A top Brussels museum is busy with its biggest event of the year.
The city’s Autoworld is hosting an exhibition of Porsche cars. But these are not just any ordinary Porsche cars – but some never exhibited in public before.
The event is timely as the famous German car company has clocked up its 75th anniversary and some of the vehicles on display at the museum are sure to attract interest from far and wide.
As Leo Van Hoorick, the museum’s head of museology (curator),said, “This truly is a world class collection of Porsche cars. This is our eighth temporary exhibition of the year and our biggest yet.”
The expo, called “Driven By Dreams”, opened on 8 December, features 64 cars, including 22 which have come specially from the company’s own museum in Germany on temporary loan.
In no particular order, this website has selected a “Top 5” of some cars to look out for. They are:
- a Porsche 917 which many collectors one of the best race cards ever. In 1970/71 it won some 15 of the 24 races in the World Championships, including the Le Mans 24 hours and the Daytona 24 Hours;
- a rare 356 Carrora speedster, with a legendary Fuhrmann motor. Between 1955-57 only 167 of these were built;
- a Porsche 928 from 1978. The one on display is rare specimen as it comes from the first year of production. This won the prestige “Car of the Year” in the same year, the only sports car ever to do so;
- A Porsche 959, described as a “technological marvel.” Dating from 1987, this is rightly labelled by many as the “first supercar.” Nearly 300 were built between 1986-89 and it debuted with a victory in the 1986 Dakar Rally;
- From 1975, a Porsche 930 turbo, which became an icon and a supercar in its own right even though it was difficult to handle and many of the first generation models crashed.
2023 also marked the 60th anniversary of the 911 model and the expo is proud to display a model of the each of the eight generations that were built, including a turbo version.
Van Hoorick told this site that the 22 cars on loan from the Porsche museum are not normally exhibited and will therefore not have previously been seen in public before.
The expo features prototypes, heritage cars and competition vehicles and one of the highlights, he predicts, is a “Gmund”, dating from 1948 which was the first ever built by the company after the war. It was manufactured in Austria before Porsche relocated to Stuttgart.
Most of the other cars on display are from Belgian collectors and the expo is probably the biggest of its kind at the museum for some years.
As well as the Porsche cars on display for the next three months, Autoworld is still exhibiting its permanent collection of around 260 vehicles. Each year as well as the permanent collection it hosts temporary expos and the Porsche exhibition is the 8th this year.
The museum is open daily all year round.
“This new expo is the biggest by far this year and it makes for a great outing over the festive season,” said Van Hoorick.
Further info: https://www.autoworld.be/en/
