Porsche: Excellence Was Expected
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Porsche Post - May 2004
EXPECTATIONS MET
by Stephen Mummery
"Hidden in the heart of some picturesque Suffolk countryside is a treasure trove; a store of motoring memories with a purpose. Attached to a characterful old farmhouse, is an archive, a real one, not just a collection of any old stuff, for the house is home to Karl Ludvigsen and the Ludvigsen Archive.
The name you will of course know; Excellence was Expected is the primary reference for almost anything Porsche. Now, sitting talking with the author on the occasion of the publication of the second edition, surrounded by shelves of research and source material, I begin to understand how such an authoritative work came to be. But I cannot get an answer as to "Why?"
Karl is American, originating from Kalamazoo Michigan, where he first learned to love cars. Now in his 70th year he is fit, energetic and active in a way that only the driven enthusiast can be. That drive is a part answer at least to my question. He is clearly a car nut - a wellworn phrase, but one that is eminently more descriptive than the current cliché 'petrol head', for Karl's commitment clearly goes beyond most normal enthusiasts to another plane, one almost spiritual. The evidence is all around, from the stacked shelves and filing cabinets to the pictures on the walls and the models squeezed into the interstitial vacancies.
Then there is the garage. Whilst the daily drivers rest outside, the shelter is given over to a Riley and a Cord; you don't see many of the latter rumbling through East Anglia's lanes.
But this is also a business, for Karl has made motoring research and journalism his life's work. At the age when most of us would be considering real retirement, Karl's concession was merely to up sticks from Kings Cross and relocate the whole enterprise to a new Suffolk base, whilst managing a bit of building work on the side. Here Ludvigsen Associates still offers consultancy and research opportunities to the motor industry and motoring press, with Karl being assisted by a secretary and Sam Turner, his stepson. But still the words pour out of him, although the Porsche book will surely stand as his meisterstuck.
Karl's initial involvement in the industry was with GM, in the design studio and he then had a spell with public relations before deciding that writing was one of the things he wanted to do. He spent time on the staff of Sports Car Illustrated and Car & Driver, ending up as Editor. But that was not the way to a fortune, nor, probably, was it using all of his abilities and time was spent working for Fiat in the USA and then for Ford. In both corporations he rose to the level of Vice-President, and whilst with the blue oval, progressed a lot of motorsport activity along the way. All the while he was committed to writing and, eventually, that and his experience in the industry led to the fulltime consultancy, the creation of Ludvigsen Associates and the Archive, which now incorporates not only Karl's personal resources but collections from for example, Edward Eves, Cyril Posthumous and Rodolfo Mailander.
I am now getting a feel for where Karl's books come from, why they happen. It is a creative and artistic drive. He cannot help himself; it is something he has to do. So, how did Excellence was Expected emerge? Karl cannot answer that precisely, but concedes that the family dynasty and the Porsche business are endlessly fascinating. I suspect there is an attraction too in their deep commitment to precision, perfection and innovation that mirrors Karl's personality. In passing, he refers to some of his notes for the new edition. Meticulously written up in longhand and typescript, they have the Porsche passion for accuracy and detail. Karl is also fluent in the German language, having married a German and lived in the country for some time, which makes extracting information from the primary sources an easy task - and a rare one in much motoring writing. A good grounding in English grammar and Latin apparently helps too!
The first edition emerged after more than three years' work, and was a project Karl inherited in the first instance in 1973. Dean Batchelor of Road & Track had commissioned a book on Porsche from Warren Fitzgerald, who unfortunately died before much work was done. Dean brought it to Karl, who indicated he would start the project again from scratch, just as Dean left R & T As things do for some people, instead of the project foundering, the difficulties acted as a catalyst for Karl who saw it taken on by Automobile Quarterly at the same time as he started to formalise his archive.
And so, with the support of L Scott Bailey the book was written. At that time, Porsche had no formally structured archive of their own, but Karl was given access to people and files at Stuttgart as he needed. He recalls being given carte blanche to go rooting through cabinets and drawers at Stuttgart in a way that would never be possible today, but which enabled him to understand the real story behind the development of the marque. Interviews with Ferry Porsche and family members such as Ghislaine Khaes were "Pure gold".
