An empty two-lane road running through red desert rock towards distant mountains

About Cars & Culture

A Car Is Never Just a Car

Cars are machines. We rarely remember them for their numbers. We remember everything around them.

01

It Started With Cars

Long before there was a magazine, there was a boy who couldn’t walk past a parked car without looking twice.

Cars were there from the very beginning. And growing up around them, the interest never stayed at a distance. It meant asking questions — endless questions — and slowly understanding that a car is less an object than a collection of decisions, repairs and memories.

Cars & Culture was founded by Grispin Bauknecht, who never really grew out of looking twice.

A driver’s hands on the steering wheel at dusk, city lights blurred beyond the windscreen
Where it begins: a seat, a wheel, a road.

02The Beginning

Podcast cover: the words Cars & Culture in green, white and orange neon lettering, with two neon sports cars either side of the ampersand
Episodes still online Cars & Culture – Car Talk with Zayd and Grispin

Then Came a Microphone

Long before the microphone, there were road trips. Grispin and Zayd — best friends since school — spent them the way car people do: talking about cars, pointing at cars and taking the long way round whenever they could.

Somewhere along those roads, the obvious idea arrived. Why not record the conversation?

That became Cars & Culture – Car Talk with Zayd and Grispin: two friends talking about cars, the culture around them and the stories that never fit into a data sheet.

— So what’s your favourite car?

— Wrong question. Ask me which one I can’t forget.

We no longer record new episodes, but every episode is still online. And it is where the idea behind everything else on this site first took shape.

03

The Conversation Got Bigger

  1. Where it began · Still online Podcast Two voices
  2. Now · You are here Magazine Words, photographs, people
  3. Next chapter Meets People and cars, in person

A podcast is a good home for a conversation. But some stories need more than voices. They need photographs, interviews and the time to be told properly.

So Cars & Culture grew. The microphone has gone quiet, but the episodes are still there to listen to. Next to them came the magazine — a place for writing, photography, portraits and features that take their time.

The question behind both has never changed: what’s the story behind the car?

Same conversation. More room.

04What we believe

The story matters more than the spec sheet.

A yellow vintage camper van driving away down a desert road between red rock formations
No spec sheet has ever told anyone where a car is going.

Horsepower, torque, 0–100 times, production numbers. They have their place. They are just not why we remember cars.

We remember the car that took us to the sea for the first time. The one a parent refused to sell. The one that broke down in the wrong place and turned a trip into a story. A car can stand for an era, a design movement, an engineering philosophy or a stubborn idea about how things should be built. It can mean freedom, rebellion, craftsmanship, status or simply company on a long road.

Some cars have grown entire cultures around themselves. That is what we want to explore. Why does this car matter to people? What makes someone keep the same car for thirty years? Why does an old car, slower and less capable, sometimes move us more than anything new?

And why do people get up early on a Sunday just to stand in a car park with strangers who understand?

Technical data The Cars & Culture edition
Power
420 hp Who taught you to drive it?
0–100 km/h
4.2 s Where did it take you?
Torque
480 Nm What did it take to keep it?
Top speed
293 km/h Who was sitting beside you?
Units built
1,500 Why is this one still here?

Every kind of car, as long as there is a story

  • Classics
  • Sports cars
  • Supercars
  • Race cars
  • Off-roaders
  • Forgotten cars
  • Affordable heroes
  • Restored
  • Modified
  • Completely original

The deciding factor is never price, performance or prestige.

05

Every Car Has Its People

A mechanic in a cap smiles beside the open bonnet of a yellow car in his workshop
The owners, restorers, mechanics and builders — the people a car belongs to.

Behind every interesting car is someone who refused to let it go.

Collectors and first-time owners. Restorers, mechanics, designers and engineers. Racers, photographers, builders and the people who started a business because they couldn’t imagine doing anything else. People are at the centre of Cars & Culture, because cars only ever mean something through them.

When we visit a workshop or a company, we are not there to write its brochure.

Questions we rarely ask

  • When was the company founded?
  • How many employees do you have?
  • What services do you offer?

