RSAmerica.net

So what exactly is this “PCA Parade” thing?

If you don't know what a Porsche Parade is and would like to find out more - click here.

For those of you familiar with a PCA Parade, the RSA registry members gave a pretty darned good showing in at least three of the four major Parade events i.e.

• Concours - with 13 members cars on display in the RSA corral at the Porsche Paddock.
• Autocross - with the four RSAs entered coming 1st through 4th place.
• Rally - one RSA was in the top 25 out of 230 cars
• Tech Quiz - I think almost all registry members must have missed this because they were out driving tours in the back roads!

Concours.

The concours was spectacular this year as Porsches from all over the US were displayed on a large gently sloping grassy hillside at Admiral Baker Golf course in beautiful surroundings with trees providing ample shade around the perimeter. Many of the examples of Porsches finest that were on display had far surpassed cleanliness, to the point of verging on Godliness, and were in significantly better condition than they were when they left the factory. Some had even transcended into becoming “objet d'art”.

I can see how owning a Porsche best described as a piece of art may sound appealing to many, but personally, I believe that a Porsche is a tool designed for a specific job - which is driving. Once you stop driving your Porsche in order to display it, in my mind - it is no longer a car and becomes metal sculpture. Admittedly, there were a few concours participants who drove their Porsche many many miles to Parade, arrived several days early and then spent every waking minute detailing the sucker. More power to those guys, here in California there is probably a 12-step program specifically for people just like them. I can appreciate the colossal amount of work that must go into preparing a National concours winning Porsche but .... as you might have gathered, I'm afraid concours simply isn't my cup of tea.

The special Porsches on display were indeed numerous and varied; from full race cars (and yes, I do mean track cars clean enough to be judged in a concours) to “beyond immaculate” street cars including air, oil and water cooled examples. To try and list all the interesting ones would take pages, so I will mention just a few of the many rare and exotic Porsches present. The usual suspects were in attendance - as far as iconic models, each with its gathering of followers heralding it as “THE Porsche to own.”

These spectacular cars included (but were not limited to) ... a silver concours prepared 959 Sport - a rare enough beast under normal circumstances ..... but in concours condition?? ..... WOW!!; the legendary 1973 Carrera RS in grand prix white with blue wheels and graphics (see license plate in the image above); a historied factory 934 in Brumos livery, a slightly over-restored 904 Carrera GTS in silver (of course), and local San Diego Region member Bob Gagnon's totally original, absolutely mint condition, 964 US Cup Car - which he actively autocrosses and is frequently in the top ten time-of-day in a field of around 120 drivers.

I was very surprised to find that the car which peaked my interest the most, from the hundreds to be seen that day was NOT actually a Porsche. It was a RUF 3400K which is the Cayman S based, supercharged, 3.4L, mid engine, 400 horsepower supercar, in the most stunning shade of light metallic blue I have ever seen. This car was featured in the November edition of Excellence magazine which tells the tale of how the dentist from Santa Barbara came to own this uniquely hued beast. In the image below, the owner removed the interior engine cover (which you can see on the ground beneath the back bumper) to provide interested parties visibility of the custom aluminum intake manifolds serving the supercharger.

Porsche Paddock on Concours day:

For me, the two distinct parts of concours day that I was looking forward to most were

• the last Porsche being parked in the Porsche Paddock.
• the RS Americas in the RSA corral.

The former because partly out of selfish greed to ensure that the RS America registry got prime real estate in the Porsche Paddock, I volunteered to be the 2007 Porsche Paddock chair - which turned out to be a significantly bigger task than I had first thought. Not until it was far too late to change anything, did it sink in that I was responsible for managing what turned out to be the largest gathering of Porsches grouped by model ever parked in one place. It required several pre-Parade meetings with local volunteers to set this event up. We soon decided that the only way we were going to be able to separate the Paddock cars into their respective model groups would be to have a staging area with sufficient real estate to allow numerous Porsches to spread out and form model groups before heading over to the single track entry into the golf course. Fortunately, within a couple of miles (1.73 to be precise) of the Concours site was San Diego's Qualcomm stadium - home of PCA-SDR's legendary autocross series and also home to a local football team famous for never making it to any kind of trophy game (unless they buy tickets). To manage this event I had over 40 volunteer workers and the help of San Diego's finest (officer friendly and his merry men) doing traffic management, which was definitely required as several groups of up to 60 Porsches at a time had to cross a major trunk road during Monday morning rush hour.

Once completed, the Porsche Paddock was indeed an awesome sight. As the shuttle buses full of Parade participants came down the hill from Parade headquarters, they turned the corner to see a spectacular mosaic of almost 400 Porsches in row after glistening row, as far as the eye could see in every color Porsche ever painted a car, plus a few colors that they didn't!

The RS America Corral at '07 Parade Concours:

The declared goal for this years RSA corral was to have more cars on display than there were at Parade 2005 in Hershey PA which was the largest gathering of RSAs to date, but ..... for whatever reason, this didn't quite come off. The net result was that 13 registry members displayed their cars in spectacular style and generated a great deal of interest in the model.

I'm not sure if the article published in April '06 Porsche Panorama (the PCA National newsletter) entitled “What exactly IS and RS America?” had anything to do with it, but there definitely seemed to be more people who knew what an RSA was, and who had a lot more questions about RSAs than there had been at previous gatherings. Maybe it was the premium location of the corral - right between where the shuttle buses delivered spectators to the event and the entrance to the display area, or perhaps it was just because they were particularly knowledgeable PCA members.

So who were the 13 registry members in attendance? - and let's see their cars....

Autocross - 4th July.

The autocross was on Wednesday and Class P10 listed eight entrants - four of which were RS Americas, who at the end of the day finished first through fourth in the mens class, with Christine R driving her and Brent's RSA to win first place in the ladies class as well!

Autocross Results.

Autocross Banquet.

• Rally:

A Time-Speed-Distance Rally (TSD) is intended to be an event whereby a driver and navigator demonstrate their ability to follow driving directions exactly - to the point where they arrive at each of a series of checkpoints along the route at an exact time, and can be a pretty competitive. In a large number of cases, the anxiety level in the car during a rally has been known to rise to felony level, and some rallyists say marriage counselling coupons should be provided to all competitors for use in case of emergency. Soon after the meltdown comes the “blanket of anguished silence” phase when the car begins to seem very small - this stage is uncomfortable but eventually it too will pass. It has been known to last for what seems like 15 years to life. Gradually combatants/competitors begin to chill out and start to enjoy the drive through local countryside that you would almost certainly never experience unless you entered the rally.

While the more serious (or the unbelievably naive) competitors enjoy the challenges and resulting delights of the TSD rally, there is also a Gimmick Rally which is more of a leisurely drive and a chance to gather clues from the written instructions and answer some basic questions intended to test your powers of observation.

The Gimmick Rally is significantly easier and a good event to start with if you haven't rallied before. Again, the fundamental benefit of participation in a Gimmick rally is enjoying the drive in a long line of beautiful Porsches - most of whom are off course .... but just haven't realized it yet!

• Tech Quiz: