Howard Shoemaker's Porsche Gags Land on Type7 Clothing

Howard Shoemaker spent decades drawing Porsche jokes, and his originals are now printed on a limited run of clothing and accessories. Type7 and Porsche Lifestyle built the collection, called "A Few Minutes Off...", from a selection of his drawings, with the Shoemaker family's support. It's on sale now through Type7 and the Porsche online shop. Porsche says the collection brings his original drawings "back to life," and it does it with the jokes intact.

This is Porsche merch with a sense of humor, and that's the reason to care. Most Porsche merch leans on crests, race numbers and livery stripes. This one leans on a cartoonist who loved the cars enough to tease them.

Shoemaker Drew for Playboy and Road & Track

Shoemaker was a single panel gag cartoonist, the kind who lands a whole joke in one drawing and a caption. Playboy ran his first cartoon in August 1959, and a 1985 newspaper profile said the magazine had printed his work almost monthly since. That profile also said Road & Track readers had found one of his drawings in every issue for 24 years.

Porsche was his favorite subject. He contributed to Christophorus, the company's own magazine, and published a book of Porsche cartoons in 1964. Friends and fans called him Shoe.

His originals have a collector market of their own. At the RM Sotheby's Porsche 70th Anniversary Auction in Atlanta in October 2018, his 1984 "King & Queen" illustration, first published in Road & Track that April, sold for $1,020. A 1983 pen and watercolor called "Dr. Ferdinand Porsche X Ray" went in that sale for $600. A 1982 gag of his has a race team plastering its car in risque advertising. He was still at it decades later; a 2002 original of his, a short subject joke about car size, has been through Heritage Auctions.

That 1982 drawing tells you the register. Shoemaker's Porsche owners were proud, a little vain and always slightly in on it.

Type7 Keeps Pulling From the Porsche Archive

Type7 is the Porsche publishing and design label founded by Ted Gushue, and its clothing has always come from somewhere specific. In 2024 it built a Porsche 993 inspired Sevenwheeler capsule with the Japanese loopwheel knitter Loopwheeler and House Industries. Its own T7 track jacket, tee and hoodie already sit in the Porsche online shop, so Shoemaker's drawings are landing in a store that knows the label. Earlier this year it profiled The Carchives clothing vault, a collector's stash of vintage Porsche Selection catalogue clothing and Erich Strenger race posters.

Strenger's posters are the serious side of that archive, all bold graphics and speed. Shoemaker is the other side, the guy in the margins drawing what happens after the race, in the parking lot and the service bay. Both came out of those decades of Porsche ownership, and only one of them was ever allowed to be funny.

Porsche Lifestyle has been loosening up in other places too. This fall it released a 911 Carrera RS 2.7 coffee collection with La Marzocco, dressed in the car's white, green and tangerine colors. In Tokyo, Poggy's Porsche capsule paired a sepia brown 911 Carrera T with 12 pieces of clothing that ran from January through March 2026.

"A Few Minutes Off..." fits that run, and of the three, it's the one built on somebody's sense of humor.

Porsche Rarely Lets Itself Be the Joke

Porsche is a company that will spend 400 hours on one paint job, and its clothing usually carries that seriousness in crests, stripes and race numbers. Shoemaker's drawings ask the wearer to laugh at the car, and at the kind of person who owns one.

That's a bigger ask than it sounds. A crest says you're in the club. A Shoemaker cartoon says you know the club is a little ridiculous, which is the more confident thing to wear.

The family's support is what made it possible. His originals are scattered across private collections and auction rooms, and a collection built from them needed the people closest to his work to open it up. Even the name sounds like one of his gags, a short break from taking the car so seriously.

Road & Track readers got one of those breaks in every issue for 24 straight years. Now Porsche sells them by the piece.