Me and My Car: Achim Anscheidt and his Porsche 911 [w/Video]

You can tell a lot about a person from the car they drive. It can also be argued that you can tell a lot of about a car from who drives it, especially when that person is a respected designer, in this case the head of Design Bugatti Achim Anscheidt.

In one of Drive's latest episodes features Anscheidt and his Porsche ‘Private Project' 911 around the streets of Berlin, discussing his take on minimalism in design and construction and how he feels about personal design projects.

The Drive YouTube channel is a favorite here at Car Design News. From roads to races and from factories to studios, it offers an insight into the cooler side of the car world, all shot in stunning HD. No wonder the channel has racked up nearly 200,000 subscribers and just under 40 million video views.

Anscheidt's Porsche is a 1981 911, stripped down to the bare bones. The standard exterior panels have been replaced with Kevlar items and the windows have been replaced with plastic. The interior has also undergone a major overhaul, with everything that could be seen as a luxury tossed out.

"It's made the car extremely light," he told Drive. "It is down now to 820kg. It has no heater also, and the whole engine bay is cleaned out. It's all added to the overall concept of an interesting power-to-weight ratio of the car.

"It's a little bit of the sign of our time that you start to feel relief if you take away things and start to concentrate on the essential things in life and also on your product," he explained.

Working for Bugatti, technology and performance are the big boxes that need to be ticked if a model is going to be rolled out onto the production line.

With his 911, Anscheidt has a chance to really go his own way. Getting back to basics with 'super simplistic' and economical approaches provides opportunities for him to really play around with design outside of the constraints of his workplace. 

We'll be keeping an eager eye on the Drive channel in anticipation of what comes next.

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Me and My Car: Eric Bauer and his Nissan Skyline

By Rufus Thompson