Porsche participated in this year's Gdynia Design Days, a Polish art festival. The automaker asked conceptual artists Ada Zielinska and Rafal Dominik to create a unique art installation. The two latched onto this year's themes – the ocean and climate change – deciding to create an artificial reef on the iconic sports car.
"People are creating reefs with old cars and sunken ships today and we thought it would be interesting to use a classic 911 in a similar way, and to display it right by the s itself," said Zielinska.
Gallery: Porsche 911 "Sunken Romance” Art Car
The artists had a challenge finding someone to loan their 911 to them. Porsche Poland Marketing Director Marek Sworowski began searching for a suitable vehicle, eventually discovering a 1973 911T that the owner was about to restore.
Zielinska and Dominik used 3D printing and crushed seashells to create the art car. It took an "intensive" two-week period to complete, bonding the finished forms to the vehicle. It was unrecognizable after completion. The car, titled "Sunken Romance," debuted for the first time at the festival. A crane hoisted it over Gdynia's harbor, and it caught peoples' attention.
"A lot of people were quite shocked and really thought it had been taken out of the sea," Zielinska added. "People were running toward it from all directions, pulling out their phones to take photos."
After the festival, the car was stripped of the artificial coral reef and attachments and returned to the owner so he could begin the restoration work. However, Zielinska would later contact Porsche to create a film exploring the art pieces imagined origin story.
Porsche has commissioned several art pieces over the last few years, turning its models into exciting creations. Last month, the automaker showed off a giant race car driver playing with a new Porsche 911, and there have been smaller creations, too. Porsche revealed two art cars based on the Taycan and Taycan Cross Turismo in 2022. Two artists gave the vehicles distinct exteriors.
