When Professor Porsche built the first
sports cars bearing his name, the cars were adorned with no logo other
than the letters PORSCHE. Importers selling the marque indicated that customers
wanted some sort of badge to identify their cars. So in 1952 Professor
Porsche designed the now-famous Porsche crest.
At the center of this crest is a black
prancing horse on a yellow field, with the name STUTTGART written above
it. This part of the Porsche crest is the official coat of arms for the
city of Stuttgart. The name Stuttgart comes from the word stutengarten,
which literally translates to "stud garden". No, this is not a garden where
a man such as yourself might be strutting about. This refers to a breeding
farm for horses, hence the prancing horse on the coat of arms.
For millennia, and as recently as 100
years ago, sports cars did not exist. Horses were the primary means of
transportation and if you had the need for speed, chances are you hopped
on a horse to fulfill that need. I enjoy both horses and Porsches and I
can tell you there are many similarities between the two.
Horses are not the fastest land animals
on Earth. That award goes to the cheetah. But cheetahs are basically equipped
with "sprint engines" and can only maintain high speed for very short sprints
indeed. Being Porschephiles, we're naturally more interested in an endurance
race, and over any distance exceeding a quarter mile, horses are the fastest
land animal on the planet. This makes horses the perfect predecessor to
a Porsche, not to mention the problems involved with trying to ride a cheetah!
As with Porsches, the speed and endurance
of horses are legendary. Scientists have studied this and found that at
maximum oxygen intake, they generate more than three times as much power
as expected for a mammal of their size. A great deal of this is due to
the design of their back and legs, which store energy in a spring-like
fashion resulting in incredible efficiency. Whether it's a Porsche or a
horse, exceptional engineering results in optimal performance. Both machines
further prove that purity of functional design results in unmatched aesthetic
beauty.
Similar to a car's transmission, horses
have 4 forward gears, plus reverse. For a horse, the four gears are walk,
trot, canter and gallop. There is one reverse gear, which is a walk. Similar
to a car, each gear is best suited to a specific range of speed. To select
a gear on a Porsche, you grab the lever and select the desired gate. For
a horse, you select the desired gait. Spooky, eh? Another similarity is
that both vehicles are designed with 4 contact patches. Cars have rubber
tires that are well suited to grip asphalt. Horses are shod with steel
shoes, well suited to turf, dirt, mud and such.
Porsches produce quite a bit of horsepower.
The term "horsepower" was defined by James Watt (1736-1819), the inventor
of the steam engine, who determined after careful measurements that a horse
is typically capable of a power rate of 550 foot-pounds per second. This
means that a horse, harnessed to an appropriate machine, can lift 550 pounds
at the rate of 1 foot per second.
Once you own a horse or a Porsche, the
next question is what to do with it. With either one you can enter various
races or other competitions. Your typical horse race is similar to a stock
car race, run on an oval track. A stadium jumping competition is similar
to an autocross where you are timed individually through a course consisting
of jumps (rather than pylon gates as in autocross). You are assessed a
penalty for knocking rails down, similar to hitting cones in autocross.
One of my favorite activities in my Porsche
is the driver ed events that our club runs. I also enjoy foxhunting my
horse. They are similar in that neither is a competition, just a chance
to put on a helmet and funny looking clothes and have some exciting go-fast
action with your buddies. At either event you'll see people arriving with
trucks and trailers, parking in the paddock and unloading their machine.
One difference is that at driver ed events, alcohol is only consumed after
the event. Not the case with foxhunting where this takes place before,
during and after. My horse is equipped with a flask of port or brandy.
My racecar is not!
Horses and Porsches are both incredibly
fun and can turn out to be more expensive than you had anticipated. After
running them hard, both smell quite offensive to people outside the sport.
But whether it is a sweaty horse or Porsche fresh in from a hard run at
the track, the aroma is a beautiful perfume to the enthusiast.
So we find that the origins of a Porsche
can be traced back to the horse. The center of the Porsche crest is a horse,
and every sports car built by Porsche has the heart of a thoroughbred.
A Porsche is a horse of course!
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