Ben&Cheryl Dimson

In part two of our in-depth conversation, Ben and Chery] discuss their careers at Porsche throughout the 80s and 90s with Total 911

Total 911: Porsche as a company was much smaller during the 1980s and 1990s than it is today. Did this mean you saw more of the Porsche family and other company hierarchy day-to-day?

Ben Dimson: The Porsche family was always a part of their products and company. They were integrated and hands-on. They brought in new management, and major members of the family like Dr Porsche and Louise Piëch were very involved in Porsche. Ferdinand would also show up every now and then. Wolfgang and Butzi would visit during major presentations for a new car or the colour shows.

They would be walked through the design department and then shown the new products. They would then hold court over the presentation on the engineering, the technical aspects and finally the visuals of the cars. If there were more cars to be presented, they went from seeing the cars in the design viewing yard where there was a viewing table, to the race track. Because as the models grew, they needed more space for all the cars.

The studio was on the bottom floor of Weissach’s Research and Development Centre and the rock wall was to make sure that no one could photograph anything that was happening in the design department. It was very difficult to attain spy shots – back then, the spy shot was a big thing! Car magazines would pay a lot of money for a blurry photo of whatever was going to come out.

Porsche appointed an outsider, the American Peter Schutz, as CEO in 1981. Did this help boost innovation at the company?

BD: It probably did because when the Porsche family decided it needed fresh blood as far as management was concerned, it was taking as many of the family members out of management and trying to bring in more professional or versed managers to run the company. There was probably some influence in that.