Invitation to race from Charles Faroux Charles Faroux was a car enthusiast, a racing official, a leading French motor-publication editor at La Vie Automobile and a charmer. Europe’s major automobile manufacturers entrusted their engineering secrets and newest models to him in hopes of a favorable review. Everyone respected his opinions....
Molly ready for the Peking to Paris rally in 2007 © David & Julie Harrison She was manufactured in 1958, and much of her early life is unrecorded. But in 2004, a customer of Gantspeed Engineering, Lincolnshire, England, asked the workshop’s owner, Robert Gant, to find him a right-hand drive...
Porsche 935-78 Moby Dick (chassis 935/78.006 ), photographed at the Porsche Warehouse in May 2017 Group 5 rules offered manufacturers a great deal of freedom to modify their cars in the Silhouette class. At Porsche, Norbert Singer pushed the rules to the limit, and gave us the Porsche 935/78 Moby...
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...
Le Mans 24 Hour, 13-14 June 2015: Lined up prior to the formation lap are (from L-R) – the #18 Porsche 919 Hybrid driven by Marc Lieb/Romain Dumas/Neel Jani (finished 5th); #17 Porsche 919 Hybrid driven by Timo Bernhard/Brendon Hartley/Mark Webber (finished 2nd); #19 Porsche 919 Hybrid driven by Earl...
Corsica Rally, 1967: Vic Elford and David Stone driving a Porsche 911 2.0 R Not a company to stand still for long, Porsche was constantly looking for ways to improve its engines in the ‘60s. Somehow the Type 916 twin-cam 6-cylinder engine always seemed to miss the limelight…not anymore! The...
The PFM 3200-powered Mooney is legendary among aviators. They all want this ‘Porsche of the skies’ – and today there are only five that are airworthy anywhere in the world. We had the extraordinary opportunity to take a ride in one. Oh, the boxer engine note is unmistakable. But what...
This book-set, Brumos: An American Racing Icon, was authored by Sean Cridland and contains 1,600 pages and over 2,900 images chronicling the history of Brumos from its inception through 2020. The four-volume collection is one of 12 Ultimate Artist’s Edition examples printed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the team’s overall wins at...
Autograph card signed by Jürgen Barth (ca. 1980) More books have been written about Porsche than any other car company so the publication in English of another tome is hardly headline news until you realise that the author, exceptionally, is a Porsche insider, but not just any insider. Jürgen Barth...
Rallye Paris-Dakar 1984: Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2 4×4 (Type 953) – driven by (from L-R) #175 Jacky Ickx, #176 René Metge, #177 Roland Kussmaul For many years, the éminence grise of Porsche’s competition department, but now in retirement, Roland Kussmaul seems busier than ever. He left Porsche officially at the...
The 1977 #40 Martini Porsche 935/2.0 Baby (chassis #935 2 001) photographed at the Porsche Museum, Stuttgart, Germany in May 2017 Ernst Fuhrmann’s requirement to develop a significantly updated GT race car in 1977, would present a number of challenges for the Porsche race department. Just to make things interesting,...
Porsche 904/8 (chassis #008) photographed in the Porsche Museum, September 2020 F.A. ‘Butzi’ Porsche, the eldest son of Ferry and Dorothea Porsche, joined the family business in 1958 having shown great interest in the field of industrial design. Working under the direction of Erwin Komenda, F.A. Porsche set about learning...
More than five decades ago, Porsche tested the exhaust turbocharger in motorsport. Shortly afterwards, the turbocharger was introduced into series production. 17 of the 19 overall Porsche victories at Le Mans were won with turbocharged engines. In 2024, the company celebrated ‘50 years of Porsche Turbo’ in series production and...
Mont Ventoux, 18 June 1967 – Rolf Stommelen won this hillclimb driving a Porsche 910/8 Bergspyder Rolf Stommelen was one of Germany’s leading racing drivers for over a decade and if as the title (above) of his biography implies, he could drive anything anywhere, this was largely true. Although his...
Arno Bohn at Weissach with the 968 Cabriolet (1991) Arno Bohn was managing director of Porsche from 1990-92. An outsider who came from the computer industry, he arrived at a company seared by falling sales and riven by internal division about future direction. He left a Porsche which though still...
Follmer with Vasek Pollack in 1976.
Follmer was born in Phoenix in 1934, though effectively he became a Californian as his family moved to Pasadena before he was two years old and it was in this northern suburb of Los Angeles that he grew up and raised his own family. He was, he says, a reasonable...
A journey back in time to 1999 begins with a roll-out on the Weissach Development Centre test track. The LMP 2000 was originally designed to take victory at the Le Mans 24. However, midway through the development, the company decided, for budgetary reasons, to discontinue the project after the car...
Le Mans 24 Hour, 16-17 June 2012: The #55 JWA-Avila Porsche 997 GT3 RSR driven by Paul Daniels, Joël Camathias and Markus Palttala gets the full attention of the team in the pits. This car would finish 33rd overall and eighth in the GTE Am class This feature, the second...
Autosport 1000 km, Silverstone, 14 September 2008: In the fifth and final round of the 2008 Le Mans Series season, the #34 Porsche RS Spyder was driven by Peter Van Merksteijn and Jos Verstappen and finished first in the LMP2 class and fifth overall, ahead of a brace of LMP1...
