Porsche’s Massive ‘Rennsport Reunion’ Showed Me Just How Powerful The Porsche Brand Is: Which Other Brand Could Pull This Off?

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Rennsport Reunion finished up this past weekend at Laguna Seca in Monterey, with over 91,000 people attending between Thursday and Sunday, per Porsche. I drove there with Autopian cofounder Beau Boeckmann in his incredible 911 Turbo in “Ruby Star Neo” — a gorgeous fuchsia color — and had one main takeaway: Damn the Porsche brand is strong. And that has me wondering: Who else could pull this off?

The trip to and from Monterey was incredible — well, I guess the way back to LA was more fun because on the way up, after taking the wheel of Beau’s 911 for only…maybe 30 minutes…I began to get drowsy (back at Chrysler I was called “Narcolepsy Dave” due to my propensity for falling asleep in cars). Beau took the reins, thank god. The way back was way more fun; I’ll get to that later.

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We arrived in Monterey on Friday evening, turned in for the night, and hit Rennsport Reunion 7 — a Porsche racing-fest held every three to five years, usually at Laguna Seca — in the morning. Here’s a bit on the event’s history:

Rennsport Reunion was conceived by racing great Brian Redman and Porsche Cars North America’s longstanding press spokesperson, Bob Carlson, in 2001 to celebrate the racing heritage of Porsche.

They envisioned an event at which drivers, enthusiasts and historians could gather to celebrate racing and pay tribute to the men, women and cars that have helped build the Porsche legacy.

What we saw upon arrival was a triumph in Porsche marketing and engineering. This brand — which sells only 25,000 cars (not SUVs) per year in the U.S. (Mitsubishi has sold as Mirages in a single calendar year) — had lured literally tens of thousands of people all to the same race track, and all to celebrate Porsche racing history and to just geek out about a single brand’s cars. It’s just remarkable.

There were over 300 race entries and 100 current and former Porsche racers in attendance, plus Porsche made the U.S. debuted of the “Mission X concept, the Vision 357 Speedster concept and the new 911 S/T,” along with “The global debut of the new 911 GT3 R rennsport.”

Looking at the race cars in the paddocks and on the start line was just magical:

 

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And so was, of course, the racing itself (the car directly below was driven by Porsche Santa Clarita General Manager Steve McCord — Porsche Santa Clarita is part of Beau’s Galpin dealer network):

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There was even a Porsche tractor race that featured NBA legend Dwyane Wade (more on him soon) and, I’m told, John Oates (I think on the pink tractor):

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Plus there was this slick extended bus with a Porsche 356 in the back:

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And there was even a Porsche Transformer:

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Here are a bunch more great Rennsport Reunion “sights and sounds,” courtesy of our friend David Osorio from Porsche Santa Clarita’s Instagram page:

After a day and then a morning at Rennsport, Beau and I headed back to LA via his Porsche 911 — speaking of, doesn’t it look great?:

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The thing is a surprisingly good road-trip machine. It was over four hours from Monterey to Van Nuys, and I was comfortable the whole way, plus there was plenty of room in the frunk for both of our bags:

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This was the first modern 911 I’d driven, and my god is it a rocketship. Zero to 60 in under three seconds, incredible handling with beautiful steering response, killer brakes, great visibility, and yet still equipped with comfort items like heated and cooled seats.

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The entire trip involved me driving like I normally do (like a grandpa), and Beau jokingly yelling at me: “Dude! You’ve got to at least do the speed limit. Come on!”

Every time I passed someone in the left lane, I’d instinctively hit my indicator to move back over. “What are you doing?!” Beau would ask. “Stay in this lane!”

You should have heard the chiding I got when we got overtaken by a tow truck. It was hilarious. “Stay in the left lane, and for goodness sake don’t get passed by… Dude you just got dusted by a minivan!”

“Nope. Stop it, David! Stay in the left lane!” he’d say again upon seeing my right blinker.

“David, someone’s coming up from behind. Why is that?”

I wiped my brow, squinted with a focused look, and pressed the rightmost pedal. About three quarters the way through the trip, I finally learned how to drive in a Porsche 911 on the highway, and I’m not even sure Beau would agree that I ever quite learned.

Regardless, it was a blast. Honestly, the whole trip was a blast. I just couldn’t believe how big Rennsport Reunion was. So that had me 1. Realizing how right Porsche is doing it and 2. Wondering who else could have pulled something like this off. I’m reminded of the “Camp Jeep” events that Jeep used to put together in the 2000s:

There’s also the Volkswagen/Audi event H2OI, there’s Wörthersee (for VW GTI fans), there’s Dodge’s Roadkill Nights (though that’s open to to all sorts of brands), there’s the Toledo Jeep Fest, and there are a few others, but most of those aren’t quite as big as Rennsport.

Which single brand do you think could put together an event this magnificent?

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Jason Torchinsky

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51 thoughts on “Porsche’s Massive ‘Rennsport Reunion’ Showed Me Just How Powerful The Porsche Brand Is: Which Other Brand Could Pull This Off?”

  1. Honestly, for the amount of TVRs left in the world, Out of the Woodwork got really good attendance! Haven’t been to one post-COVID but it always fascinated me how many people came.

  2. Well I hope my fellow Western PA members can support my memory. Every year in Pittsburgh PA in Schenley Park for a week an entire golf course is converted to a car show. Every hole and fairway is dedicated to a different brand, make, or model. They have old school races where drivers drive great old cars to win, scrapes and dents on expensive cars happen. One hole dedicated to mustangs, I believe Porsche has its own hole. I have lived and visited across the country and have never seen a show close to this. Trolleys running from parking areas to the show, Trolleys running from hole to hole. Yes Rolls, Jaguar, Porsche, MGs etc. Yet never seems to get the coverage the smaller shows do. I bet you add up the value of cars it beats the fancy pants of the Rich Only Shows.

