Nord Stern also helped out Carmichael-Lynch from time to time. Mid-morning in June 2003, I received a slightly panicked call from a contact at CL. She related that they had gotten a very short fuse project regarding the recognition of the announcement of the then 901 at the Frankfurt Auto Show in 1963. The plan was to use a Monte Carlo Rally theme using an old photo from the rally that originally featured three 356s and Photoshop in an early 911, an ’80s 911, and a new 996. They needed to quickly put together the three cars for a photoshoot.  I told her this was no problem and of course she wanted to know how quickly we could get the cars together. She was a little speechless when the response was “before lunch.”

Only a matter of days later the photoshoot was organized and Bob Fleming brought is ’65 911, Dave Weisel his 1989 Silver Anniversary 911, and I bought my new 996.  The shoot was in an empty parking lot at Flying Cloud Airport. We met late afternoon and as is typical with something like this, there was a bunch of lining things up, signing waivers, and mostly standing around waiting for the right light.

Bob Fleming, Roger Johnson, Jim Holton, Dave Weisel and two classic 911s.

They really wanted to pay for the use of the cars and we agreed on a nice print from the shoot as compensation.  When it was darn near dark, they got us in our cars, Dave and Bob in the passenger seat so they were visible in the line of cars. We thought this was the shot for us and were pretty enthused about what it would look like.  But like most photo shoots, they just end and you don’t know what the results are.

A few weeks later a courier dropped off a package at my door. In it was a framed poster of the final product. See below. They had used that final photo in the actual ad campaign!

This was a pretty significant ad campaign. Direct mail, dealer posters, merch, all sorts of stuff. Very fun to know the Nord Stern connection. It also really cemented our relationship with Carmichael-Lynch which was very strong as long as they had the Porsche account.

Watch for the next post on how we celebrated the 911’s 40th birthday.