When Griot’s Garage President, Mark Greene, told me a generous customer was allowing us to showcase his 1957 Porsche Speedster, I was ecstatic. When he told me where he wanted the car displayed… I was floored. It’s not every day you see an automobile like this. And I bet you’ve never seen one hoisted 12 feet into the air with a forklift!
I had imagined the rare Porsche would sit in the Griot’s Garage auto display area. Nope! Turns out, Mr. Greene wanted it on the office roof in our Tacoma Retail Store. Thoughts started racing through my head. Is he serious? How do we get it up there? This car is worth a lot of money. One wrong move and it could come crashing to the ground. I don’t want to be under it if that happens, and I certainly don’t want to make that phone call to the owner. Fortunately, the roof structure above the office was built to take this kind of weight, so we put on our thinking caps and came up with a solution.
The gorgeous Speedster while still on terra firma.
We welded two ramps onto skid plates that would allow a forklift to raise and position the car.
The forklift was carefully backed into the Retail Store.
Ramps were built to roll the car onto the forklift rig.
And, up she goes! No turning back now.
We positioned the forklift and rollled the Porsche onto the roof.
Success!
Visit our Tacoma Retail Store and check it out for yourself!
July 9th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I was wondering if this car was a replica when I fist saw the pictures on your page…all my thoughts have been answered. Thanks for sharing looks good up there.
August 24th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Now that’s a generous and TRUSTING customer! Great post.
August 26th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Just curious-The 2 pictures of the Porsche on the cover of Handbook #317 appear to be different cars. 1 shows an outside mirror on the passenger side door and an emblem on the lower section of the front fender and the other does not. Are these 2 different cars?
August 30th, 2010 at 8:14 am
Dennis, the two Porsche’s on the cover of Handbook #317 are different (and different from the one pictured here as well.) The ‘58 Speedster that is the focal point of the image was driven up to our HQ in Tacoma, WA by a customer from central California. The Speedster in the background of that image is our “Emerging Speedster” that is on display all the time out front of our HQ. (It is actually a replica built for us by Intermecanica.) The ‘57 Speedster pictured in this article is another (third) Speedster a customer of ours so kindly allows us to display in our Retail Store (as pictured).
I think we have an addiction…