Air-cooled Porsches are the stuff of dreams these days for both driving enthusiasts and collectors, but a 911 should be considered first a driver’s car and then whatever you wanted it to be.
Meet Hans-Michael Gerischer, proud owner of a tastefully modified Porsche 964 Turbo featured in the latest Petrolicious film, and owner of manufaktur964, a company that specializes in restorations and bespoke builds for the 964 generation of the Porsche 911.
“If you fix up Volkswagen Bugs and tune them, I mean the basic idea, the fundamental construction, is very similar,” he says. “Eventually, you reach the limits of the Beetle. So I decided to move on, and I bought a Porsche.”
This particular 911 started its life with Gerischer as his daily driver but as he started attending trackdays, the need to tailor the car for his new addiction came to play. “Eventually, my driving skills improved to a level where the driver was better than the car. This lead to improvements on the car”.
Even when he had thought about replacing his Porsche with a newer model, he was never able to do it, simply because he is still in love with it. “I’ve had this car for 21 years, and I never found something else that, for me, was worth replacing it with,” he says. “It’s just simply my car, end of story.”