Randy Leffingwell wrote his first book, American Muscle, while still on staff at the Los Angeles Times. The book examined Times' publisher Otis Chandler's growing collection of muscle cars. American Muscle published in September 1990, jump-started a love of book creation that ultimately led Leffingwell to leave the Times in 1995. By then, he and Motorbooks had published Porsche Legends, and six other books.
Since 1990, Leffingwell has authored more than 60 titles, most of them automotive-oriented. Over 30-plus years, 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. During this time, he has regularly traveled to Germany to continue his research regarding Porsche's history. To date, Leffingwell has interviewed more than 200 Porsche engineers, stylists, model makers, racers, and managers.
While he has tackled other subjects including John Deere tractors, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and West Coast lighthouses, Leffingwell admits he is almost addicted to the Porsche story. In addition to his book work, he is historical editor for
000 magazine and
PorschePanorama. 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.
