Randy Leffingwell wrote his first book, American Muscle, while on staff at the Los Angeles Times. The book examined Times’ publisher Otis Chandler’s muscle car collection. American Muscle, published in September 1990, jump-started a love of book creation that led Leffingwell to leave the Times in 1995. By then, he had authored Porsche Legends and six other books.
To date, Leffingwell has authored more than 60 titles. These include a dozen Porsche titles ranging from general overviews—Porsche 75 Years: Expect the Unexpected, and The Complete Book of Porsche 911—to deeper explorations in Porsche Turbo and Porsche 911: 50 Years. He regularly travels to Germany to continue his Porsche-history research, and he has interviewed more than 200 Porsche engineers, stylists, model makers, racers, and managers.
While Leffingwell has tackled other subjects, including John Deere tractors, Harley-Davidson, and West Coast lighthouses, he admits he is almost addicted to Porsche’s story. In addition to his book work, he is historical editor for 000 magazine and Porsche Panorama. And for the past decade, he has been researching and writing an encyclopedic history of Porsche’s motorsports endeavors.
Leffingwell lives near Santa Barbara, California.
Harm Lagaaij was born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1946 but spent his entire youth far from Europe. Between 1947 and 1952 he lived in Ecuador and Venezuela, then attended English-language grade school in Brunei through 1960. He returned to the Netherlands for high school and then studied at the IVA (Institute for Automobiles) at Driebergen, Netherlands, graduating in 1968.
He worked at Olyslager and then Simca before joining Porsche in September 1971. He had designed the 924 by the time he left in mid-1977. Broadening his perspectives, he spent eight years as Advanced Design Studio Manager at Ford in Cologne, then three more as chief designer at BMW Technik.
Lagaaij returned to Porsche as Director of Design in January 1989, where he encouraged change, fresh thinking, and experimentation. He set the style for Porsche’s extraordinary product expansion, from the 993, 996, Boxster, Cayman, Cayenne, Carrera GT, through the 997. He retired from Porsche in September 2004.
In 2013, Lagaaij received the “Officer in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau,” the Netherlands equivalent of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Since 2021 he has been an independent automotive design consultant.
