By Tim Harris, Blair Smith & Shinoo Mapleton · May 22, 2026

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First, a dispatch.

Tim Harris, reporting from Puerto Rico:

We're pretty sure he's having more fun in Puerto Rico than he would be here. Anyway. We had a great show without him.

This week we brought on our first-ever guest — a mechanical engineer, aerospace specialist, and one of the more quietly extraordinary car people we know. His name is Derek, and if you've ever wondered what it actually looks like to be one of Porsche's most valued customers — not as a status play, but as a genuine driver and obsessive — this conversation is for you.

He's also in the middle of a special build with Porsche that, according to Porsche themselves, has never been done for a private customer. More on that below.

Before we get to Derek, let’s talk:

Shinoo led a canyon run from his shop last weekend — 15 to 20 cars, mostly Lotus, couple of different canyons, a good time all around. He drove the Miata. Turns out the Miata is quick enough to be fun, which is most of the point.

But the real story came from a passenger who trailered a crashed Lotus Exige all the way down from Idaho. His insurance adjuster wanted to total the car. He didn't think that was right, so he loaded it onto a U-Haul trailer — the standard enclosed car hauler — and brought it down.

Getting it off was a production. The suspension was badly damaged, the rear wheel sat at the wrong angle, and that U-Haul trailer sits too high for a low sports car. It took a crane, floor jacks, dollies, planks of wood, and a lot of patience to get it off without making things worse. Shinoo's word of caution: if you're moving a sports car yourself, use the U-Haul toy hauler — the flat, drive-up style trailer — not the enclosed car hauler. Or skip it entirely and use a professional shipper. Which leads to…

Hagerty just ran a piece on a rapidly growing trend: theft targeting car shippers and transport brokers. A famous victim: Shaquille O'Neal. The headline stat: cargo theft has increased over 1,000% in the last five years, costing the trucking industry roughly $18 million per day. That includes more than just cars — but cars are absolutely part of it.

If you've ever shipped a car and filled out an online quote form, you already know what happens next: your info goes to a dozen brokers simultaneously and they all call you at once, playing whatever games it takes to get your commitment first — before they've even found a driver. The price they quote you upfront and the price the driver ultimately gets negotiated to can be very different.

Shinoo's hard-earned advice from shipping multiple cars:

Blair attended the friends and family open house at one of Salt Lake City's two Porsche dealers (they're under separate ownership, both built new facilities recently). The highlight was the Singer Turbo Study — a 964 built as a loving homage to the 930 Turbo, accordion bumper and all.

The proportion work is exceptional. Singer kept the G-body visual language completely intact — they embraced the impact bumper look rather than swapping it out for fiberglass — while modernizing the details at close range. Blair's take: this might be the best styling they've done since the original classic singers. Singer is also the featured marque at Goodwood Festival of Speed this July, so there's likely something new coming from them.

One footnote: the owner of the Singer at the open house admitted he'd mostly just driven it to the dealer and back. Shinoo and Derek both collapsed. Some cars just deserve better.

Shinoo flagged this story last week, and this week it's everywhere. Lotus CEO Feng Qingfeng officially confirmed that the company is using engines from Horsepower Train — a joint venture between Renault and Geely, with funding and support from Saudi Aramco's engineering arm — in two upcoming models:

Horsepower Train was formed in 2024. Their CEO's quote on the engineering:

The architecture is modular — the same platform scales from a 4-cylinder (which Caterham is already using for their Academy Championship racing series) up through the V6 and V8 depending on application. The engines are also lighter and more compact than what they replace, which matters for a car like the Emira.

The irony isn't lost on anyone: just a few years ago, Lotus announced the Emira as "the end of the line" for their ICE cars, committing to an all-EV future. Now they're announcing not one but three new combustion engine variants. As Shinoo put it: these decisions are made years in advance — Horsepower Train was formed in 2024, while the EV wave was still cresting. The companies that are winning are the ones that kept their heads down and planned for alternatives.

A few wrinkles worth watching:

For enthusiasts, the bottom line is clear: ICE is coming back. GM just announced a billion-dollar investment in ICE. Lotus just confirmed two new combustion engines. The "it's over for internal combustion" narrative lasted about three years.

Our guest Derek came to cars the old-fashioned way. At age nine he talked his dad into doing a hot rod project together. By eleven they committed, and young Derek was riding his bicycle to the gas station to read Thrifty Nickel ads — early Bring a Trailer, basically — searching for something worth buying. They found a 1978 MGB for around $1,800, barely running. His parents were not mechanical. Derek stared at the thing from a garage stool for three hours, then decided "some guy designed this thing, I'm going to figure it out." He spent four or five years restoring it, self-teaching from manuals he'd ride his bike to Barnes & Noble to find.

He went on to study mechanical engineering, spent his career in aerospace (fuel systems for aircraft), kept wrenching on cars and motorcycles the whole time, and never really stopped. Axel, his ten-year-old son, was servicing a lawnmower the last time Blair stopped by the garage. The apple doesn't fall far.

