Grant Larson
Total 911: As a designer at such a powerhouse motoring company as Porsche – where you’re inspired by tradition but not constrained by it – surely you must consider yourself to have one of the best jobs in the industry?
Grant Larson: That’s a very good way of putting it. If you look around the industry, every company has its own buzz words and at Porsche it’s ‘tradition’ and ‘innovation’, which allows us to cover all grounds.
Your current role as head of Special Projects at Porsche enables you to be more creative than, say, mainline 911 production…
Generally it does, but it depends on the project. Of course, many of them have a lot to do with a traditional aspect, particularly with the 911. I always think of it this way: if you have fantastic history, you use it to your advantage.
That’s what a lot of customers also expect, and so you must be careful how much you change – how far you take the 911, as an example. One customer once said, when we were working on the next generation of 911, “Don’t ruin my car!” He’d already claimed it as his, and that shows the level of burden which is levied at you.
When you joined Porsche in 1989 from Audi, what sort of company did you walk into?
I spoke to friends in the
