Google Streetview Catches Porsche Prototypes Testing

Images captured by Google Streetview show engineers testing a series of new Porsche models

How technology makes the world smaller.

It used to be that automakers could test their pre-production cars on the streets and all they really had to do was avoid the car paparazzi. After all, the average person on the street couldn't really do anything about it even if they knew what they had just seen. Nowadays, well, aren't we all being watched somehow by something? And everyone has a camera phone.

Here you get a spy photographer's bonanza spotted by that ubiquitous Internet search engine turned into mad mapper of the world: Google. These images were captured by Google Streetview. Google Streetview is a project by Google to photograph each street or road to go along with its extensive Google Maps project that is literally mapping out the globe.

These images, taken on Mount Evans Toll Road high up in the Colorado Rockies, show the next-generation Porsche Cayman and Boxster, as well as the face-lifted 911 Turbo and Targa. You can even see the Porsche engineers scrambling to cover up the cars once they spotted the cameras. Porsche was likely doing some high altitude testing there.

But it still takes a human eye to spot what the camera captures and we tip our hats to our colleagues over at garage419.com for having recognized what Google had inadvertently spotted.

 

Source: garage419.com via jalopnik.com

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 dbehmoaras dbehmoaras
gotta love google
December 29, 2008 9:07 pm
 Iconic Iconic
now that is too funny. these guys actually caught my moms car driving away from her house. crazy
December 29, 2008 9:33 pm
 coopergt coopergt
WOW a few Porsches in a mine. how original!
December 29, 2008 9:51 pm
 stelvio stelvio
don't look like the next generation as the wing mirrors are still mounted on the a pillars
December 29, 2008 11:19 pm
 NISMO NISMO
It's okay though...the Google Maps Streetview van wasn't running on production tires.
December 29, 2008 11:34 pm
 tom43 tom43
You can see these spectacular "new" Boxster and Cayman models at your german dealer around the corner... How old are these pics? Is this really worth to mention?
December 30, 2008 6:00 am
 jpm jpm
not sure it's about the exclusivity of the shots more than incredibly 'public' world we live in. there was a statistic i read in the Economist recently that stated the average Londoner is caught on cctv 300 times per day. and the average american is subjected to an average of 100 adverts before they even get to work, this of course is dependent on the means by which one travels to work.
December 30, 2008 2:40 pm
 miller miller
is so cool GO googel
December 30, 2008 5:39 pm
 wjaprep wjaprep
These look like the current Boxster, I think googlemaps hasnt been updated in like 2 years.
December 30, 2008 6:29 pm
 Meeshka Meeshka
That's very true that the pictures have not been updated, but in fact they have not been updated in the past half a year. Google's "street view" only debuted in the past year, year and a half maximum.
January 3, 2009 10:30 pm
these are the soon to be recent models. Thats the first generation Porshe cayman clearly. key features are the tail lights, head lights, and tailpipes.the same goes for the "current" 911 in this picture.
January 1, 2009 2:42 pm
 ck314 ck314
©2008 clearly those pics can't be those of the 2012-2013 Cayman but the recently restyled one, probably doing high altitude tests on the new gen direct injection engines.
January 2, 2009 4:07 pm