Air | Water — Emory Motorsports
Orange County Fairgrounds

Air | Water 2024 landed on Saturday, April 27, at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. Gates opened at 9 a.m. and the fairgrounds filled quickly—indoor halls and outdoor plazas stitched together into one Porsche skyline. I moved between owner-driven entries and more curated “hero” placements, the mix spanning seven decades in a single walk. Under clear coastal light, you could read the contrasts: patina beside paint-to-sample, narrow bodies against modern wide hips, club plates near track rubber. It felt like a full-spectrum roll call—air-cooled lineage meeting its water-cooled descendants on neutral ground.

I gravitated to Emory’s corner because the story is as compelling as the metal. This really is a family craft: it starts with Rod’s grandfather, Neil Emory, whose Valley Custom Shop in Burbank set the template for tasteful, coachbuilt-style metalwork after 1948. In his mid-teens—age 14, then through high school—Rod built and raced his first 356 with guidance from Neil and hands-on help from his dad, Gary, the path that eventually became Emory Motorsports. Gary’s Parts Obsolete kept early Porsche projects alive for decades, and that resourcefulness still colors the cars here: purposeful stance, louvered decks, wise hardware choices. At Air | Water 2024, Gary was the draw—steady, generous, connecting swap-meet ingenuity to today’s refined outlaws while Rod’s builds spoke for themselves. The photos lean into those signatures: functional details over gloss, pieces that invite use, and a through-line from Valley Custom’s metalworking discipline to modern, road-ready 356s that still feel hand-wrought.

Air | Water grew out of the Luftgekühlt playbook. In 2023, the team extended the Mare Island weekend with a Sunday program that welcomed water-cooled Porsches alongside the air-cooled faithful—proof that the format could bridge generations. In 2024, it became a stand-alone show at the Orange County Fairgrounds, and by 2025, the concept returned there with the same blend of owner cars and spotlighted features. It’s the same curatorial DNA—Patrick Long and the Luft crew—applied at a larger scale: open, inclusive, and story-driven, with placement and lighting used to bring visitors closer to the machines.