellowbird."
Clearly, Porsche and the Petersen go hand in hand, a testament to the Stuttgart automaker's commitment to the classic car community as well as to the museum's recognition of popular trends within the collectible marketplace. Luftgekühlt, however, represents the absolute pinnacle of modern air-cooled mania, having blossomed in less than a decade from a small gathering in Venice to an internationally renowned event featuring some of the most incredible cars in the world.
To learn more about the new Luft show, I spoke with photographer-turned-racer (and still photographer and racer) Jeff Zwart about the brand's close relationship with the Petersen and how he and Luftgekühlt co-founder Patrick Long pulled together this impressive collection of both air-cooled and water-cooled racecars.
Jeff Zwart: Photographer, Cinematographer, And Racer
After growing up in Southern California and famously learning to drive in his father's Porsche 901—not to mention buying a 914-6 as his first car in high school—Zwart discovered an almost magnetic attraction to motorsport in Germany. Figuring that a degree in photography might allow him to get even closer to the cars and people involved, he headed back to California to attend Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, aiming to hone his craft and earn entrée into the exclusive (not to mention expensive) auto racing scene.
"The thing that I liked about Art Center," Zwart recalled, "Was it was purely a professional school, less on the art side. And then I love the transportation design side of it. I went to study photography at Art Center but funny enough, I was the only one in my class who was shooting cars. All my friends that were at school were all in the transportation design departments, so it was really cool to make all those connections with the future car designers."
After graduating from Art Center, Zwart spent about a decade shooting stills for the likes of Road & Track, as well as Porsche, before turning to film directing and production for the rest of his career. Somewhere along the way, he ended up racing Formula Fords and then developing a focus on rally racing, which led to his renowned success at the famous Race to the Clouds or, more officially, the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb. In 2011, he drove a street-legal GT2 RS from California to Colorado and then straight into competition. Last year, he raced one of only 77 examples of the modern track-only Porsche 935 up the famous ascent.
"Pikes Peak is my specialty," Zwart said, "Obviously I’m really close to the Porsche brand and I’ve grown up with it. I’ve handled their advertising, I’ve been able to kind of race all over the world with Porsche, in a variety of different Porsche automobiles."
Joining Luftgekühlt Founder Patrick Long
Zwart's connection to Luftgekühlt began when Porsche factory driver Patrick Long introduced him to the German word for air-cooled. Zwart's own successful racing career, impressive as it might sound to an average gearhead, pales in comparison to Long's.
"Patrick Long and I both kind of come from racing backgrounds," Zwart explained. "So to work with someone who’s as talented a racer as Patrick is, who is the only American factory Porsche driver, that’s a pretty special combination."
Luftgekühlt grew quickly from that small meet in Venice into perhaps the world's most famous annual (until the pandemic) gathering of air-cooled Porsches. Now drawing everything from original 356s to 911s, 914s, 993s, and Singer-modified 964s, the perfectly Instagrammable events attract massive crowds and sell out reservation slots months in advance. The word Luftgekühlt sounds amazing enough on its own, but the impressive visuals of assembled vintage Porsches most attracted Zwart into the fray.
"Patrick said the word to me and talked about it being an air-cooled show," he remembered. "Everything just engaged me right away, it seemed like something that was quite in my zone. And the nice thing was that it not only was in my zone for what I was truly interested in, it also combined so many things that I do in my own career, which is production and directing and putting together major commercials and films."
From The Porsche Effect To Ruf
Porsche's long-standing partnership with the Petersen included an expansive exhibit in 2018 and 2019 titled The Porsche Effect, which Zwart also helped to organize, though the smaller Luftgekühlt displays downstairs represent a more closely curated experience—and somewhat ironically for a brand that doesn't allow the attendance of non-air-cooled P-cars, this summer's Ruf assemblage did include water-cooled engines.
"The idea is that all Porsches came from air-cooled Porsches," Zwart admitted, "But we don’t deny the fact that they exist as modern cars."
Zwart, much like so many Porsche enthusiasts who found themselves enraptured by the famous Faszination on the Nürburging video, loves Ruf as an example of pure automotive enthusiasm. Operating out of a small garage in Pfaffenhausen, Alois Ruf shot to global fame when his heavily modified 911 known as the CTR Yellowbird was dubbed "The Fastest Production Car in the World" by Road & Track magazine—ironically, a title taken from Porsche's own in-house supercar, the 959.
