Warm autumn sun takes the edge off an early Saturday morning in Weissach. Outside the gates of Porsche’s near-mythical development centre northwest of Stuttgart, the sleepy Böblingen air is disturbed only by a distant but distinctive thrum.
Climbing the hill out of town, a small convoy of air-cooled 911s is weaving its way towards the entrance. The sound grows from murmur to burble, from burble to bellow as an early ‘S’, a G-Series Turbo and stripped out 964 RS round the corner and pull up here and there before the barriers. Their drivers clamber out smiling, shaking hands, embracing. Wives and bleary-eyed children emerge into the sun, gazing out at the spectacular view over Weissach and the surrounding countryside.
Scarcely have their engines fallen silent before the sound is redoubled. More cars appear: an immaculate 356 A, an delphi green 914, a black-on-black 993 Cabriolet.
The numbers swell as a sea of period paintjobs creates a technicolour welcome mat over Weissach’s drab concrete forecourt.
The cars begin to double park along the fence line, edging up towards the main road and out of sight over the hill. The sound is constant now, a deep, insistent background rumble, occasionally punctuated by a sharp bark of throttle.
This is Freunde Luftgekühlter Boxermotoren, friends of the air-cooled engine, or FLB for short. Unpublicised, and under the radar, this is perhaps the most exclusive Porsche club in existence. And today, the tribe has been invited.
Created some seven years ago to preserve and celebrate the air-cooled boxer in all its forms, the FLB is the Porsche club you’ve never heard of, open only to current and former employees of Porsche -publicity shy, low key and quietly determined to stay that way.
Today is the principle 2017 meeting, where a full 80 privately owned cars of every description will assemble at Weissach for a day of mutual air-cooled adoration, spirited driving and later, beer.
In the nick of time the barriers are raised and security waves the expanding throng inside the hallowed turf of Porsche Motorsport and its GT division, the founding ground for every one of the marque’s myriad racing successes since the early 1960s.
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