DIETER INZENHOFER
CO-FOUNDER OF LEGENDARY PORSCHE TUNER ANDIAL
STORY | Justin W. Roeser
PHOTOGRAPHY | Jack Schroeder
Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion says that a body in motion stays in motion. Eighty-year-old Dieter Inzenhofer, co-founder of legendary Porsche tuner ANDIAL, has embraced this edict by living his life full speed ahead all day, every day. Dieter began his apprenticeship in 1955 at MAHAG – a Volkswagen and Porsche dealership in Munich. While many German youth slept off a party from the night before, Dieter and his fellow teen apprentices spent their weekends cleaning the workshop. During the week, he learned the fundamentals of an automotive mechanic, helping to dirty the same shop he was tasked to clean.
While Dieter was specifically a Volkswagen apprentice, he was intrigued by the affluent Porsche customers who dropped their cars for service. One day, after seeing so many of the higher end machines being serviced, he mustered the strength to ask if the Porsche mechanics needed any help. The shop foreman agreed to put Dieter to work and he was to clean parts on the state-of-the-art Porsche street/race car, the 550 Spyder. “I got to work on those cars from nearly day one” stated Dieter. The 550’s all aluminum body, 1500cc four-cam motor, and Sebring exhaust was magnetizing to Dieter and the very first Porsche he put his hands on.
NORTH AMERICA BOUND
After nearly five years learning the ropes in Munich, Dieter set out to North America in May 1960. His first stop was Toronto, Canada where he landed a job as mechanic with Porsche importer Golden Mile Volkswagen and Porsche. It was difficult to immigrate into the United States at this time and “Canada needed workers!” exclaimed Dieter. He laid many important foundational blocks during his tenure at Golden Mile. It was here that he met his future business partner Arnold Wagner. Arnold worked as parts manager at the dealership at the time and had immigrated into Canada prior to Dieter. Arnold had studied to be a cabinet maker in Germany but found success early running inventories for BMW, Porsche, and Volkswagen. Golden Mile was the sole Porsche and Volkswagen importer into Canada. This meant they had state of the art facilities, a large workshop, and direct access to Porsche factory parts. One of the perks of Dieter’s job was access to parts which helped him when he was building his 1960 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. This was the beginning of a lifelong career modifying cars, specifically Porsches.
Dieter with his parents behind, boarding a vessel to North America, May 1960.
BUILDING BACKYARD BOMBERS
“The dealership would not let us use their shop, so we started putting Porsche engines, brakes, and other parts on our Volkswagens in our friends’ backyards or garages in Toronto. We built engines out in the open on 55-gallon drums and a shoestring budget,” laughed Dieter. These trick cars Dieter and his friends built were found competing in the Canadian Championships, ice racing in the Toronto winters, or in gymkhanas in the summer. Long before Ken Block made gymkhana a household name, many speed fiends were experimenting with this early form of autocross. The main difference from the standard autocross was the incorporation of more technical stunt type driving such as 180—or 360— degree slides, reversals, or full-on drifts. After three years at Golden Mile servicing customer cars and race cars owned by the likes of Peter Ryan, Rudi Bartling, Horst Kroll, and Ludwig Heimrath, Dieter and Arnold headed together out West to Vancouver, B.C in 1963. Two years later, a hot-rodded Karmann Ghia and a 1951 Pre-A Porsche 356, piloted by Dieter and Arnold and their wives, crossed the border into Washington and continued heading south to California.
DESTINATION: VASEK POLAK MANHATTAN BEACH
Vasek Polak’s first Porsche dealership was a single-family home with four lifts in a garage out back and a separate woodshed they would perform alignment services in. The actual house served as the showroom and parts department. In May of 1965, Arnold took a position as parts manager and Dieter as a mechanic at Vasek Polak. With California’s blossoming admiration for Porsche, the humble dealership beginnings did not diminish the German brand by any means. After quickly outgrowing the Manhattan Beach location, Vasek Polak Porsche moved to Hermosa Beach in 1967 where a larger showroom and eight service bays awaited. Polak still kept his BMW dealership in Manhattan Beach, but the Porsche business was booming and they desperately needed more space. In 1970, a third important name was introduced to the Vasek Polak family, Alwin Springer. Prior to joining Vasek Polak, Alwin had followed in similar footsteps as Dieter and Arnold. He also spent time working at Golden Mile Volkswagen in Toronto before emigrating to America and joining his soon-to-be business partners.
