Daily Slideshow: Porsche Passion on Full Display

California Boy

Jeff Zwart was destined to become a Porsche guy from day one. Born in sunny Southern California, Zwart's dad taught him to drive in, you guessed it, a Porsche. But not just any Porsche, a pre-911 designation 1964 model 901, chassis number 35. The occasion for these photos, in which the 901 sadly isn't pictured, was a photo shoot supporting a  video shoot by Will Roegge.

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Makes Good

Luck played a part too. Zwart lived next door to automotive designer Freeman Thomas when the two were growing up, and they were both Porsche nuts as kids. Working a part-time job during high school to pay for a Porsche 914/6, as Zwart did, would be a pretty good story in and of itself, but it was just another early step for Zwart. A pretty good next step was attending the world's premier school for car people with an artistic bent—the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Soon after graduating from that prestigious mecca he landed a dream gig shooting photos for Road & Track Magazine. Just another step, though. Next up was directing TV commercials. Shooting work for Porsche, Cadillac, BMW, Ford, and Firestone has been good to him and his company, Radical Media—and in his spare time, he co-founded Racer magazine.

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Goes Racing

Like any red-blooded car nut with a little spare cash and a little spare time, Zwart went racing. He started in open-wheeled Formula Fords in the '80s, transitioning to rallying soon after. He drove for Mazda in the US Pro Rally Championship in 1989/90, winning the national Open Class Championship. But where Zwart really shined was at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. He drove the hill climb for Porsche in 1994, winning the Open Class Championship, and the winning (in Porsches) hasn't stopped since. In 14 years he won 8 separate class championships at Pikes Peak, each one behind the wheel of a Porsche. In 2010 he set a record in the Time Attack Class with a Porsche GT3 Cup car. In 2011 he drove a 911 GT2 RS from SoCal to Colorado for the hill climb, a feat captured in the short film “Porsche, the Road to Pikes Peak,” directed by none other than Will Roegge. 

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Plays in the Dirt

Roegge and Zwart brought Zwart's rally Carrera 4, and 356 Coupe, out to Big Sky Ranch in Southern California to play for a day. The Carrera 4 is the one Zwart campaigned in the SCCA ProRally Championship in the first part of the '90s. It boasts quite a few pieces, such as the torque split device and transaxle, straight from the Porsche factory's Rothmans 911 Dakar efforts. But Zwart credits Porsche's 356 as the car that first got him into the brand, this particular one sports a 60 hp flat-four with just enough torque, when combined with skinny tires, to be lots of fun in the loose stuff.

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...Keeps On Keepin' On

When he's not racing, directing, or goofing off on back roads, Zwart keeps busy by writing. He's a frequent contributor to the Porsche Club of America’s Panorama magazine and has had three books released by David Bull Publishing. He also finds time do speaking engagements, or to act as a consultant, as he did for Rush director Ron Howard. And in that 914/6 he bought in high school In 1997, he took second overall in the 25 day-long, 10,000-mile, Panama-to-Alaska Rally. The 914 was yellow, but it doesn't seem as though Zwart's ever been yellow of anything in his life.

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