A Blaupunkt Stereo and a Porsche 930 to Carry It.

I Buy Another Car No One Has Heard of Before

They turned me onto the idea of a Porsche Turbo, black on black on black on black, and I found myself negotiating with Ron at Jim Kelly Porsche Audi in the late fall of 1975. I say negotiating. He’d never even heard of the car but he wanted the sale as much as I wanted the car, so it was ordered.

We Install a Nice Sound System

Before the ink was dry on the paperwork, I was thinking about the stereo upgrade: a Blaupunkt Berlin 8000. Bose had yet to suggest that automotive manufacturers like Porsche might be great at making cars but they could be beaten in the sound game. I created quite a sensation as my shop ripped out what the factory had installed and fitted a system that would be ahead of its time even now.

There has never been anything like the Blaupunkt Berlin 8000. The most unique feature of this exorbitantly expensive radio was the design of the tuner and volume controls, which were mounted on a flexible stalk that originated somewhere under the dash and could be oriented toward driver or passenger. They were like the contraption that holds a cellphone, but three feet long and designed a half century ago. Tuning and volume were one-touch, just like the sensational Bang and Olufsen home equipment of the time. The frequency scale indicator was a bank of LED lights that moved across the bottom of the scale as you touched the tuner bar. You couldn’t beat it.

Photo courtesy of Bring a Trailer.

I Enjoy the Combination of Car and Stereo

The car turned heads on its own but, the surprise inside—a dash of my personality/German sound engineering—meant was winning trophies at mobile audio shows and more business than ever. People came from Boston to Toronto because they had heard what I’d done and wanted the same experience in their cars.

Photos courtesy of Bring a Trailer.

They’d stay overnight as the work was done and, as we killed time and got to know each other, they’d ask how I got my start. The answer is: a moment at Radio Shack and a set of Acoustic Research AR3 speakers changed my life. What’s more interesting is what came next and then the next thing after that. One thing leads to another. The equipment led me to friends who turned me onto interesting cars.

It’s Who I Am

A complete disregard for the norm got me behind the wheel of what I think was the third Turbo in America when I hit the road with the end-all-be-all of audio systems. Seems only fitting that I keep breaking the rules where cars are concerned with the next thing: The Piston Foundation as the national fundraising platform that nobody’s thought to do before now. I still think there’s always a better way to do something.

Robert P. Minnick is founder and CEO of the Piston Foundation. The cars in his life and the people he calls friends because of those cars inspired him to create a national fundraising platform to preserve car culture. He’d like nothing better than to know future generations can have experiences as memorable has his own.