Today, Ruf still works on both air-cooled and water-cooled Porsches, so the exhibit earlier this summer allowed Luft to share more of the expansive Porsche legend in, of course, stunning visual style.
"It’s a relatively small room," Zwart said, "And we were looking for a story that we could tell in that room that’s not really been told before. Outside of car owner situations, I think that was the largest group of Rufs brought together in one space."
Real Group C Racers
But how to follow up such a collection of Rufs and keep that wow factor in place? Zwart and Long helped to organize the current 956 and 962 show by bringing together Porsches from the Group C racing era, some of the most powerful cars ever allowed in sanctioned racing. And much like the Rufs, various iterations of the 956 and 962 graduated from entirely air-cooled technology to water-cooled heads and, finally, fully water-cooled engines.
The specific examples at the Petersen include multiple historically significant cars. The all-white 956 won at Fuji and Suzuka in 1984 thanks to a 650-horsepower, twin-turbocharged and water-cooled 2.65-liter flat-six. In Miller High Life livery sits arguably the fastest 962 ever built, which employed an air-cooled single-turbo 3.0-liter flat-six and notched wins at Daytona, the Porsche Cup, and the Palm Beach GP. The Copenhagan car, meanwhile, was personally purchased by AJ Foyt and managed by Brumos Racing. Derek Bell, Hans-Joachim Stuck, and Al Holbert drove the Rothmans 962 to a win at Le Mans. The Art Sports livery car was driven by the likes of Hurley Haywood, Wayne Taylor, James Weaver, Roland Ratzneberger, Scott Brayton, Johnny Herbert, Bob Wollek, Richard Rydell, and Eje Elgh, with a third-place finish at the 1992 Rolex 24 at Daytona. And the Kremer 962-C with Leyton House livery mixed air and water cooling successfully enough to take a win at Fuji in 1988.
Most importantly for Zwart, the incredibly low, incredibly wide, aerodynamically optimized racers simply spellbind anyone who sees them.
"For me, when that door opens, how much does it captivate you?" he asked me, rhetorically. "Yes, there are private collections of Group C cars, Porsche and Jaguars, and all the cars that ran in the day. But to walk into a room and see the range, from a white 956 looking exactly as it would have been delivered from the factory to the furthest evolution of the 956 and the cars we have on display there, it kind of starts to tell that story."
Personal Connections To The 962
Predictably, Zwart's own extensive Porsche story also includes some 962 anecdotes. He even formerly owned a Blaupunkt car that finished third at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
"I was really drawn to them," he recounted. "This is really a transitional time in racing. Group C came along and Porsche had to step up—and they stepped up in the best possible way. It’s that kind of stuff, the cars before Group C were nothing like Group C, it was such a big jump."
In 1987, Zwart also told me, he spent a few days photographing a 962 for Porsche, capturing the car still in its Rothman's livery, fresh off another Le Mans win.
Choosing A Car For Pikes Peak
For a bit of fun, I asked Zwart which car on display at the Petersen he'd drive up Pikes Peak given the choice.
"I think they might have a little trouble getting around the hairpins, they don’t have the tightest turning radius," he laughed. "But just the thrill of driving one up Pikes Peak, any time you get a chance to drive these cars that were so instrumental in your life, in terms of inspiring you to go racing or inspiring you to do photography—for me it’s both of those things—so when you have a chance to drive one, it’s really a special moment."
Among So Many Porsches, The 956 And 962 Still Stand Out
When I spoke with Zwart, he'd just trailered his Porsche 906 over Independence Pass after getting it serviced in advance of Luftgekühlt 7, the brand's air-cooled calendar mainstay that returned for 2021 at the heart of American motorsport lore, Indianapolis. But even when talking Luft 7, plus all the global pop-ups that now make up the rest of the year, the passion for Porsche's iconic 956 and 962 racers still shines through.
"I’ve had a chance to drive several 962s in my life," Zwart recalled, "And every one of them was special. They are a unique racecar."
Photographs, videos, and a few descriptive pages don't do justice to the presence of such cars. And while the park-and-show nature of a gathering like Luftgekühlt or an exhibit at the Petersen might allow fans to get up close and personal with the cars of their childhood dreams, on site, the imagination naturally turns to a real-life turn behind the wheel—if the wildest feats of imagination can even approach anything near reality.
"Someone like Patrick Long, who has driven and raced everything in the world, would say something similar: in the Porsche world, driving a 962 is pretty unique."
Sources: luftgekuhlt.com, petersen.org, ruf-automobile.de, artcenter.edu, and ppihc.org.