Hagerty Drivers Club exclusive: Porsche Experience Center

Southern California Hagerty Drivers Club members were recently invited to attend a special event at the Porsche Experience Center in Carson, California, and bring along a fellow car lover for a taste of Porsche’s history, aftermarket culture, and on-track speed. 

The event, which took place on October 12th, showcased the Porsche Experience Center’s event space and garage stocked with a wide variety of road and race cars representing 50+ years of Porsche history. Towards the end of the event, visitors got a chance to ride shotgun in a Porsche 911 GT3 on a hot lap of the Porsche Experience Center’s 1.3-mile track.

The special guest for the evening was renowned southern California Porsche builder Rod Emory, who’s famous for his fantastic vintage Porsche restomods. Emory grew up in a hot-rodding family, and his first-hand Porsche experience kicked off when he began his first air-cooled restoration at just 14 years old. Hagerty Drivers Club members got to meet Emory and hear a condensed version of his family’s history in customizing cars of all kinds as he showed off some vintage photos and discussed his latest build.

When Rod’s presentation and Q&A were over, the 100+ Hagerty Drivers Club members and their guests headed to the track, where a team of Porsche Experience Center drivers was waiting to chauffeur passengers for an E-ticket hot lap. Each lap began with a Launch Control start that saw the cars unleash a fury of torque and traction before rocketing off to the first turn. Especially at night, the Porsche Experience Center’s tight, twisty track is a blast. Even with very short straightaways, the 500-horsepower GT3s can hit triple-digit speeds at a few points.

If you’d like to drive some laps yourself, the Porsche Experience Center can help you with that and get you behind the wheel of anything from a Macan to a 911 Turbo or these very same GT3s. If you’d like to be on the guest list for future HDC events, sign up here and start reaping the benefits of membership.