Arnold Schwarzenegger and Thomas Gottschalk visit Porsche
Los
Angeles. The Governor of
California, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, and his friend, German showmaster Thomas Gottschalk,
visited the Porsche Show Hall dedicated this year fully to hybrid
technology during their tour of the Los Angeles Auto Show. This “state
visit” paid to Porsche by the Austrian-born Governor of California
quickly became a meeting of good friends, Wolfgang Dürheimer,
Executive Vice-President for Development of Porsche AG and Peter
Schwarzenbauer, President of Porsche Cars of North America (PCNA),
making Schwarzenegger, himself an avid car collector, acquainted with
the Porsche cars at the show particularly beneficial to the
environment: the Lohner-Porsche electric car built back in 1990, the
current Cayenne Hybrid and the RS Spyder racing car which this year
drove to victory in the American Le Mans Serie (ALMS) with ethanol
additives in the tank.Schwarzenegger was very happy to note that Porsche had gone to great lengths and efforts to present the unique Lohner-Porsche even protected as a national monument for the first time outside of Europe. This zero-emission vehicle presented by the Stuttgart-based manufacturer of sports cars clearly demonstrates the unique position of company founder Professor Ferdinand Porsche as a visionary pioneer in the history of the automobile.
The Lohner-Porsche was made available for the Los Angeles Show by Vienna Technical Museum. It is the forerunner of the first hybrid car Professor Ferdinand Porsche presented to the world public in 1901.
Although Governor Schwarzenegger is acknowledged as the most important political driving force behind the low-emissions policy in the USA, he nevertheless remained faithful, as a famous action star in former times, to his Terminator image and enquired about all the features of the Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet and the Porsche 911 GT2.
