The Porsche Book [Hardcover]

As a Porsche fanatic, anything that displays the name Porsche on it - gets reviewed several times before purchase.

Unfortunately, this book is a recent addition to the material normally found on the Amazon shelves.
So in haste, I purchased before waiting to read the reviews.....

As a Coffee book, it's Big, Glossy and full of colorful images. Represents some quality photographs of the 'Greatest Marque'. However, after that it gets stuck.

The book is neither a READ nor a usable reference, even for images.

Other books better represent the Marque and unless it's for display only. Save your money!

In summary this the '924' or '914' of Porsche Literature.

The Porsche Book, The Best Porsche Images by Frank M. Orel, is all about art. If you are the kind of person who walks up to an original 550 Spyder, or 356 Speedster, and stares at its patina or the way the light plays off of its haunches, or you are captivated by the authoritative wide stance of a 917 at rest or the flowing curves of the 904 in profile, then The Porsche Book is probably going to be the kind of car pornography you'll want on the coffee table. It also helps if you enjoy photography as art. If you want a chronological photo history of the marque, then you'll want to look elsewhere. But we already have Karl Ludvigsen and Dennis Adler to give us those histories, so The Porsche Book doesn't need or aspire to fill that niche.

The art experience starts on the outside. This is a nicely produced hardbound 300-pager that will give the UPS man a hernia and will have you reinforcing the bracing under your coffee table. The cover is a fuschia foil tone with a monotone photo of an 356 Abarth front and center, so this is not a brown-cloth-blend-into-the-bookshelf package. With the official Porsche logo in block type on the spine, it's clear that it was produced under the auspices of Porsche. Happily the publisher provided a proper cover and we don't have a doomed-to-tear paper dust jacket, which never works well on books of this heft. On the outside, you'll either like it or not. I think it's a handsome book, and a hard one not to want to pick up, provided you work out regularly.

Inside, there are Porsche cars - some of the most important ones ever made, mostly competition cars - presented in a playful and often dramatic fashion, almost always one photo per two-page spread. Photo designer Orel is based in Stuttgart, and seems to have had access to Porsche's own considerable photo archive, and his love of motorsports is evident, with landmark racers such as the 904, 908 and 917 making multiple appearances. Each chapter has a keyword or theme - a concept such as "Red", "Origins", "Open" and so on - that serves as the unifying idea. The authors want you to go on a visual adventure, and at this they succeed. This is not a sequential photo run of the changes from, say, 924 to 944 to 944S to 944 Turbo. And if you can't tell the difference between a 356A Speedster and Cabriolet now, you probably still won't after an afternoon with this book.

There is plenty of magic in here, however. If you can resist stopping and staring at the parade of 550 Spyders under the famed LeMans Dunlop tire arch, or the especially fetching view forward over the rear deck the 718 RS 60, dents and all, you might want to check your pulse. In some ways, the photography is at its best in its original, pure black and white, although the colorization is generally nicely done. The arrival of the 550 Spyder (photo number 071 here), featuring a shot of the car's tail with the transport aircraft in the background, is the sort of thing that could be framed. Interesting, too, is the appearance of famed Porsche driver Huschke von Hanstein in the background, though the caption omits this interesting context.

In fact, the captions are perhaps the one place where the book falls short. Admittedly, no one would buy this book for the captions, but in many cases they are lacking in detail, and occasionally self-indulgent. One reads: "Today they are from yesterday, but they are always designed for tomorrow. Porsche's future has an everlasting past." It sounds like the leftovers of an ad agency's brainstorming lunch break. Apparently costs were cut by firing the copywriter. If there is anything missing here, it would be a well written paragraph explaining the significance of the image apart from its inherent visual appeal. While a photographer only needs to give us an arresting image, the subjects here often have historical importance that can add to the context.

On the plus side, all photos are captioned in the back of the book, with thumbnails and numbers, so you can flip through it and fairly quickly test your knowledge of what you've been ogling.

But forget the captions. It really is all about the photography. Orel's look into the wide eyes of driver Stefan Bellof behind his helmet is tense but elegant. There is the two-page side view of a 904 Carrera GTS draws you into its curves, all flawlessly lit. The car seems to be clinging to the ground, its body poured over the chassis like molten silver. A photo of the 356 Carrera Abarth awaiting unloading in a trailer, with sunlight trying to pierce the metal cocoon, is also brilliant, a study in textures: There's the famously louvred deck of the car, the old oil-stained wood decking of the trailer and the fabric of the tie-down straps twisted on the floor, with plastic bubble wrap, presumably to protect the car from chafing. It is enough to put you there with that amazing silver racer.

If you read the last couple of sentences and thought, "OK, so an old Porsche in a trailer", then you may not have the mindset to really enjoy Orel's book. If you look at the cars and their mechanical side as an art form, then it should stir the oil in your veins. Sports cars have always been about the art of speed, and Orel taps into that truth. This is not the usual sterile brochure photography.

Are all of the photographs that good? Almost. I suspect Porsche wanted to show some of its newer machinery in this book, so we have a few views of the ungainly new Panamera sedan. By featuring beautiful people standing in front of the car, and blending it into the surroundings, Orel actually manages to make even this beast look good. And that does take real talent.

This is an absolutely amazing book. I own 2 Porsches myself, run the "Manhattan Porsche Stammtisch" meetup group and love every page of this Porsche Bible.

Sexy photography from cover to cover, I actually have this sitting on my coffee table and open it to a different page every few days. Maybe I am a little biased but the images really are that great!
Each page is a work of art. You could actually take pages out and have them framed...
I can only highly recommend this book, great size, shocking pink hardcover. What is there not to love?

I just bought two more books from TE NEUES and love them as well.