After three and a half years, with Chuck Stoddard as a key element in checking details, and the assistance of a book editor, the typed manuscript was finally delivered as originally planned and proposed cuts in length of fifteen percent shelved when friends and colleagues exhorted everyone to have faith; they would buy it. Publication in 1977 was something of a landmark in the industry and Karl acknowledges the support of the publisher in committing to a complete story that justified the Excellence title.
For twenty-five years the volume stood as the definitive work on Porsche, whilst Karl continued with his dual careers as corporate honcho and academic author. There were also occasional forays onto the circuit - Aston Martin, Maserati and a Borgward are mentioned - and playing with cars in his spare time. Volumes on Mercedes, great automobile engines and a number of driver biographies were among the horde of books that emerged from his den, but all the time the need to update the book on Porsche grew. So much so that it took from 1994 to '96 to develop the plan for the revision and agree with Automobile Quarterly that Bentley would publish the second edition. And it was to be no mere update but a total rewriting, expanding the original single volume into three to bring the story up to the era of Wiedeking and the 996.
In contrast to the Seventies, Ludvigsen now had access to an official Porsche archive and he pays generous tribute to Klaus Parr and Jens Torner for their help and assistance. That support enabled Ludvigsen to continue with the philosophy of researching the primary sources, to comply with the request from Betty Jo Turner, Editor of Porsche Panorama to "Tell us all what happened and why". It took virtually the same forty months as the first time and, working outside the hours committed to the management consultancy business, the author used his experience of twenty and more years in the motor industry to look behind the scenes and reveal the 'How and why', through interviews with every one possible - Peter Schutz, Ulrich Bez, Horst Marchart, Arno Bohn, Heinz Branitzki and others. In addition, there was access through Paul Henzler, to the updated versions of the company's ten-year reports, and discussions with some of the players on the fringe, such as Ron Dennis, Derek Bell, Jackie Oliver and Hans Stuck.
As the material began to accumulate, every so often what Ludvigsen describes as a process of fission seemed to take place and a planned chapter suddenly emerged as two. The growth of the original 870 pages in one volume, to 1533 in three became inevitable. The final result was published in the autumn of 2003 and became an immediate 'must buy' for a huge number of enthusiasts.
Such success meant an early reprint was assured and Karl has taken the opportunity to make the inevitable one or two corrections. But he prides himself on the original accuracy, for he knows that almost every purchaser will turn immediately to the chapters dealing with their own Porsche and errors and omission will be instantly identified. He also believes he can provide answers to some of the long-standing questions surrounding the marque, such as who built the Abarth Carreras.
Karl has other projects on the go or in the pipeline, an update on the Corvette book and a possible Ferrari volume are mentioned, but another revision will surely not be out of the question, hopefully rather sooner than a quarter of a century hence. He is concerned about the generation change within the company itself and sees it as a different business now from what it was at the time of the original book. In particular he identifies a diminishing call for the ingenuity that characterised the company's first vehicles and a reduction in genuinely clever technology. He cites the Cayenne as an example; an assessment that surprises me, given my experience of the model, but is probably a reflection of what he believes the Cayenne could have been as opposed to what it is.
The drift away from motorsport alarms him too. He believes in sport improving the breed, but also that, once you lose the ability to succeed at it, you struggle to get back. He refers to Norbert Singer's doctrine that the company learned something new at every outing and implemented it at the next.
I try one more time to pin down what drew him to Porsche. Living and working in Germany contains part of the answer, for during his military service he identified it then as a new company with some historic achievements. "It was not hard to get steamed up about them and to want to tell the Porsche story." He talks of a fascinating and beguiling business that was family led, that had an irrepressible desire to keep on improving. "You could get your arms round it and at the moment still can."
It is obvious too, that this driven man shares the same passion that distinguishes the company and its enthusiasts; a demand for high standards, and an expectation of excellence."
In conversation with Ferry Porsche (top)
Signing copies at Cornbury House in December (middle)
Karl and Chuck Stoddard (top)
Jay Leno has his copy signed (middle)
The team at Bentley Publishers backed the project all the way (middle)
Photographing before the days of digital (bottom)