Questions we always ask

  • Why did you start?
  • Which car changed your career?
  • Which project nearly defeated you?
  • What’s sitting in the corner that nobody knows about?
  • Which car would you never sell?

We’ll rarely ask how many people work here. We’ll ask which car you’d never sell.

06Editor’s note

The cars that took me deeper.

I don’t have a collection. I have a handful of cars that each pulled me a little further in. In order:

  1. 2019

    Jeep Wrangler My first car · Still in the garage

    Red, square and still here. The one that started it all.

  2. 2019

    Porsche Boxster Owned in 2022

    A completely different idea of what a car can be — and the first one I drove simply for the drive.

  3. 1942

    Willys MB Still in the garage

    The Wrangler led me back to where it all began: the original Jeep. A specialist workshop took it apart, and helping them was the first — and so far only — time I really got my hands dirty. Life then got busy, and a second workshop put it back together without me.

    But by then the lesson had already happened. Seeing a car in pieces changes how you see it. Every worn edge has a reason. Every old repair says something about the person who made it, decades before you.

  4. 2023

    BMW M440i Convertible Owned 2023–2025

    Roof down, long distances, new roads.

  5. 2025

    BMW M2 G87 · Since 2025

    The current chapter — and the one most likely to take the long way home.

A workshop wall lined with spanners and tools above a workbench
In pieces, a car starts to explain itself.
Hands turning a spanner deep inside an engine bay

None of these cars mattered to me because of its numbers. Each one mattered because of what it changed — where it took me, who was in the passenger seat, what it taught me.

That is the spirit behind every story on these pages. Spend time with a car, even if it is only the time it takes to take it apart, and it starts to tell you things.

Grispin Bauknecht Founder, Cars & Culture

07The dream garage

Still on the list.

Every car person has a list. Mine has 86 cars on it, from the 1950s to the newest hypercars. Some of them I may never see in person. That has never been the point of a list like this.

Cars
86
Marques
5
Status
Someday

Ferrari

21 cars

01

Why it’s on the list · No. 1

Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder

Elegant, beautiful, spectacular — I love everything about it.

Ferrari is my favourite marque. When I went through the list of every car Ferrari has ever built, the 250 California was the first one I wanted. It still is — number one on this list, and number one, full stop.

I think the first time I saw it was in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The film played its part, but the car had been my dream car before I ever watched it. Since then I’ve seen one in person at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este on Lake Como — and more times than I can count in photos and videos.

Long wheelbase or short, red or silver — honestly, it doesn’t matter. If I can ever afford one, I’ll buy it. And I already know where it goes first: over the mountain roads of Italy and the Swiss Alps, with my girlfriend in the passenger seat.

First seen
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Seen in person
Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este
Version
LWB or SWB — either
Colour
Any
First drive
Italy and the Swiss Alps
  1. 01250 GT California Spyder Story
  2. 02250 Testa Rossa
  3. 03250 GTO
  4. 04365 GTS/4 “Daytona”
  5. 05288 GTO
  6. 06Testarossa
  7. 07328 GTS
  8. 08F40
  9. 09F355 GTS
  10. 10Enzo Ferrari
  11. 11Scuderia Spider 16M
  12. 12599 GTO
  13. 13458 Speciale A
  14. 14F12tdf
  15. 15LaFerrari Aperta
  16. 16488 Pista Spider
  17. 17812 Competizione A
  18. 18Daytona SP3
  19. 19SF90 XX Spider
  20. 20296 Speciale A
  21. 21F80

