How To Enjoy Your Porsche 101: The Kottenrun

Photography by SSSZ Photo

Perhaps you read about our adventures on the “Kottenrun” earlier this summer, when we joined our likeminded friends for a laid-back GT-style day trip across Germany’s Eifel mountains in a pack of Porsche 911s.

It’s a very informal affair compared to some of the other car club events that take place during the warmer months of the year out here, and while we are all very invested—monetarily or otherwise—in the lore and future of the P-car crest, we don’t take ourselves so seriously to not have fun with it. You’ll see stone chips that are shown off rather than patched up, some purist-provoking modifications, general signs of not just use, but enjoyment. The cars aren’t thrashed like a bunch of track rats might be after a few years of duty on the Nordschleife ​Touristenfahrten, but they’re out here spinning their odometers and racking up the external evidence to show for it.

The Kottenrun isn’t about catered lunches and royal venues, but it embodies indulgence in other forms. It’s a simple mission: enjoy the cars. Spend time with the people who think like you do, and learn from those who might not. Drive with spirit, not with nerves and a bottle of spray-wax that’s deployed on first contact with a splattered bug. This group takes care of their cars, but they also take care to not let such things be the entirety of the ownership experience; what’s a few paint chips to experiences like these that let you enjoy so many different aspects of these cars? Some cars do belong in museums, these don’t.

On this particular Kottenrun, we met up with the pack’s peloton in a hotel cafe in the Eifel region outside of the Nürburgring for some coffee and conversation before unfolding a few road maps (both paper and digital). We had a plan to do some driving in the undulating country lanes that cut across the rolling hillsides that surround the infamous race track that calls this place home: the Nürburgring.

When we arrived we were met with a massive traffic jam, the antithesis to the driving pleasures we’d sought. There happened to be an endurance race going on that day, and as such the ‘Ring was aswarm with spectators and the going was S-L-O-W. Figuring we may as well put the driving on hold for the time being, we parked up along the street and strangely enough (well, perhaps not, given this particular population), we started attracting more attention than the goings on on track—traffic jams are more fun when they’re full of Porsches I suppose.

We got out to take in the atmosphere of a race weekend at the track, enjoyed some time just hanging out with each other just shooting the schnitzel and absentmindedly watching racing cars fly past in the background through the Green Hell. But after 15 minutes or so, we all snapped back to our senses and were reminded that we’d rather be the ones behind the wheel than the ones watching, so we got back in the Recaros and took off again to find some open space.

We ended the day by stopping in an old industrial park that had been rebuilt by one of the participants to a loft. A great place for photos, but a better place to just unwind with good food, good drinks, better friends, and the idealization of summer nights come to pass.