Derek's path into Porsche started where all the best ones do — with a car nobody wanted. He and his new wife had zero dollars and a 1999 Honda Civic. He sold it, reasoned that a 911 probably wouldn't depreciate the way a Honda Accord would, and found a 964 Carrera 4 — black, 1990, Carrera 4 — in Denver. He flew out with a check. The seller asked if he wanted to test drive it. He said no. Drove it home.

At that time, 964s were deeply unloved: heavy, gasket issues, leaky, nobody wanted them. Derek put 50,000 miles on his. He drove it in winter. He tracked it. He did all his own maintenance — valve adjustments, everything. He paid about $18,000. It remains one of the great buys in the history of air-cooled Porsche collecting.

Derek's older brother — 14 years his senior, founder of large companies, busy professional — bought a Ferrari 458 as a gift from his executive staff around 2012/13. Nice car. Then the hypercar trifecta arrived: the McLaren P1, the Porsche 918, and the LaFerrari. His brother called Derek: "Which one do I get?"

Derek's answer was immediate:

His brother got the 918. Weissach package. And then he did something very few 918 owners have ever done: he dailied it. The car now has 135,000+ miles on it. When it came in for the 12,500-mile service — a service interval no one had ever actually reached before — the dealer had to call Porsche engineering to figure out what was even involved.

Buying the 918 also came with something Porsche offered at launch that most people have forgotten: a 10-year VIP status granting first allocation rights on whatever Porsche wanted to produce. At the time, Porsche actually struggled to sell all the 918s. The VIP program was partly a sales tool. What buyers who took it didn't fully realize at the time was the pipeline Porsche was about to build: one remarkable model after another — RS variants, STs, Safaris, Sport Classics. First allocation suddenly became very, very valuable.

Once the VIP relationship was established, Derek and his brother started pushing what Porsche would do for them. The progression:

Turbo S: Olive Green / Bright Blue — inspired by Alpena's iconic green-and-blue BMW liveries. Most people either absolutely hate it or absolutely love it. Blair hated it until he drove it. By the end of the drive, he told Derek it would have been a tragedy if they'd done it in saddle brown like he originally suggested. The car was built via Exclusive Manufaktur with CXX (custom exclusive) options — things like shift knob numbering in matching leather color, factory-painted wheels, 12 o'clock indicator on the steering wheel in a custom color. Porsche said no to doing the dashboard in blue (too much glare reflection). Turned out to be the right call.

Maritime Blue GT3 — at a time when nobody was doing Maritime Blue. Derek was nervous about it. It showed up and was stunning.

Slate Gray 6601 GT3 Touring — inspired by Steve McQueen's old 911. The 6601 slate gray has green undertones that make it alive in a way that other slate grays (which read almost like primer) don't. Done with a guards red interior and color-matched wheels. Sold — and whoever is driving it is very lucky.

Sonderwunsch Dakar — a full factory special wishes build. Sonderwunsch is a specialist workshop off the main Porsche production line; cars literally get built to near-standard spec on the factory floor, then pulled off the line, disassembled, and completely redone. Interior stripped and rebuilt. Wheels stripped and refinished. It's massively inefficient, which is why it's so exclusive — and why Porsche charges accordingly.

Sport Classic: The Build That's Never Been Done — this is the one teased in the intro. Derek and his brother are in the middle of a Sonderwunsch Sport Classic build that Porsche has told them has never been done for a private customer at this level. We're not going to give away what it is here — tune in for the follow-up episode for the full reveal when it's further along.

Derek's honest take on where Porsche is headed — and he has more skin in this game than almost anyone:

The brand is at genuine risk of losing the enthusiast base that built it. As the cars become collector status items and financial instruments rather than things to be driven, the engineering soul of the company gets harder to sustain. He referenced Piëch directly — the engineers who built these cars to be the best in the world. If those engineers see their creations sitting in climate-controlled garages collecting value instead of rock chips, something is lost.

Derek on Ferrari: "It's been a terrible experience." (He was being diplomatic.)

On the 992 throttle-by-wire: too digitized. Too synthetic. Something real has been lost between the pedal and the experience.

On what should be done: establish actual enthusiast-driven benchmarks — measurable, objective data on how a driver interacts with a vehicle — instead of chasing horsepower headlines. Derek's aerospace background involves designing aircraft controls so that pilot workload doesn't become a safety hazard; every input is measured and tuned to hit specific targets. He believes the same rigor applied to cars would produce more engaging, more honest driving machines.

Shinoo summed it up well:

The good news: Porsche is still trying. The Sonderwunsch program exists. The Sport Classic exists. The Safari exists. There are still people inside the company who know what the brand is supposed to be.

Derek is coming back — and the conversation we're teasing is the one about NVH: noise, vibration, and harshness as a design philosophy. His aerospace background gives him a framework for measuring and tuning how humans interact with machines that almost nobody is applying to the car market right now. He also drove Shinoo's 111 RS Lotus build and had thoughts. He drove a Pininfarina Battista on track and has thoughts about what 2,000 horsepower actually feels like to interact with. It's going to be a different kind of car conversation.

Don't miss it.

▶️ Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/26dZKHg-td8?si=xqWdKZU42jOJS-fD

– Tim, Blair & Shinoo

🏁 The Full Throttle Talk Team
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