Second build. A wrecked Porsche, and someone will ask who even buys a thing like that. But you don't buy a wreck to flip it, you buy it to cut into it. That is how the fleet comes together, the one you work the language out on: 964, 933, 996, 997, and a few more.

The minimal-changes prototype. 996. So much talk of form, of line, of how a volume holds together tight, and the car won't even hold idle.

It could have been anything. Plugs, coils, fuel pump, oil separator, vacuum. The engine wanted TLC anyway, and the shop is buried in 996 parts, so we took it all at once: oil separator, vacuum lines, plugs, coils, fuel pump, gaskets, fluids. Rebuilt half the block.

Near three in the morning, still closing it up, Felix and I looked at the hoses inside the fuel tank. And there. The 30c hose, torn.

A hole the size of a pin. At low revs there isn't enough pressure to push the fuel, so the engine dies, while at high revs it holds and the pressure carries it. Nothing showed on the outside, no smell, no leak, all of it sealed inside the tank. We never meant to fix this. It found itself.

Whether it would run, we wouldn't know until morning.

In the meantime, tired and high on fumes, for some reason we tried a Porsche wing on Beetle. And you know, not as bad as it looks. We put it on, and mad as it is, together it's funny.

In the morning the car came alive. Good as new.

Then the back yard, and the surfaces.

Brought the front bumper closer to its form, though there is still plenty to do. It needs more mass, a thickening along the bottom edge, where the lines right now run too sharp. Sharp forms don't always work on volumes like this. Like in 3D, like in architecture, you want dense lines, not thin ones, because dense lines hold the form together.

We took a spray can and half-inch tape, ran it around the lip a little higher up the bumper, and laid down black, just to see how it sits if it goes up. And it fell into place. The lip will be taller and the whole mass drops lower, but the look is already there.

With the same can we hit the base of the wing. Verticals in black, the body of the wing in body color. That's it. It is only primer for now, but the lines read. The side skirts came in right too, maybe a touch denser for the volume, but they are what the car needs.

At the rear an OLED bar runs the line, and it recuts 996 entirely. There are no caps on top; we grow the quarter panels instead. And once the wing went onto the car it was clear: there has to be a gap between the bar and the wing. We had thought to bring the wing all the way down to the bar, but standing on its own it reads better, and we won't merge it into one piece with the engine lid.

Big progress, small things from here. Two or three weeks and the car is done on paint, or close enough to move to the interior.

The interior we worked out for every model at once, one language with small differences by year. Simple and universal, it suits any Porsche, and we start with 996, where the gain shows clearest.

The shifter took off out of nowhere. An aluminum base dipped in rubber, over a leather boot, a knob of natural rubberized suede held by a silver ring with white onyx on top. The shifter as a jewelry object, jewelry inside the car, and with the new dashboard it works especially well.

We made it not for sale, the production too expensive. And it is already booked out to November, and they are asking us to adapt it for M3.