Installing a stealth system in an untouchable ride.
Childhood folklore can have a grand impact on the people we become. Take the story of the tooth fairy. You leave a fallen-out tooth under your pillow, and when you wake up in the morning, lo and behold, the tiny piece of bone is gone and in its place is some cold, hard cash. Visions of candy purchases flash through your mind with which to spoil the remainder of your teeth and, hopefully, earn some more scratch. For the time being, life is good. Once the mystery is gone, though, and money stops pouring in, you realize magic like this is hard to come by in the real world.
Yet, it's just this kind of illusion that David Keenan and lead installer Jeff Brand aimed to create when he took on the project to install a high-class system in the '07 Porsche Targa 4s demo car. The goal was this: Creep into the car, remove an underwhelming factory stereo and leave behind a killer, competition-ready audio setup, all without disturbing the car's painstaking, luxurious refinements. Keenan explains, "The car's elegance and power rides a fine line and if any part the car was drastically altered you would instantly loose the power and elegance of the entire vehicle." Needless to say, it was quite a task, but along the crew from World Wide Stereo, Keenan was up to the challenge.
Knowing that the wrong head unit could clash with the rest of the Porsche's interior, the team took great care when selecting Kenwood Excelon touchscreen as the system's brain center. With a 26 band EQ, digital time alignment and digital crossovers, along with support for navigation, Bluetooth, Sirius and iPod connection, the unit supplies the car with high-end features and supreme audio control. As for the installation, Keenan reveals, "We felt the need to paint the entire plastic console assembly to ensure a perfect color match and transition back into the factory controls."
Precision was required again, when Keenan and company set out to install the Dynaudio Esotec System 362, which includes a pair each of MD 102 soft-dome tweeters, MD 142 softdome midranges, MW 172 woofers and X362 crossover networks. Because the vehicle is sensitive to added weight, they had to use insulation material sparingly, installing five square feet of Dynamat and three square feet of Dynaline into each door. For a bit of pizzazz, the team "removed the Bose logo from the door and carefully modified a Dynaudio emblem to fit. This gave the doors an amazing final touch," says Keenan.