As a 78-year-old man soon to turn 79, Bob Ingram says the Porsche models from his collection always remind him of their previous owners’ enthusiasm, pride, and joy. He was very close to lose them all. Here’s how he and his family managed.
“There is no other company in the world that can draw on such a loyal fan base,” says Mr. Ingram. He’s not a collector who keeps cars in garages or on trailers. He drives them all. Nowadays, with the help of his son, the cars are being shown to those who want to see them and are also prepared for a spirited drive on the track. There’s no bumper-to-bumper racing involved, but the vehicles aren’t being treated like princesses either. This is a living car collection, one that keeps its stories and helps create new ones.
While in a podcast with Jason Stein, the Porsche collector said how he almost lost it all in a fire. He was preparing for a day out with his wife and was driving one of the family cars. Out of nowhere, he gets a phone call from his accountant. The man on the other end tells him the building that housed the Porsches and was the place where millions were raised for charity, exploded. He later found out some technicians had tried to install Internet wires and mistakenly hit a gas line.
The leak was identified in time and most people were evacuated, but two men lost their lives in that awful day. The owner of nearby coffee shop insisted to go in. When he opened the door, the friction caused a huge explosion. The roof collapsed and the water used by the firefighters acted as a major weight that simply leveled the cars. It was an almost total loss.
The next day they got some of the cars out and tried to assess the damage that explosion had done. The sight was upsetting. But hope was starting to come back. In the end, out of the 32 cars only four were lost. The rest of them were all restored to their previous glory after what can be called just incredible effort.
The whole effort brought Ingram’s family even closer together. That’s when they decided it’s important to cherish more moments with loved ones rather than just things. They knew then that this collection of rare and important Porsches must be open to the world and to those interested in driving them. And that’s what the man’s family is doing today.
“Through our collection, we become part of contemporary history, of the cars and the people,” said Cam, one of Bob Ingram’s sons.
Car shows on TV and his father's Fiat Tempra may have been Florin's early influences, but nowadays he favors different things, like the power of an F-150 Raptor. He'll never be able to ignore the shape of a Ferrari though, especially a yellow one. Full profile
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