This article is not really about Norbert Singer himself. But it does describe that wondrous laboratory where Singer and the other Porsche wizards do their magic, making the race cars that dominate. You'll hopefully get the feel of what it must be like to work there, and you'll better appreciate the environment that fosters Singer's brilliant contribution, as well as that of Porsche AG of course, which had the foresight to build the place and hire Singer and the other meticulous artists, engineers and technicians that work there.
    The article is scanned from a 1980's Car and Driver, so please excuse the typographical errors and bad image quality.

Except for a touch of aristocracy in its pricing, Porsche is very much a populist car company. It believes in being close to the folks. As the huge Frankfurt international auto show kicked off last September [remember, this is from an old issue - Ed.], Porsche was the only automaker to leave its glamour cars right out on the floor - not even a rope around them - where any kid with a lollipop could come right up and do his damnedest. The pearlescent Gruppe B prototype, never before seen by non-factory eyes, was there with its doors invitingly open. A similarly pearly 956 racer up-hoistered in genuine leather was just spitting distance away. And so were the Porsche heavies: Peter Schutz, the managing director, Helmuth Bott, chief of research and development, and even Dr. Ferry Porsche himself. You could walk right up and have at these guys. That's what they were there for. Being available is sort of an unwritten company policy.

    But when you tell them you want to visit Weissach, that's another story. Eyes roll upward. "That would be difficult," they say, "very difficult."

    NASA has Houston, our atomic scientists have Los Alamos, and Porsche has Weissach (say, "Vy-sock"). Engineering is there, as are the experimental shops, the test track, and the racing department. Everything new at Porsche comes from Weissach. An enthusiast would make the pilgnmage just to warm himself in the technical heat. And if he happened to glimpse an ill-concealed secret project or two, well, heh, heh, that's what these little forays are all about.

    The Weissach on everybody's map is a postcard-peaceful village about 25 kilometers from Porsche's headquarters in the Stuttgart suburb of Zuffenhausen. The roads along the way are narrow, and they loop randomly over the wrinkled quilt of Swabian farm country, cresting occasionally to reveal a tractor or some more sinister implement in immediate need of dodging. "Porsche roads," quips our host, as we reel in the distance in an arrest-me-red 944. At one crest, we glimpse in the middle distance a complex of industrial buildings. Draped over the ridge in the buildings' back yard is an area that's carefully fenced to keep the neighboring agriculture out. That's about all the fence can accomplish, because the lay of the ridge is such that, from any approach, you can see tortuous blacktop roads, fresh excavations, various shuttling cars, and numerous construction projects. Porsche's Weissach may be hard to penetrate, but for an outsider to keep it under surveillance requires little more than staying awake.

    This is a relatively new property, carved out of virgin farm land in 1970, soon after Porsche was freed of its exclusive consulting contract with Volkswagen. The decision had been made to use this new liberty to become a free-lance R&D concern for hire to all comers, automotive or otherwise, and Weissach was to be the engineering center.

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