Porsche, Louis Vuitton and Singer: A Collaboration Too Far

Some creative collaborations are brilliant, bringing out the best in both brands while creating something new in its own right. These Porsche 911s, made through a partnership between the restomod company Singer and Louis Vuitton, are not among them.For background, Singer is a California company, founded in 2009, that strips classic Porsche 911s to their bones and almost completely rebuilds them with fanatical attention to detail. They’re teenage dreams made metal, more perfect versions of the 911 than a production line could ever make.They’re beautiful, luxurious, special cars, and so it only makes sense that a luxury marque would want one dressed in its details, materials, and palette. And given Louis Vuitton’s history — both as a collaborator and as a luggage maker — it only makes sense that it would be the one to do it.And yet the two cars born from this collaboration, unveiled at The Quail, are exactly what they oughtn’t to be: bright, crass cars that mistake brand recognizability for style and forgo all class and subtlety for the sake of bragging rights.The first is a coupe built to Singer’s Classic formula: a Type 964 chassis with a carbon-fiber body, a naturally aspirated 4.0-liter air-cooled flat-six, a six-speed manual transmission, rear-wheel drive, and carbon-ceramic brakes. But then the whole thing is painted saffron, cobalt blue, and yellow; fitted with a roof rack for matching skis, luggage, or a surfboard; decorated with Monogram flowers on the seat vents, sun visors, headrests, and windscreen tint; and given cobalt-blue tires. The interior isn’t any better, with yellow stitching everywhere and the ordinary plastic fittings replaced by hand-finished metal components, most of them rhodium-plated.The second car is a Classic Turbo Cabriolet conceived by Louis Vuitton women’s artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière. Any taste earned from the more toned-down color scheme is undone by the ugly, motorboat-inspired details: a teak-inspired wooden rear luggage deck, wooden bumpers, wood lining the engine compartment and front boot, and leather fastening straps on both hoods. That nautical influence worked beautifully on the 1971 Buick Riviera and Rolls-Royce Boat Tail. Slapped on a small, wide Porsche with a whale-tail spoiler and golden brightwork, it looks painfully excessive. The underlying Singer design is beautiful, but the whole thing is marred by excess, like someone wearing too much rouge in too many bright, clashing colors.Thankfully, only two of them exist — but even so, that is two too many.

Porsche, Louis Vuitton and Singer: A Collaboration Too Far

Porsche, Louis Vuitton and Singer: A Collaboration Too Far

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