It's been two years since Classic Driver and Marks Feinkost teamed up to create a casual cars & coffee meet during IAA Mobility in Munich. After all, the delicatessen store and cafe founded by Cornelius Dornier and run by Kaspar Triller is a hot spot of the local car community and many of the city's collectors. Simply named Marks & Cars, the first edition of our little event was a big success with the crowd — and we were immensely proud about an Audi Le Mans racer we managed to park curbside in front of the cafe tables. In September 2024, Marks & Cars returned with a homage to Marcello Gandini and the icons of wedge design, starring many of the grandmaster's creations from the Maserati Khamsin to the BMW Garmisch.
Fast-forward to 2025, and we struggled to understand how things had escalated that quickly: Our innocent idea to celebrate the spirits of motorsports with a display of cool track toys was embraced enthusiastically by our local friends as well as some of the biggest carmakers — and on a casual Tuesday morning we were standing in front of Marks Feinkost at Kufsteiner Platz in Munich Bogenhausen, coffee and croissant in hand, orchestrating a fleet of 28 racing machines, many of them driven to victory at the world's greatest races and worth 8-figure-sums, towards their dedicated roadside parking spots. For the last months, we had been working frenetically to curate a selection of cars that would surprise even hard-boiled petrolheads, and this morning it seemed like we had reached our goal.
In front of the cafe, the Porsche Museum had lined up some of the brand's greatest endurance racers, starting with a Gulf-liveried Porsche Gulf driven by Pedro Rodríguez and Leo Kinnunen at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1970, and a Rothmans Works-Porsche 956 piloted at the Nürburgring 1000 KM in 1983 by Jackie Ickx and Jochen Mass. Paying homage to the great racing driver (and fine human being) who passed away earlier this year, our friends from Rennmeister had brought a bright orange Jägermeister Racing Porsche 962 which also had been raced in period by Jochen Mass. Leaping into contemporary motorsports history, Porsche had added two amazing modern racecars to the mix — one of the three Porsche 919s that raced to triple victory at Le Mans in 2015 and a Porsche 963 that won the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2024.
We doubt that a similar line-up has ever roamed the streets of Munich, or any other city, before. But around the corner, there was more to see: Parked directly in front of the tables where the Marks & Cars guests were enjoying their morning coffee, there was another display of motorsports variety, starting with a Williams F1 monocoque racers from the BMW Classic vault, followed by the very Bentley Speed 8 that was raced to victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2003 by Tom Kristensen. This breathtakingly elegant and impressive machine might have been enough to make racing enthusiasts tremble, but the Bentley was followed by a Fina-liveried McLaren F1 GTR entered into the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans by BMW Motorsport and driven by J.J. Lehto, Steve Soper, and Nelson Piquet. Number four in line was one of our childhood heroes and favourite racecars of all time, the unforgettable Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO with it's mindblowing silhouette body and iconic aero wheels.
The madness continued on the other side of the road where two more Le Mans legends were casually parked alongside the curb. First there was the BMW V12 LMR #15 driven to victory by Pierluigi Martini, Yannick Dalmas, and Joachim Winkelhock in the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, securing BMW's first and only overall win at the prestigious race. Parked right behind it stood the Audi Sport Team Joest LMP900 which won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2000 with Frank Biela, Tom Kristensen and Emanuele Pirro on the wheel. The two winner cars were followed by a nimble, but iconic and sculpturally beautiful March-BMW Formula 2 monocoque racer from the Jägermeister Racing stables once driven by Jochen Mass. On the other end, and instead of the usual Volkswagen and Volvo family cars, there were more contemporary GT-class racing machines from the stables of Porsche Motorsports and Bentley, still carrying the marks of their challenges.
Near the bus stop, we had paid reference to racing royalty from the golden era of motor racing, starting with the Shelby Ford GT40 chassis GT 106 — the famous black-and-white prototype and Ford Works car that was driven by Bruce Mc Laren and Ken Miles in the 1965 Le Mans 24 Hours, reaching a mind-bending top speed of 342 km/h. At Marks & Cars, it was flanked by the 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint regularly piloted in historic racing by Floyd's Bernd Georgi and Vanina Ickx. Furthermore, there were two remarkable Porsches, a Porsche 3.0 RSR from the Banzai garage and a beautiful silver 904 GTS from our Weekend Heroes friend Christophe Schmidt — who, by the way, played a crutial role in Marks & Cars from day one, helping us to source many important cars. Last in line were a pearl white Aston Martin DB3S from the Golden Age Collection which we had last encountered at The ICE St. Moritz and OKP Racing's Kamm-tailed Alfa Romeo Guilietta SZ.
