Porsche 917
Porsche 908, 909 and 917 racing cars were the brainchilds of engineering genius Ferdinand Piëch, the grandchild of Ferdinand Porsche and nephew of Ferry Porsche. The 917 was the only Porsche model produced with the 12-cylinder engine and experimentally even with the 16-cylinder. When the new rules for the International Championship for Sports Cars were made public at the end of 1967, the team in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen decided to build a new race car for the under-five-liter class. As the successor to the successful 907 and 908 types, the 917 got an air-cooled twelve-cylinder engine. Powered by the Type 912 flat-12 engine of 4.5, 4.9, or 5 litres, the 917/30 Can-Am variant was capable of a 0-62 mph (100 km/h) time of 2.3 seconds, 0–124 mph (200 km/h) in 5.3 seconds. The long tail Langheck version had a maximum measured top speed of 362 km/h (225 mph). It was dominant, scary and probably the most insane racecar ever built. See all our Porsche 917 Research.
All
Porsche 917 Factory Racing In 1969 Porsche’s new 917 was never intended to be ready for the two Florida races, Daytona and Sebring, at the beginning of the 1969 season. As it happened, the 917 also missed the first two European races of the Championship for Manufacturers, namely Brands Hatch...
Without question, Ferdinand Piëch’s crowning glory came with the arrival of the Porsche 917 in 1969. This race car brought Porsche the one trophy that was missing from its trophy cabinet, the Le Mans 24 Hours. Remember, this was a time of great change in many aspects of life as...
On April 28, 1975 a one-off Porsche 917 race car left the Weissach development center. It headed not for a track – like every 917 before – but instead, and for the very first time, it took to public roads. It was an audacious adventure driven by the passion of...
Story by Glen Smale. All images © as stated in the book & on the DVD Brilliant…just brilliant!! I don’t often start a book review in this manner, in fact I can’t remember when I last did so, but this book and DVD set certainly deserve such a response. No...
Porsche 917 Sales Brochure The Porsche 917 is one of the most legendary race cars in motorsport history, known for dominating endurance racing and securing Porsche’s first overall victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970. Built to comply with FIA’s Group 4 homologation rules, Porsche was required...
The Porsche 917/10, introduced in 1972, was purpose-built for the Can-Am series in North America. At its heart was a mid-mounted 5.0-liter flat-12 engine, equipped with dual turbochargers, producing an extraordinary 900 horsepower. This immense power enabled the 917/10 to achieve blistering speeds of up to 240 mph, making it...
World famous icon to be auctioned in 2025 One of the most recognizable race cars of all time is coming to auction. Built by Porsche KG in 1969 for FIA-Homologation, the halo racer was converted to short tail specification by the factory in April 1970. The racer was then purchased...
Chassis #019 Campaigned by the Martini Racing Team in 1971, chassis #019 has been preserved in the same unrestored condition as when it finished the Spa 1000km race. This 917K (Kurzheck or short tail) competed in both the 1970 and ’71 seasons, racing with Porsche Salzburg during its first year...
‘It feels like a bathtub with a bomb stuck to the back of it!’ Those were the words of a shocked F1 driver, Mark Webber, after a turn at the wheel of the Porsche 917 racecar. It’s an extreme description but apt for one of the most fearsome machines ever...
With the 911 GT3 RS Tribute to Jo Siffert, Porsche is paying tribute to the late Swiss racing driver while also commemorating the first victory of the legendary 917 almost 55 years ago. On 10 August 1969, Siffert and Kurt Ahrens won the first international 1,000-kilometre race at the Österreichring...
Le Mans, the movie This Porsche 917K was immortalized as the race winner in Steve McQueen’s 1971 film Le Mans, and was the Gulf-Porsche works entry for Mike Hailwood and David Hobbs in the 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours. An icon among icons, this 917K is an incomparable example of...
The legendary Porsche 917 debuted at the Geneva Motor Show on March 12, 1969. Hans Mezger, renowned for Porsche’s flat-six boxer engine, led the development of the 917’s flat-12 engine and oversaw the entire project as lead engineer. Initially unstable at high speeds due to insufficient downforce, the 917 was...
The undisputed King The Porsche 917, conceived in the late 1960s, emerged from Porsche’s strategic intent to conquer the World Sportscar Championship, particularly the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This ambition materialized through exploiting a loophole in the homologation requirements, allowing the creation of a vehicle with unprecedented speed and...
Background The Porsche 917, unveiled in 1969, stands as a testament to Porsche’s commitment to innovation and their quest to conquer the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Its debut at Le Mans in 1969 revealed its formidable speed and reliability, yet aerodynamic issues resulted in high-speed instability. After major changes,...
