SECRET PORSCHES

We’ve found where old, iconic Porsches go for a touch of R & R. Ollie Marriage (quietly) meets a few of his heroes

This is where famous Porsches go to hibernate. Under the cover of darkness, we catch them napping...

DO HISTORIC PORSCHES DREAM OF ELECTRIC MOTORS?

Nah, of course not. They dream of race tracks, of open roads and wailing flat sixes. They go to bed under blankets, clutching road tax certificates and trophies, while plugged into trickle chargers. This is their dormitory.

This is not a secret bunker under the famous Stuttgart museum. This is another facility. Still secret, not far away, and I guess you could say that, like a Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid, it’s a bit of a Q-car. A Q-building. Because outward appearances give no clue as to what lurks within. There’s no branding, it’s not a purpose-built premises, but instead used to house a manufacturing company. Out back, there’s a DHL depot, next door, a paper mill, the other side of the road, a motorway.

Inside, some of the most valuable cars on the planet. And a lot of them. All those exotic machines you see at Goodwood or historic grand prix or concours events? This is the place they call home. Not just somewhere to rest and be quiet, but somewhere to be prepped and fettled, fuelled and readied. Twenty per cent of them are turn key – road legal, taxed and able to be driven out the door right now. As most of the cars here are racers, we can assume that, by and large, the road cars are ready to roll. The majority of the racers are runners, too.

The trick, according to Alexander Klein, the man in charge of corralling all the museum cars, is not to take restoration too far.

“We want to keep the authenticity of these cars alive. That for us is a big challenge.” You’d be right to assume that many of the Le Mans cars still wear their original grime and bug splats, but did you know that when the Paris-Dakar-winning 959 from 1986 came back, they swept up the dirt that fell off it and kept it in a jar?

Given this obsessive approach, you might be surprised to learn that Porsche hasn’t actually been keeping the first and last cars from each production run for very long. When they decided they needed an example of every car, they had to go out to the market and buy some back from owners. There’s a 993-generation cabrio somewhere around here that used to belong to Julio Iglesias.

And it’s not just cars. Bits of Martini-liveried bodywork lean up against walls, there are over 200 engines here, and upstairs an archive of design blueprints. Nondescript building it may be, but safe to say the security is pretty good. It’s quiet around here. Must help make the dreams more vivid.