        1. That would be awesome. They could also come to Pitt Race, which is vastly better than you would assume driving through nearby Wampum. Alas, I now reside 10 hours to the south.

  3. So your first time driving a new modern Porsche and it put you to sleep? Sorry I can’t stop laughing. Quite the testimonial. On anther note, have you spent much time at the Horseless Carriage Restaurant? It’s really good.

  5. It was a great event, my kid and I took my Cayman up. It was a guys road trip, grabbed dinner in Carmel, stayed at an Airbnb in Carmel Valley, went to the aquarium Sunday, looking forward to the next time. Hopefully the 1 will be open this time, was planning on taking that home Sunday but not this year.

  7. Which Other Brand Could Pull This Off?

    Since you asked.

    • Harley Davidson: See Sturgis and the Street Vibrations events in Reno, Nevada as examples. Not strictly HD events, but the vast majority are HDs.
    • Jeep: See Moab Jeep Week or any summer weekend on the Rubicon trail in California. Again, not brand-exclusive, but Jeep dominates both.

  8. It’s like H2Oi, but people’s main occupation isn’t selling weed at a state school! What a bunch of dweebs. I bet no one even picked up a felony. And no nudity. Or large vape clouds. What an unfortunately respectable event.

  10. “Every time I passed someone in the left lane, I’d instinctively hit my indicator to move back over.”

    Hey look, ONE American who gets it. Good job and keep it up!

  12. Apparently nobody remembers the rabid loyalty of Saturn owners with their meetups and reunions? And if we don’t limit ourselves to 4 wheels: Harley Davidson all day long.

    Hot take: one of the reasons the Porsche brand can pull this off is probably because the average owner has the luxury of disposable time and money to attend. It’s actually more impressive when a less premium brand can induce customers to spend half their yearly vacation budget.

  13. Man, I wish I could have gone this year. The last one was just MAXIMUM PARSH OVERLOAD. So much parsh. SOOOOO much parsh. SO MUCH GOOD PARSH. EVEN THE TRACTORS FDJGKELWJTFELWHJROW:LAJRFLTJRDA:jkdljfielk;rsd!!11!!!!!!

    { Stef’s brain fizzles out, melts into puddle from parsh overload }

    Someday I should weasel a 944 into this if I ever find stable employment again (lol, lmao, lol, please hit me with that 356 bus). I did request that the Porschelump’s cage fit PCA Racing specs when I had it built, but I have no idea if they’ve updated those since or would require me to add back in something dumb like a dashboard (possible) or a rear hatch (highly likely).

    Either that or I show up in the 411.

    I do think there are few brands that can really pull this off without getting booted from venue to venue for attendees being knobs (ahem, H20i). There’s been a few efforts to restart a big watercooled VW show sans douchebags lately, and more power to ’em—I hope it works. It’s just so hard to control the behavior of randos who attend, though. Parsh folks skewing a bit more mature helps, sort of like Jeeps not being built for speed.

    (P.S.: It’s Rennsport, not Rennfest. Tractors, not horses. Beer, not mead. Crests as car badges, not as jousting show decor.)

  14. It’s amusing that you were chided for driving a German car with appropriate German lane discipline.

    That’s a very nice car color, although the generic color is annoyingly spelled “fuchsia”, not “fusca”, which is literally “rod” in Spanish. Actually, owning a Porsche painted “Rod Pink Neo” would be damn funny.

    I hope you at least returned to LA on Highway 101, since the journey on Highway 5 is hideous, boring, and mostly a straight line that’s a waste of a good Porsche (regardless of speed). 101 gives you curves, hills, the ocean, and the tunnel Dustin Hoffman drove his Alfa through in “The Graduate”.

    1. And “fusca” in Portuguese is beetle, and VW Beetles are called Fuscas…which are 911s all along? Or is it the other way around?

      I’m confused.

    1. I love that Porsche actually offers these wild and sophisticated colors. It breaks my heart when I see white/black/silver modern Porsches. Like…you can essentially get any color you can imagine and you went with….that?

  16. Subaru. The loyalty is so super strong, the racing pedigree is there, and they could tie into into the new Wilderness models with an off-roading section.

        1. upon further review there’s quite a few non-Subaru’s in the mix. But hey, all the power to them, this is a huge event! But that said, it’s still not on the magnitude of Porsche.

          1. Sure the Reunion is a big event, but it’s not yearly, and while all the cars in the picture I linked aren’t all Subarus, 91k Porsches didn’t show up to Rennsport, 91k people did. Thousands show up to regional Subifests, 8,000 to the Northeast one, these are yearly. I’m not arguing it’s bigger, just arguing your “nah”.. Not to mention the annual income of your average Porsche owner lends to attending a national event more than your average Subaru owner. I’d be willing to bet a statistical analysis might show the Subaru event and the Porsche event equal in “loyalty” and enthusiasm”

      1. This is David we are talking about. I’m sure Beau had to explain who John Oates is, list off a dozen songs or so, and David still wondered when he played with Dwayne Wade.

  21. Ford could, easily. It wouldn’t even have to include the entire brand, just limit it to Mustangs and they’d still get many tens of thousands of attendees.

    Ferrari could also probably pull it off.

    I think Mini is a dark horse candidate but owners really love them and they have racing pedigree. Honestly I feel like most brands could probably throw a huge festival for themselves if they wanted.

  23. Bummed I couldn’t make it out to this but it was a bit out of my price range and it was the weekend where we celebrate the filming of Vertigo in our small town. Maybe next time it comes around I’ll have a Porsche of my own!

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