Dieter welding a broken 906 exhaust with Mr. Vasek Polak
From the late ‘60s to the early ‘70s Dieter built Elvas, 904s, 906s, 908s, and spec 911S race cars for SCCA competition from Vasek Polak’s Hermosa beach facility. Across town, Alwin was at the BMW shop in Manhattan Beach where many of the early Porsche race cars were serviced out of the public eye. These race cars included the 917-10s campaigned by Milt Minter and Jody Scheckter. Can you imagine hearing a 1,000 horsepower, 4.5-liter, 12-cylinder, twin-turbo engine spooling and spitting fire from the service bay of a BMW dealership?
917 race car #22 in Vasek Polak’s Hermosa Beach Showroom early 70s.
By the mid-‘70s Vasek Polak had the opportunity to purchase another Porsche dealership in Santa Barbara, California. Dieter and Arnold were interested in running the new dealership but they wanted their own shares in the business. Dieter recalls Mr. Polak saying, “I’ve never had a business partner and I never will.” Feeling the glass ceiling looming, Arnold, Dieter, and Alwin ventured out on their own and formed the legendary Porsche tuning house ANDIAL in 1975: AN for Arnold, DI for Dieter and AL for Alwin.
With Arnold running the business and Dieter and Alwin running the lifts, they found a three-bay shop in Costa Mesa, California. They chose this area because of the well-known Porsche community in Newport Beach, but it was also located far enough away that they wouldn’t poach on Mr. Polak’s customer base.
One of the early rules of the ANDIAL partnership was none of the partners would take a paycheck for six months while they worked to build their business. Dieter recalls their first customer owned a Ferrari Daytona and needed some carburetor work. After ANDIAL experienced extremely long lead times on Ferrari parts it was evident that Ferrari service would not align with their startup business model. Business did quickly pick up however and “Arnold came to us within three months and said we have some money, so we started taking paychecks,” chuckles Dieter. It didn’t take long for ANDIAL to start churning out its own championship winning Porsches. “In 1977 we built a 911 Targa for Howard Meister that became national champion for the SCCA. We also were maintaining a 917-10 driven by Randolph Townsend that would also become national champion.”
Scale models of ANDIAL’s first racecars, the 917-10 and 911 Targa, both of which went on to become SCCA national champions.
It was in these same years ANDIAL also found itself building, servicing, tuning, and shipping race motors for the Porsche 934 and 935. “The police would come to our shop and loved to hear and see the engines. As long as the neighbors didn’t complain the police were good with the noise blasts,” exclaimed Dieter. The 934 and 935 engines were based on a 3.0-liter engine and later bored out to 3.2 liters with several high-performance modifications. The early 3.0-liter cars had twin-spark ignition and a single turbo while the later 3.2-liter cars had twin turbos. The power range was 550 to 600 horsepower for the early 3.0-liter engines while the 3.2-liter powerplants were tuned to 700 horses in qualifying trim but dialed back to 600 to 650 for races. In fact, some drivers would control the boost from within the car and were able to increase boost where and when they needed it on the track. “Rolf Stommelen was one driver that used this trick up his sleeve at many races,” said Dieter. Stommelen unfortunately passed away behind the wheel of a 935 at the 1983 Los Angeles Times Grand Prix at Riverside Raceway.
By 1980, ANDIAL had outgrown its first shop and relocated to Santa Ana, California in a brand-new industrial park built to suit. The new shop had three 16-foot bay doors and a total of eight lifts inside. In the early ‘80s ANDIAL employed 12 to 14 people. By 1987, it jumped to 27 employees and added an additional 6,000 sq. ft. building next door dedicated to building race engines. “Racing is here one day and could be gone tomorrow, so street business still had to be our baseline,” explained Dieter. However, with the introduction of the Porsche 962, ANDIAL became the premier U.S. powerhouse, churning out numerous race-winning engines. “We used Al Holbert’s #14 prototype 962 as our test mule. Al always led the first race with our tweaks. But, in the next races, when we implemented what we learned onto the other cars, the cars evened out.” There were a dozen or more 962 teams using ANDIAL built engines, a who’s who of racing legends such as A.J. Foyt, Bobby Rahal, Al Unser Jr., Hans Stuck, Derek Bell, and Jochen Mass to name a few.
A.J. Foyt, Derek Bell and Dieter.