Porsche

43 cars
  1. 01356 Speedster
  2. 02550 Spyder
  3. 03911 R (F)
  4. 04911 Carrera RS 2.7 (F)
  5. 05911 Carrera RS 3.0 (G)
  6. 06911 Turbo (930)
  7. 07911 Turbo 3.3 Flachbau (930)
  8. 08911 Speedster (G)
  9. 09959
  10. 10911 Carrera RS 3.6 (964)
  11. 11911 Turbo S Lightweight (964)
  12. 12911 Speedster (964)
  13. 13911 Turbo 3.6 (964)
  14. 14911 Carrera RS 3.8 (964)
  15. 15911 Turbo S 3.6 Flachbau (964)
  16. 16911 Carrera RS (993)
  17. 17911 Carrera RS Clubsport (993)
  18. 18911 GT2 (993)
  19. 19911 GT2 Evo (993)
  20. 20911 Turbo S (993)
  21. 21911 Carrera Speedster (993)
  22. 22911 GT1 Straßenversion
  23. 23911 GT2 (996)
  24. 24911 GT3 RS (996)
  25. 25Carrera GT
  26. 26911 Sport Classic (997)
  27. 27911 GT2 (997)
  28. 28911 GT2 RS (997)
  29. 29911 GT3 RS 4.0 (997)
  30. 30911 Speedster (997)
  31. 31911 Turbo S 918 Spyder Edition (997)
  32. 32918 Spyder
  33. 33911 Club Coupé (991)
  34. 34911 R (991)
  35. 35911 Turbo S Exclusive Series (991)
  36. 36911 GT2 RS (991)
  37. 37911 GT3 RS (991)
  38. 38911 GT2 RS Clubsport (991)
  39. 39911 Speedster (991)
  40. 40911 Sport Classic (992)
  41. 41911 Dakar (992)
  42. 42911 S/T (992)
  43. 43911 GT3 RS (992)

McLaren

5 cars
  1. 01F1
  2. 02P1
  3. 03Senna
  4. 04Speedtail
  5. 05W1

Lamborghini

11 cars
  1. 01350 GT
  2. 02Miura SV
  3. 03Countach LP400 “Periscopio”
  4. 04Diablo GT
  5. 05Murciélago LP670-4 SuperVeloce
  6. 06Reventón Roadster
  7. 07Aventador SVJ Roadster
  8. 08Veneno Roadster
  9. 09Centenario Roadster
  10. 10Sián Roadster
  11. 11Countach LPI 800-4

Mercedes-Benz

6 cars
  1. 01300 SL
  2. 02300 SL Roadster
  3. 03CLK GTR
  4. 04SLR McLaren 722 Edition
  5. 05SLS AMG Black Series
  6. 06Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series

A list like this is never finished. That’s the point.

08Independent automotive publication

Independent by Design

Cars & Culture is independent. No manufacturer decides what we cover, and no press release decides how we tell it.

That freedom is what allows a priceless collector’s car to share a week with someone’s modest weekend project. Before every story, there is only one question: is there a story worth telling?

Partnerships and advertising may one day help keep the magazine running. They will never decide the story. And we publish in English for a simple reason: car culture doesn’t stop at borders, so neither do we.

09

Beyond the Magazine

A row of parked cars lined up side by side, headlights catching the light
The best part of any meet is the conversation in between the cars.
  1. PodcastStill online
  2. MagazineCurrent chapter
  3. MeetsNext chapter

Today, Cars & Culture is a digital magazine, with the podcast episodes where it all began still online. The magazine is the foundation, and it is where our energy goes right now.

But a magazine about car culture shouldn’t only be read. The next chapter is bringing people together in person: Cars & Culture Meets — early mornings, good coffee and the conversations that happen between parked cars.

The ambition is simple to say and long to achieve — to become one of the world’s leading magazines and communities for people who genuinely love cars and the culture around them. We are at the very beginning of that road. Which, as anyone who loves driving knows, is the best part.

Manifesto

For the ones who turn around after parking.

Who still remember the sound of the car their parents drove.

Who spend Sunday mornings in cold garages and call it rest.

For collectors and first-time owners.

For the mechanic, the photographer, the designer and the driver.

For anyone who has kept a car longer than made sense — and would do it again.

Cars are the subject.
Culture is the story.

Keep reading

Discover the Stories

Cars, people, places and the culture in between.

Get in touch

Have a Story Worth Telling?

A car you’ll never sell. A collection, a workshop, a road. If there is a story behind it, we would like to hear it.