An enormous hurricane – Ida, as it was called - ravaged the East Coast a week ago and it’s being hailed as the worst one to hit Virginia and the Carolinas in a long time. And while there’s nothing remotely funny about natural disasters of this magnitude, this photo of a Porsche Cayman getting buried in sand along Cape Hatteras in North Carolina was – in the least bit – mildly amusing.
Good luck getting that out of its sinkhole, and on a more important note, we hope everyone is alright from that part of the US.
Legal battles involving trademark claims are nothing new.
This one, however, is a little surprising considering that the two protagonists come from completely different industries.
In the blue corner is German carmaker Porsche. On the red corner, it’s footwear designer Crocs.
Their squabble: the rights to use the name ‘Cayman’ in their products.
Porsche is claiming that the name ‘Cayman’ is trademarked for its exclusive sports car and that Crocs, which sells a plastic cog bearing the same name, should refrain from using ‘Cayman’ again. Predictably, Crocs is staying on course and in a statement that was filed in their quarterly reports, the footwear brand has stated that they will “vigorously defend themselves against these claims”.
We haven’t gotten further comments from the two squabbling brands although if you ask us, we don’t think that these two are risking anything by just letting things go. Apart from catering to distinctively different markets, it must be pointed out that a Porsche Cayman costs around $50,000 while a pair of Crocs Cayman sells for just a shade under $30.
Big difference, don’t you think?
The German tuning specialists Techart have just relased a new lineup of high performance modifications for the Porsche Boxster and Cayman models. The aero is available in two flavors, somewhat conservative with only a front lip and a rear wing, or all out including a wide body conversion that includes the LED driving lights, sculpted side skirts, sleeker side mirrors and the Techart Vario or VarioPlus threaded chassis high performance suspenion. Techart is offering a racing exhaust system for the flat six powered Porsches that can be finished off with either a glossy or black chrome finish. The aftermarket manufacturer then utilizes their signature Formula wheel to beef up the diminutive Porsches.
The upgrades don’t stop with the exterior, the interior receives a few upgrades like a sport chronometer, TECHART 3 spoke sport steering wheel, new trim on the doors and carbon/stainless steel doorsills with illuminated logos. The sport buckets are wrapped in soft leather and dressed up with decorative stitching in the owner’s choice of colors as well as a trio of aluminum sport pedals and a healthy helping of carbon fiber. So now no matter which Porsche you drive Techart CEO Thomas Behringer has a tuning program for you.
The staff of summer inters at TopGear America pulled a fast one on us. Remember the very strange looking Porsche Caymanshooting brake test car that was shot with a camera phone in some Italian back street? Well it was actually shot in an alley in Brooklyn, the car was a computer generated image that was created with Maya 3D drawing software, stitched together with Photoshop and then edited on Final Cut Pro to look like video from a mobile phone. They even went as far as to include a little hint that apparently no one caught on to, a Stig helmet tucked back behind the rear window.
There were three main masterminds behind the scheme. First was former TopGear.com America editor, Jared Holstein along with the renderings of Matt DuVall, a digital arts student at Savannah College of Art and Design and left to manipulate the media was Jon Masters, a master’s student in media studies at the New School in New York City. Holstein guided DuVall through some very meticulous details, like official Porsche development wheels, a front bumper that mimics the Porsche mule car as well as the same license plate number that the German automaker uses.
Once the digitally enhanced video was produced, Holstein planted it on the TopGear.com America web site while summer intern, Jon Masters, began to post links in various Porsche enthusiast sites as well as the major Automotive online media. Masters then went so far as to create a fake screen shot from Forza 3 and then linked that to other videogame websites, “It was originally posted on a Czech Forza fan site — in Czech to add a layer of deception and plausibility,” Mr. Holstein said. The group claim to have been testing the abilities of digital media as a way to introduce new designs and get a public reaction to a new figure that would traditionally take an automaker a lot of time, money and research to figure out. We’re still saying that they were trying to pull a fast one on us.
The gentlemen from iMotor have jusst put two of tje best sports cars on the market against one another in a head to head competition. From Nissan, the 370Z is powered by a 3.7 Liter VQ37VHR engine with VVEL and is rated at 332 HP at 7,000 RPM and 270 lb-ft of torque at 5,200 RPM. While the Porsche Cayman S is powered by a 3.4 Liter flat six engine cranking out 320 HP. Despite the Porsche’s nature as a more pure driver’s car, there is just something about the 370Z that makes it stand out in the fun to drive category.
