For Artichoke Annie: Her 912 Recreated

A polaroid of Artichoke Annie's long-lost Tangerine-colored Porsche 912. Or is it?

C H O P ,   S O R T   O F — New reader, Artichoke Annie, mentioned in a recent post that she once owned a 1968 Porsche 912 painted a Tangerine color. She must have been AWESOME back in the day! She also mentioned that she didn't have a single photo of the car, so I thought that I would create one for her. What's the good of Photoshop if you can't recreate history once in a while? Annie, if you click on the photo, and then 'save image' on a Mac, or right click on a PC to save it to your hard-drive, you now have a photo of your car you can print out. If your car had the extra-cost, five spoke Fuchs wheels, let me know. I can change the chrome hubcaps here, but I'm pretty sure most 912s came with this wheel treatment. There is a Navy Blue 912 in town to this day, and it has these chrome wheels and hubcaps.

I remember a bright Pea Green 912 in my town. Did my readers know that back then Porsche would paint a car ANY color you wanted, as long as you paid for it of course? There were stories about people bringing samples of leather shoes, clothes, other car paint samples, their pet's leashes, you name it, to the Porsche factory, and for a price they would create the correct pigment color and paint your car. They supposedly KEPT all of those special formulas forever, in case you needed touch ups or wanted your next car in the same shade. I seem to remember racing Porsche Carreras in bright orange, but not regular production cars, so Annie's may very well have been a special-order color. 

For this Photoshop rendering, I found a photo of a 912 through Google images. I placed it on a generic wooded background that might have been anywhere Annie might have parked in front of. I changed the color to Tangerine, and then I placed it in a Polaroid frame background. I used a couple of filters to simulate the aging process which 'disrupts' the pigmentation a bit, and I added a wrinkled texture to make the polaroid appear as if it had been handled a lot. Annie said she bought the car in '69, so I wanted this image to look 41 years old. I keep files of textures for my art; in this case I overlayed 'wrinkled paper' for that last step. 

The 912 was the 4 cylinder volume sales model of the 911 lineup, and they actually sold more 912s in Europe than 911s in those years, helping to keep the company afloat in lean years. They were also used by die Polizei, the German Police. They never sold as well in the States with most Americans preferring the more powerful 911, so Annie had a pretty rare car on her hands for awhile! She also had what many people felt was the better handling Porsche by way of it's lighter overall weight. With Porsche's engine hanging way back past the rear axle, the lighter the engine, the better and safer the handling. It was the smart Porsche to buy.

For the Wiki on 912s, click here.

Hope you enjoy it, Annie. I'm very glad you found my blog!

UP D A T E :  At 10:00AM EST, I made a couple of 'fixes' to the image, and I updated it the entry. Annie, if you've saved it already, this version is a little bit better, lol. : )

UP D A T E  2:  PhantomX has alerted me to this very cool early 911 scale model available on eBay. It's right up Annie's Alley, lol! It's a 1964, but is very similar to the '68 912. Ya gotta love eBay, and thanks Phantom!

Orange 911 model.