RARELY has a 911 Turbo with 480 horses been driven so sedately. But knowing that the 'track' is Orchard Road - on a busy Friday afternoon - and that a minister is in the passenger seat, does help to keep things in perspective.

The cruise in the red 911 was part of Porsche Pit Stop Singapore, a commemoration of everything that bears the Porsche badge.

Firstly, the one-day event at the Padang yesterday was a showcase of the German sports car maker's motorsports heritage. Secondly, it was the first-ever launch of the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia season in Singapore as a support race to the inaugural 2008 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix.

Thirdly, it celebrated the 20th anniversary this year of the Porsche Club Singapore. And fourthly, it was the premiere of a new model here - the Porsche Cayenne GTS.

By doing so, Porsche Asia Pacific and the Eurokars Group, which distributes Porsche cars here, managed to combine everything in a single event for a bigger bang.

To mark the occasion, Eurokars Group executive chairman Karsono Kwee made yet another donation. This time, Mr Kwee, who has been actively supporting various charities since the 1990s, gave $50,000 to the Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund and another $50,000 to the MILK Fund.

The day began with the inaugural Porsche Commemorative Drive. It comprised about 100 contemporary and historic Porsches, including a limited-edition Carrera GT supercar, and they were led by Mr Kwee in the 911 Turbo. On board with him was the Minister of State for Trade and Industry, S Iswaran, the man behind the effort to bring F1 to Singapore.

Other delectable Porsche models included the 911 GT3 RSR and the Cayenne S Transsyberia and they all travelled in a convoy from Dempsey Road, down Orchard Road before ending up with a 'pit stop' at the Singapore Cricket Club. There, the 100 Porsches assembled themselves for the public to view and drool over.

And perhaps to ensure that Eurokars will continue to sell Porsches to the next generation of owners, there was the debut of the Porsche Kids Driving School. The aim of this school is to promote motorsports awareness, as well as enhance road safety education and good road etiquette. So, in their Porsche 911 pedal cars, children between the ages of five and 10 got to learn about basic traffic rules and road signs.

The highlight for the kids, however, was driving, or rather pedalling, the Porsches under professional supervision - under the guise of applying and following the traffic rules they had just learnt, of course.

But amid all the fun, the hope is that these young drivers will also learn to pay attention to other road users like pedestrians at junctions and crossings, thus cultivating good road etiquette from a tender age. That way, no one has any excuse to say that sports-car drivers are all jerks.

This article was first published in The Business Times on Mar 15, 2008.