Leon Mandel 1928-2002.(Porsche enthusiast and automotive journalist)(Brief Article)(Obituary)

When Leon Mandel was a college student at Cornell University in the early 1950s, he received a modest inheritance.

He spent it all on a new Porsche 356.

``Much later, when they were speaking with me again, my parents asked `Why?' and the only answer I could offer them was that I didn't have a choice. My parents, I came to understand, had expected me to invest the sum in something like IBM,'' Mandel remembered in a keynote speech at last summer's Porsche Rennsport Reunion at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut. ``If I had invested it, in IBM or something like that, I would certainly have been wealthy within a decade.

``Instead, I bought a Porsche... and got a life.''

That life with and among cars and car people ended when Mandel, diagnosed with leukemia, died at age 73. Found in his Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, home on March 5, he appeared to have passed peacefully, ending a long and heroic battle against the disease.

Last summer at Lime Rock, with hundreds of Porsche fans anticipating the rest of his personal story, Mandel instead stepped down from the podium. Most in the infield tent knew the rest of his story, either firsthand or by reading what he wrote during more than 40 years in automotive journalism.

They knew how that 356 carried young Mandel and his beloved wife Olivia across the continent in a memorable pre-Interstate drive to San Francisco. That he had sold ``foreign'' cars in Kjell Qvale's operation, and both Mandels had gotten involved in the sports car and racing communities. How that involvement led him to activities that included racing himself, ownership of a C-Type Jaguar, working as a track announcer and as a turn marshal, even doing a little wrenching for Joe Huffaker.