The Can-Am Porsche 917 The Can-Am Race Series, held from 1966 to 1974, helped propel professional sports car racing to new heights of popularity in the United States. The series was governed by an open and simple set of rules, which created an environment that brought the most powerful and...
Renowned designer and Porsche aficionado Magnus Walker got the opportunity to get behind the wheel of a Porsche 917K replica and drive it along the breathtaking roads of Norway. At first glance, this car bears an uncanny resemblance to the iconic Le Mans legend, but this one is has been...
After claiming two Le Mans victories with the iconic 917 Kurzheck, Porsche’s Weissach engineers converted it into a Group 7 contender by 1973, boasting over 1000 bhp. The result was the L&M Porsche+Audi 917/10, driven by George Follmer and backed by Penske, which triumphed in the 1972 Can-Am Championship, outshining...
The ultimate expression of CanAm’s unique sky’s-the-limit approach to technical regulations, this 1200bhp twin-turbo monster was a sensation, rubbing salt into the opposition’s wounds by totally dominating the 1973 season after its predecessor. The Porsche 917/30 was a derivative of the 917/10 and it was the first real turbocharged racing car developed to...
Despite being 50 years old, the formidable Porsche 917/30 still boasts a power-to-weight ratio that rivals that of a modern Formula 1 car. With approximately 1200bhp generated by a 5.4-liter flat-12 engine equipped with two turbochargers, all contained within an 800kg car, the 917/30 proves its prowess on the road....
Porsche & Le Mans Newly released “Racing with Giants” video features archival footage of Le Mans past and present, along with interviews with multiple drivers and Porsche team principals, including Allan McNish, Patrick Long, Jacky Ickx and Nick Tandy. Porsche has long competed at Le Mans, though recently solely in...
Watch as Bruce Canepa gets behind the wheel of a 1969 Porsche 917K with chassis number 917-015 around the famous Laguna Seca along with other historic race cars....
With the aerodynamic instability of the 917 in the 1969, two separate configurations were used in 1970. These were the short-tail Kurzheck version and the less common Langheck or long-tail. Most of the 917’s accolades were achieved by the 917 Kurzheck, leaving the Langheck a less popular, but ultimately just...
Have you seen a Porsche 917 in action outside of Le Mans? If not, you’re in for a treat as YouTube channel, 19Bozzy92, filmed a Porsche 917 bearing the chassis number 025 racing at the Monza Circuit....
Images by: Virtual Motorpix/Glen Smale and Corporate Archives Porsche AG The Porsche 917 was the culmination of a line of race cars produced by the Stuttgart manufacturer during possibly the busiest decade, from 1964 to 1973, of its (by then) short existence. Just 21 short years after Porsche opened its...
Key Moments from the Porsche Club of America Event Below: Tech ED Event Organizer John Mueller introduces the program and event moderator Jay Gillotti. Brian Redman is a world class storyteller, a colorful, entertaining man with a bottomless well of interesting and amusing tales of his motor racing experiences. A...
The 917 Kurzheck Coupé (917K) first appeared in 1970 and contributed more to the Porsche 917 story than any other variant. It was a high-down force version that featured a cut-off tail for increased downforce. This reduced the cars top speed, as much as 30 mph, but it helped the Porsche win...
The loophole Porsche racecar Ferrari couldn’t touch! The Porsche 917 was the brainchild of engineering genius Ferdinand Piëch, the grandchild of Ferdinand Porsche and nephew of Ferry Porsche. The 917 was the only Porsche model produced with the 12-cylinder engine and experimentally even with the 16-cylinder. When the new rules...
The Porsche 917 story is among the most significant chapters of the marque’s history. More than five decades after the first iteration of the 917 broke cover, six examples gathered at the Velocity Invitational, a celebration of vintage racing on the Monterey Peninsula. No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate...
Drivers View Porsche 917K On Track A visor-cam in a $20 million Porsche 917K? Absolutely. Let driver Bruce Canepa and RACER take you inside the coveted 4.5-liter flat-12 Le Mans icon during a race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca during the recent Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion event where Canepa duels...
Porsche 917K Onboard Video filmed during Rennsport Reunion IV, in 2011 at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California. Chassis 016 was originally driven by Pedro Rodriguez and Leo Kinnunen for John Wyer’s Gulf Oil sponsored racing team during the 1970 World Sportscar Championship (what is today the World Endurance Championship,...