Leaping from the 1960s and 1970s right into the future of automotive performance, we had teamed up with Ionity and dedicated the center of Kufsteiner Platz to electric vehicles with a twist: BMW had brought the VDX prototype, an experimental high-performance test vehicle sporting18,000 Nm of torque and an active aerodynamic system generating 1.2 tons of downforce. The car was presented by BMW's full design team, including Adrian van Hooydonk, Oliver Heilmer and Tobias Krengel, who arrived at Marks & Cars with their freshly-revealed BMW Neue Klasse iX3. Right next to the BMW stood the mind-bending Audi S1 Hoonitron, the all-electric, one-off prototype of a Gymkhana racer inspired by the original Audi Sport Quattro S1 Quattro and Pikes Peak monsters of the 1980s and polited sideways through Las Vegas by the late drift artist Ken Block in 2022.
On the other side of the Ionity charging pole stood a championship-winning Formula E racer from the Auriga collection and a Rimac Nevera R. Soon after the start of the event, the crowd parted for a dark-blue Bugatti Chiron Supersports on Croatian numberplates driven by Mate Rimac — the charismatic CEO of Bugatti and Rimac had kindly showed up and walk us through his vision for an electrified future of the automobile.
It was the first of a series of outdoor conversations moderated by Classic Driver's CEO J.P. Rathgen. After this glimpse into the future of mobility, the next talks took a deep-dive into the history of motorsports: Ferdi Porsche, multiple FIA championship and Le Mans winner Marc Lieb and Bastian Schramm, Porsche Germany's Head of Marketing, allowed the listeners a glimpse into the workflows of Porsche's motorsports department and the history of FAT International while Bentley CEO and former Porsche motorsport strategist Frank-Steffen Walliser shared some highly entertaining memories from his racing days.
Last but not least, we had even managed to convince two real-life racing heroes: Karl Wendlinger had raced in all motorsports genres, from Formula 1 to DTM and the FIA GT while Tom Kristensen has claimed nine Le Mans overall victories — more than any other racing driver has ever archived. Tom had flown in from his home in Denmark and was happy to be reunited with two of his Le Mans winner cars, the Audi Sport Team Joest LMP900 and the Bentley Speed 8, which, during a quick sit-in, still fit like a glove.
Despite some intermittent downpours, the mood in the fast-growing crowd was excellent: Champagne and Leberkäs sandwhich in hand, local and international car enthusiasts mingled and chatted around Marks Feinkost and on the streets between the cars. Children petted race-worn tyres and dogs sniffed curiously at exhausts. Our friends from Audi, BMW, Bentley, Porsche, Rennmeister, Type 7 and Ruf were chatting with each other just like the big automotive family they are, and even the 'big boys' of US car collecting, Bruce Meyer and Chip Connor made a cameo appearance to check out the cars. And just when we thought we had entered motorsports heaven and nothing else could surprise us, a black Porsche Cayenne rolled onto Kufsteiner Platz to drop off Orlando Bloom, who was in town with Porsche and joined our little gathering for a few hours, injecting a dose of Hollywood spirit into our little cars & coffee meet.
On the morning after, we're obviously still pinching ourselves — did this really happen? Or was it just a dream? After all, Porsche's influential Type 7 channel already called our event "one of the best cars & coffee meets in world". What else can we archive? In case it was not a mirage, we all agreed we should do this again. Next year, even if there is no IAA in 2026. And maybe, who knows, also someplace else outside of our bubble in Munich and Germany. Meanwhile, there are even more ideas taking shape in the modest think tanks behind Marks & Cars — the wood-clad "Marks Büro" back office behind the deli's kitchen and the offices of Classic Driver and its creative agency CD Works in Zurich. Soon it will be time to make plans. But first, coffee!
Photos by Stephan Bauer for Classic Driver
