Skip Kuhn

Robert "Skip" Kuhn, is currently a technical and engineering consultant to the automotive industry including OEMs and suppliers, both domestically and abroad. Skip has worked in the automotive industry for 30 years and has been an automotive and driving enthusiast for as long as he can remember. During the last 11 years, Skip has been working as an engineering technical consultant, which has afforded him the opportunity to greatly expand both his knowledge and experience in the automotive arena.

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Articles by Skip Kuhn

• Are millennials interested in stick shifts?

  Monday, April 17, 2017

  As a father of four millennials and a car enthusiast, I have (not surprisingly) made some observations concerning that millennial generation, manual transmissions and performance/competition driving in general. While not a compendium of all my many varied and mostly useless observations over the last 24 years, these are my most recent.

• The right car for the right teenager

  Monday, February 06, 2017

  A few weeks ago, I was bantering with my cab driver (no Uber here) about cars and Porsches and my somewhat nostalgia-driven 944 habit, when he asked me what car I would recommend he get for his teenaged child. Now, I’ve made it a habit not to recommend specific makes and models unless we are talking about hobby cars (like Porsches), so what I did offer was my standard initial response of "Why do you want to give them a car?" along with my opinions about what his considerations and concerns should be.

• Just fix the car already

  Monday, October 31, 2016

  Last weekend was the annual weekend for getting the garage ready for another Michigan winter. This involves getting all of the cars, the lawn tractor, etc., back into the garage in a somewhat orderly and efficient arrangement — with the goal being that I can work on any of the four cars during the winter without having to put one of them outside to make working space.

• The excitement of Porsche shopping on Craigslist

  Friday, July 29, 2016

  Shop, click, and find a car online, whatever style dot com. Car buying made easy. Yay, what fun! Might as well look for one with an automatic transmission while I’m at it. Whatever happened to scanning the classifieds in the Sunday morning paper with that intangible sense of adventure and anticipation that comes with finding what you are certain could be just the right car in just the right condition based only on a brief description and local phone number?

• Reaching the journey’s end

  Monday, June 13, 2016

  As summer begins to heat up, I'm reminded about how much I love autumn. So many journeys in my life seemed to have started in the beauty and magic of a clear autumn day.

• A quick education on buying classic cars

  Monday, March 28, 2016

  Spring is upon us, and quite predictably I have found another car to add to my garage. My primary excuses were: I just sold two cars; the brown 944 project is finished and ready to go; and this was a good deal on what could be a ready to go "driver."

• Movies to satisfy your racing fix in winter

  Friday, January 29, 2016

  Since I’m rarely in attendance at Rally Sport Region events, I really enjoy researching and collecting videos and books documenting racing and race cars as they were in the 1960s through 1980s, with occasional forays into the 1950s and other more eclectic topics. On a business to China while watching "2 Fast 2 Furious," I got to thinking about the necessity for developing an emergency entertainment plan for when I'm traveling, stranded on a desert isle with solar powered video equipment, or just plain procrastinating about working in the garage.

• Forget technology — Here’s how to ‘connect’ with your car

  Friday, September 25, 2015

  Cars and driver "connectivity" have recently become a topic of much discussion and debate. Technology content, infotainment and virtual connectivity all seem to be the metrics by which a growing portion of the driving public defines the performance or desirability of an automobile.

• How Porsche prototypes captured my attention as a kid

  Friday, July 10, 2015

  Back in grade school, I remember finding a fictional story in the school library about racing at Le Mans and poring over it cover to cover several times. If I recall correctly, it was set in the 1950s and followed the exploits and competition between various drivers wielding Jaguars and Ferraris around Circuit La Sarthe in the traditional 24-hour-long endurance test.

• If you like vintage Porsches, try these 2 road trips

  Monday, April 20, 2015

  Spring is upon us, and what better way to start the good weather season than with a road trip? Road trips are special, of course, in that they exist to accomplish one of three basic goals: see something, do something or get (buy) something.

• What you need to know about maintaining a 944

  Monday, February 09, 2015

  944s are great cars that can be had at a really reasonable price. What seems to cause consternation among some first-time buyers is the cost of ownership when things like timing belts and clutches come due for service. That's when the grumbling begins. Porsche cars require Porsche maintenance, new, used or otherwise.

• Finding your point of entry to the timeless world of Porsche

  Monday, November 17, 2014

  Back in July, I made a couple of observations about the current Porsche business model. The first one was that an entry-level Porsche was best defined as a used Porsche. Whether that means a 30-year-old 944 or a 12-year-old 996, it's a big difference compared to new Porsches starting at the $60,000 range — not what one would traditionally call entry-level pricing.

• The not-so-risky business of driver safety

  Monday, September 08, 2014

  I'm fortunate to have four great children, three of whom are of driving age. Consequently, when it comes to driving, what they learn and how they learn it is one of my priorities. As a consequence of this, my approach to driver education prioritizes training and experience.

• Then and now: Examining Porsche through the years

  Monday, July 07, 2014

  Last month, my good friend and I repeated our yearly tradition of screening the film "Le Mans." We usually do so during the weekend of the running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans as our schedules permit, and this year was fortuitous as we actually got to screen "Le Mans" on the weekend of the actual race.

• Stemming the tide: Let’s save the manual transmission

  Monday, April 28, 2014

  ​What is a manually-shifted car? After 30 years as an engineer in the automotive industry and 36 years of driving more cars than I have fingers, toes and hair follicles, I think my definition fits with others Porsche owners of like mind.