Gearing up for a top festive treat: Porsche cars dazzle at Autoworld in Brussels

A top Brussels museum is gearing up for its biggest event of the year. For the next three months, the city’s Autoworld is hosting the exhibition Porsche Driven By Dreams.

Running until 25 February, the event is timely as the famous German car company is marking its 75th anniversary. Many of the vehicles on display are set to attract visitors from far and wide.

But these are not just any ‘ordinary’ Porsche cars, and some have never been shown in public before, the museum’s head of museology Leo Van Hoorick told The Bulletin.

“This truly is a world class collection of Porsche cars. This is our eighth temporary exhibition of the year and our biggest yet,” said the curator.

The 64 cars on show include 22 on temporary loan from the company’s own museum in Germany.

In no particular order, we have selected a ‘top 5 list’ of cars to look out for:

• A Porsche 917, which many collectors rank as one of the best race cards ever. In 1970/71 it won some 15 of the 24 races in the World Championships, including the Le Mans 24 hours and the Daytona 24 Hours;
• A rare 356 Carrora speedster, with a legendary Fuhrmann motor. Between 1955 and 1957, only 167 of these were built;
• A Porsche 928 from 1978. The one on display is a rare specimen as it comes from the first year of production. This won the prestige ‘Car of the Year’ in the same year, the only sports car ever to do so;
• A Porsche 959, described as a ‘technological marvel’. Dating from 1987, it’s is rightly labelled by many as the ‘first supercar’. Nearly 300 were built between 1986 and 1989, and it debuted with a victory in the 1986 Dakar Rally;
• Dating from 1975, a Porsche 930 turbo that became an icon and a supercar in its own right, even though it was difficult to handle and many of the first generation models crashed

In addition to its 75th birthday celebrations, the company is marking the 60th anniversary of its 911 model. The exhibition is proud to display a model from the each of the eight generations it was built, including a turbo version.

The show also features prototypes, heritage cars and competition vehicles. One of the highlights, Van Hoorick predicts, is a ‘Gmund’, dating from 1948, which was the first ever built by the company after the war. It was manufactured in Austria before Porsche relocated to Stuttgart.

Most of the other cars on display at the popular automobile museum are from Belgian collectors.

“This new exhibition is the biggest by far this year and it makes for a great outing over the festive season,” said Van Hoorick.

As well as the Porsche cars on display, Autoworld is also showing its permanent collection of around 260 vehicles.

Porsche Driven By Dreams
Until 25 February (open daily, including Christmas Day and New Year's Day)
Autoworld
Parc du Cinquantenaire 11
Brussels