John Ternus, who took the reins at Apple less than a month ago, reportedly owns one of 77 Porsche 935s ever built. He doesn’t just own it. He drives it, hard, at Laguna Seca, where he’s said to have posted lap times under 1:40.
That’s a 3,042-pound carbon fiber missile with 700 horsepower from a twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter flat-six, based on the bones of a 911 GT2 RS. Porsche priced them starting above $800,000 when the car launched in 2018, before options. Finding one now would cost considerably more, assuming any of the 77 owners are willing to part with theirs.
Silicon Valley CEOs are not traditionally known for their track habits. The usual fleet runs to Teslas, maybe a Mercedes S-Class with a driver. Ternus is a different animal.
A sub-1:40 at Laguna Seca won’t trouble professional drivers or the Czinger 21C’s outright lap record, but it’s quick enough to prove the man actually knows what he’s doing behind the wheel. The Corkscrew alone separates tourists from people who’ve done their homework.
The 935 itself is Porsche’s modern homage to the “Moby Dick” 935/78 that terrorized Le Mans in the late 1970s. It’s a track-only machine wearing bodywork that looks like it belongs on a grid somewhere in the FIA WEC, not parked in a Cupertino garage. Porsche built it as a celebration of its motorsport heritage, and it sold out instantly.
Ternus is also reportedly a devoted Formula 1 fan. There’s no sign Apple plans to enter the sport as a team sponsor or partner, but the company has been quietly deepening its ties to the automotive world. Apple CarPlay remains one of the most contested pieces of software in the car business, with GM famously dropping it, then reversing course on its trucks.
Ford recently chose Apple Maps over Google for its next generation of EVs. A CEO who genuinely understands cars, who can feel the difference between a well-sorted chassis and a lazy one, brings a different sensibility to those software and partnership decisions. That’s not the same as a boardroom executive reading a strategy deck about “mobility ecosystems.”
Whether that translates into anything tangible for Apple’s automotive ambitions remains to be seen. The company famously killed Project Titan, its decade-long, multi-billion-dollar effort to build an Apple car, just last year. That wound is still fresh, but Ternus wasn’t the one who killed it.
Porsche has leaned into its relationship with Apple over the years, featuring Apple liveries on its motorsport cars and integrating CarPlay deeply into its infotainment systems. The two brands share a customer base that expects polish, performance, and zero tolerance for mediocrity.
Ternus running a 935 at Laguna Seca tells you something about his appetite for risk and precision that a corporate bio never could. The tech industry is full of people who collect cars. The list of people who actually drive them fast, and drive them well, is considerably shorter.
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