The empanada. Not quite a pie as such, more like a Hispanic pasty but smaller, spicier and a bit more interesting. It emanates not from the southwest of England but from South America, which is where I found myself recently, talking trade secrets with a thoroughly amicable chap called Marcos Marques while both of us munched on said empanadas.
Marques is not only Porsche’s global e-fuel expert – I’d been invited to Chile to see how his company’s new e-fuel is made and to try it first-hand in a Panamera Turbo S (it’s the holy grail, potentially, but not without its challenges) – he’s also a walking encyclopaedia on Porsche engines. Actually not just Porsche engines but those throughout the VW empire. And boy has he got some secrets to tell about cars that were built but never made production.
The conversation only got going when I asked him, albeit through a smirk, what on earth Porsche was thinking when it came up with the four-cylinder 718 Cayman. He smiled at me, thought about giving the PR answer for a second, took another bite out of his empanada then said: ‘Because originally it was part of a bigger project, one that involved another car that would have made a lot more sense of the flat-four project.’