Driving A LeMans Race Car To Dinner! Whilst in Kansas, I got the amazing opportunity to jump behind the wheel of a Porsche 917 recreation by Kraftwerk… one of the most comprehensive replicas you can buy of the iconic 1970s race car. Even better, I get to drive it on...
Bruce Canepa Street Driving the 1969 Porsche 917 Come along for the ride in the 1969 Porsche 917 driven by Bruce Canepa in the streets....
Epic Porsche 917 On-Track Shakedown Hosted by Porsche Cars North America, Rennsport Reunion V once again brings together an extraordinary gathering of significant Porsche vintage and current racecars, as well as the motorsports figures who have designed, engineered, and driven them to victory in the world’s most famous sports car...
Porsche 917 vs Porsche 911 GT2RS James May joins the legendary Dickie Atwood to race the Porsche 917 against Neel Jani and the Porsche 911 GT2RS....
Triple test: Porsche 917, Ferrari 512S and Lola T70 Porsche 917, Ferrari 512, Lola T70 – perhaps as great a concentration of sports car heritage as you could find in a single pit garage. And Motor Sport was at Donington Park to drive them. Your chauffeur? Dario Franchitti. For the October...
Porsche 917K Racing at Spa A works car, this 917 was entered at Le Mans in 1969 for Vic Elford and Richard Attwood as a 917 LH. The British pairing led for 18 hours and by six laps until clutch issues signalled the beginning of the end for the final...
Porsche 917K Track Video This is a video of a 1969 Porsche 917 (chassis 025) racing at Monza Circuit during the “1000 km Challenge” race revival, a 3 hours race in which race cars from 1960 to 1970 compete for the victory. This Porsche 917-025 was built for Porsche AG as...
Monterey 2021—How to Start the 1970 Porsche 917 K How do you start a Porsche race car? It might be more involved than you think. Watch and listen in for a quick lesson with Paul Lanzante, owner of Unit Four Limited, as he instructs on the proper method for starting...
Porsche 917K racing at high speeds! (brutal flat-12 sound) The 917 Kurzheck is very rare and very expensive. However, on a racetrack like Spa-Francorchamps you just gotta do what you gotta do, right? Drive it like you stole it! This was recorded during the Classic Endurance Racing 1 (one hour race)...
Porsche 917K Goodness – Turn Up The Volume...
The Porsche 917 – What They Said We found some great interviews from back in the day on what drivers thought about driving the mighty 917. Below we took excerpts and quotes from the drivers who were brave enough to drive the Porsche 917. Brian Redman The below appeared in...
Some great work by one of our colleagues who managed to put together the chassis numbers for all the Porsche 917s. Chassis Number Notes Active Years Team Details 917-001 First 917 to appear in public, at the Geneva Salon in March 1969. Used for testing and announcement of partnership with...
In 1996 the 30 years of the Canadian – American Challenge Cup series were celebrated, better known as CanAm and which only ran for 9 seasons (1966-1974), although it stood out for using the cutting edge technology of the moment. The CanAm series gave more than enough action to keep it in the memory of the...
The Engines Engine Type 912 – 12 Cylinders The Porsche House made it the norm since 1967 to participate in the tests for the Manufacturers’ Championship only with new machines, because the cost of developing and building them was partially offset by the sale of the used units at the end of each season. This...
A total of 30 drivers managed to win races during the four-year period between 1968 and 1971. Here’s the breakdown: The 30 drivers who won at least one race with points for the World Brand Championship formed, among themselves, a total of 26 different winning pairs. These are the most successful:...
A Brief History In mid-1967 the International Automobile Federation (FIA) announced that it had decided to modify the regulations pertaining to the Sport Prototype, Sport and Gran Turismo categories. As a result, the World Brands Championship was on the brink of the greatest crisis in its history. Many were the...
No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
1971 Porsche 917 Langheck Pictures...
No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
1971 Porsche 917 K Pictures Visually, the “shark fins” on the tail look awesome, but they also gave the Porsche 917 KH 1971 greater directional stability and reduced wind resistance by 11 percent. ...
No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
Porsche 917 LH-69 Pictures...
The Martini team run by Hans-Dieter Dechent had three cars, two to race, and one T-car. The #3 was driven by the two Austrians, Helmut Marko and Rudi Lins Some say this was the best Daytona 24 hour ever. It certainly was the closest finish up to that point in time....
Vasily KOSTIN A cage of thin aluminum tubes, lightweight skin, double wishbone suspension and a crazy five-hundred-horsepower engine — this was the legendary Porsche 917 prototype, which forever inscribed the Porsche name in the history of Le Mans marathons. This year, the “nine hundred and seventeenth” turns forty: it’s high...