When race day came, the ANDIAL team would run up and down the pits attending to all their customer cars. “December to January was always hectic due to the 24 Hours of Daytona” recalls Dieter. “We had our 962 cars, RSRs, 935s and even 2.5-liter cars all racing.” With 962 engine services ranging from $15 to $40,000, it was feast or famine. “Some teams didn’t have sponsorships lined up until late December or early January, so they pushed us out to the last minute because they finally had money to pay for it!”
Between 1984 and 1989, the ANDIAL team had taken more than 50 wins with its 962-engine program. “The 962 was the pinnacle of ANDIAL racing history,” summarized Dieter. Hanging in Dieter’s living room is a very special poster “0-50 in 4.6 years” symbolizing the enormous success of their involvement with the 962. One very special win was the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1989 where Jim Busby’s Miller High Life 962 took first place.
In the early ‘90s, there was to be a U.S. Carrera Cup Series where a total of 45 964 Carrera 2 Porsches would duke it out as “filler material” between larger races. These Cup Cars arrived in the U.S. in street legal guise to avoid any import issues with customs. “Getting the interior glue out of those cars was a real pain, it would take someone two or three days,” remembers Dieter. ANDIAL set off to prepare these 964s for their new life as race cars, but by the time ANDIAL converted 25 cars Porsche pulled the plug because the series could not find a title sponsor. So, the 25 cars were reconverted back to street cars by ANDIAL and all 45 Cup cars eventually found homes at Porsche dealerships across the U.S.A. The $13,740 “Carrera Cup Edition” option was added to the base price of your standard $63,900 Carrera 2. These Carrera Cup cars are now one of the most highly coveted versions of the Porsche 964. In fact, one ANDIAL converted car fetched $335,000 on Bring a Trailer in 2020.
ANDIAL SPLITS
In 1997 ANDIAL split the company between its street and racing business. The racing portion of ANDIAL now became factory Porsche Motorsport and was led by ANDIAL co-founder Alwin Springer. Dieter and Arnold Wagner kept the ANDIAL name, the street business, and committed to pushing the limits of Stuttgart’s latest and greatest offerings. One very special car was the 993 Turbo. ANDIAL built 24 993 Turbos by customer request. For an additional price of $75,000 you could send your 993 Turbo to ANDIAL to receive an increase to 3.8 liters, twin ignition, larger GT1 street turbos, unique ANDIAL intercooler, and a custom ECU. These performance tweaks would take your stock factory 400 horsepower 993 Turbo to a whopping 570 on pump gas or 630 on 100-octane “All by the flip of a switch,” points out Dieter. The ANDIAL cars didn’t flaunt with flashy exterior upgrades, however their 993 Turbos needed upgraded front rotors, Brembo calipers, and higher performance pads all around which were cooled by the factory “S” front bumper mounted air ducts. The suspension work consisted of more robust front and rear sway bars and tuned Bilstein suspension offering what Dieter calls “a street car feel, not a race car feel.” The car featured in this article is Dieter’s very own Polar Silver ANDIAL 993 Turbo.
In 2005 Dieter and Arnold went into what Dieter calls “semi-retirement” and moved the ANDIAL business to the location you see pictured here. ANDIAL went back to its humble beginnings as a threeman team but sadly, Arnold Wagner passed away in 2011 at the age of 75. Over the next few years, running the day-to-day business became increasingly heavy and exhausting on Dieter. However in 2013, Porsche paid him the ultimate compliment, purchasing the name ANDIAL paying homage to the significant contribution to Porsche history. The name ANDIAL can now be seen on limited edition Porsche Motorsport watches, hats and shirts by Luftgekuhlt, or even on modern-day Porsche race cars reflecting their motorsport heritage.
Although the Ferrari business never quite picked up, Dieter now maintains a fleet of Italian bicycles and has a strict regimen of pedaling 150+ miles a week with a group of friends. He still turns wrenches on his own cars and those of close friends or colleagues from Porsche past. From time to time, he will make a guest appearance at the Porsche Experience Center workshop in Los Angeles when a historic race car needs an expert touch or he may travel east to supervise an iconic run of an elite fleet of Porsche 906s.
Dieter is proof that age is just a number and being old or young is only a state of mind. He still derives much enjoyment driving his 993 Turbo, built over 25 years ago, holding its own against modern supercars. In many ways age is just a number to cars too.
Special thanks to Bob Ruder and his “Red Rocket” 993 Turbo for the introduction to Dieter.
Very special thanks to Jeff Zwart and the Petersen Museum.