Held in the grounds of Hedingham Castle, Classics at the Castle is a very special Porsche car show held annually. One of the highlights of the show was the Le Mans winning, Number 23, 917K as driven by Richard Attwood. We spoke to Richard about what it was like driving...
ACO Museum, Le Mans 16 September 2020: As it was the 50th anniversary of Porsche’s first win at Le Mans, a special display was set up featuring several of Porsche’s winning cars In 1971 the first ever Starbucks coffee house was opened in Seattle, Washington. That same year, the fourth...
Enjoy a close-up experience of the history of Porsche at the Porsche Museum, at night when the museum comes alive! Encounter legendary racing and sports cars, fascinating production models as well as unusual prototypes. More than 80 vehicles will take you from the early years all the way to the...
Last weekend, we would have been at the Le Mans Classic had the coronavirus pandemic not intervened. Now, thanks to this global medical crisis, all sports and major events involving large public gatherings have had to be either cancelled or postponed. One of our favourite historic race car meetings, the...
In our series of looking back at the racing icons of history this month, in preparation of global motorsports returning in July 2020, our second article is about one of the most famous Porsche race cars of all time. From the Grand Tour show, James May, or better known as...
50 years of the Porsche 917 Anniversary The most famous racing car of all time made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show on 12 March 1969, and the Porsche Museum is celebrating the landmark birthday with plans to restore the first 917 ever made to its original condition, as...
© Porsche 917 – Zuffenhausen’s Le Mans and Can-Am Champion Porsche 917 – Zuffenhausen’s Le Mans and Can-Am Champion, is the third title we have reviewed in the Ludvigsen Library Series. The other two have been Porsche Spyders 1956-1964: Type 550A, RSK and 718 models, and the White Racers from...
One of Only Two in the World...
April 6, 1970, Volkswagen test track (Ehra-Lessien). April 6, 1970 was a test day. Factory test driver Kurt Ahrens was testing various aerodynamic solutions on chassis 006/040. The tests lasted all day, although the weather was unlucky – it was drizzling and the track remained wet. Towards evening, a package...
The Porsche 917-001 will be shown in the Porsche Museum for the first time in its original condition My 2019 European Expedition had been organised for some months, which was to take in the WEC Spa-Francorchamps 6 Hours (1-4 May) followed by almost a week in Stuttgart (5-10 May). It...
Porsche 917 Full Demo – 77th Members’ Meeting ...
Le Mans 24 Hours, 31 May-1 June 1986: Start of the race – Porsches dominate the lead group In Part 1, Stories from Le Mans – with a Porsche flavour, our intrepid scribbler who hails from that beautiful part of South Africa, the Western Cape, shares with us some hilarious...
Porsche – Graphisme 917 by Stéphane Coradi © Virtual Motorpix/Glen Smale Porsche Graphisme 917: This is Stéphane Coradi’s second publication in less than a year, the man is irrepressible. His enthusiasm for the Stuttgart marque knows no bounds, and combined with a unique artistic talent, this new book is quite...
Simeone Foundation Museum – 1970 Porsche 917-043 While diplomats and cartographers may technically show the roads around Le Mans as French soil, Porsche has laid claim to the winding bit of pavement that comprises the race track and especially victory lane. Since 1951, when a silver Porsche 356 clocked up...
1969 Porsche 917 LH poses outside the workshops in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen © Porsche Werkfoto The world has become obsessed with anniversaries or facts that you can leverage, in order to bring your message across. And that is also true to some extent about this account of a legendary race car, but...
Gulf 917 by Jay Gillotti – © Dalton Watson Fine Books There is little that you can add to the vast history that is already known about the Porsche 917, or so you might have thought. But the quietly spoken Jay Gillotti, has pieced together a valuable and mightily useful...
1973 Vasek Polak Porsche 917/10-018 Cam-Am Spyder driven by Jody Scheckter Jody Scheckter was born in East London on the east coast of South Africa, a sleepy seaside town that actually carried the honour of being the country’s motorsport centre up until the early 1960s. In 1973, Scheckter, by then...
The fabulous story of this car’s life begins in 1970 with the construction of chassis #021, one of the first batch of twenty-five 917s to be built. In April 1970, the newly completed chassis #917-021 was sold to the Finnish AAW team, finished in the red and yellow colours of...
#21 Martini Porsche 917 LH (chassis #042) was driven by Gerard Larrousse and Vic Elford in the 1971 Le Mans 24 Hour race – DNF, lost engine cooling fan From 1964 through to 1969, Porsche lifted its game from being a class winner to setting international lap speed and endurance...