9:11 Podcast In the current episode of the 9:11 Porsche Podcast, Dr. Wolfgang Porsche talks about the company’s history, the current anniversary year, and his 80th birthday. Dr. Wolfgang Porsche embodies ‘75 years of Porsche sports cars in a very special way. He has witnessed the entire history of the...
In the vast design world, few names resonate with as much acclaim and distinction as Porsche. While many associate this name primarily with high-performance cars, there’s another realm where the Porsche legacy thrives: product design. This evolution commenced with Porsche Design, founded by Prof. Alexander ‘Butzi’ Porsche in 1972. FA...
Lined up in the pit lane before the 1994 Le Mans 24-Hours, is from the left: #36 962 Dauer Le Mans GT driven by Mauri Baldi, Yannick Dalmas and Hurley Haywood; centre is the street-legal 962 Dauer with rather appropriate Boeblingen region (Weissach) registration plate ‘P 962’; on the right...
Anatole Lapine, 1973 Anatole Lapine who was in charge of styling at Porsche under two disparate CEOs, Fuhrmann and Schutz, looks back on quite a CV: Chevrolet Corvette, Opel GT, Porsche 928, Porsche 964. But there is a lot more to this designer whose career spans two continents and most...
The name Porsche is synonymous with the world’s toughest endurance race, the 24-Hours of Le Mans, boasting an unbroken run of 65 years. During this time, they have amassed 18 victories. This is Part I of their story… The Veuillet/Mouche 356 SL proved reliable on its Le Mans debut in...
Kim Copperthite watches the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo during its record run at the Porsche Rennsport Reunion VI, Laguna Seca, 2018 (© Mike Copperthite) It is interesting how, sometimes when you trace an old classic car or historic racer back to its roots, you end up not far from the...
Alois Ruf Porsche Newsroom: As a teenager, Alois Ruf sees an early predecessor of the Porsche 911 on the autobahn, which ultimately ignites a lifelong passion. And what sounds like fiction is, in fact, actually true: around 50 years later, he discovers the car in Enamel Blue in his own...
Kremer Porsche 935 K3 – chassis #930 890 0021 The Porsche 935 was the Stuttgart manufacturer’s answer to the FIA’s Group 5 class regulations, making it eligible for the World Championship of Makes. The first Porsche car in this so-called ‘Silhouette’ series, was introduced for the start of the 1976...
Four originals: Dr. Wolfgang Porsche, his son Ferdinand, and two Porsche 550 Spyders on the Großglockner High Alpine Road – a mountain that figures prominently in Porsche family lore. What a panorama: At an altitude of 2,571 meters, the Edelweißspitze offers a magnificent view of the Großglockner, Austria’s highest peak....
What makes the Porsche brand so legendary? What inspires people to keep it young and full of life 75 years later? And how does this emotional, often lifelong bond with the Zuffenhausen sports cars come about? A very personal declaration of love to Porsche and its global community. Introducing Pete...
When discussing breakthroughs in sportscar technology, the Porsche 959 merits its own chapter, if not a book. Introduced in the mid-1980s, this genuine supercar emerged as a spearhead of innovation, vastly surpassing the technology Porsche had developed to date. While the standard 911 was not short on performance or prestige,...
Ulli Upietz poses with the 2010 model year Type 987 Boxster S outside the Porsche Museum, 1 Porscheplatz, Stuttgart On 7 January 2018, Ulli Upietz, the well-known Porsche photographer and founder of the publishing company Gruppe C Verlag, passed away after an illness. Over four decades, he made a name...
Overview Mountain championships, endurance races, Formula 1, Spa, Daytona, Sebring, and Le Mans after Le Mans – no matter what series, no matter what track – Porsche’s racing victories formed the bread and butter of Erich Strenger’s work. As a freelance graphic designer from 1951, he designed sales catalogs, driver’s...
Rothmans Porsche 962C (chassis #006) 1987 Le Mans 24 Hour winner photographed at Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, May 2017 The Porsche 956 and its successor the 962, are widely and justifiably regarded as the most successful sports racing prototypes of their era, and quite possibly ever. Over a period of...
Le Mans 24 Hours, 14-15 June 1975: Porsche 9083 in the paddock ahead of the race (copyright Yves Ronga) When I’m not helping to sell the occasional old race car, or visiting old race car meetings, I’ve usually got my head down, researching various projects for clients, usually to do...
Obviously these two attractive models from the lingerie manufacturer Triumph (München) like this Porsche 914/6 – Rutesheim Athletics Club, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (1969) Very different from previous production Porsches, the 914 was an attempt by Zuffenhausen to introduce a lower cost model. Commercially it was only a moderate success, but it’s...
Porsche 911 991.1 GT3 RS
Jean Behra following his accident at Caracas 3 November 1957 Staring out of period black and white photographs, Jean Behra’s handsome, but battered face tells its own story: a combative soul who seemed to thrive only when living on the ragged edge and for whom an exploit was either going...
1961 Porsche 718 W-RS Spyder ‘Grossmutter’ (chassis #047) photographed at the Porsche Museum, May 2019 The word unique is a much-overused word today, as it is applied, it seems, to just about anything that is produced in small numbers, or even just to enhance a claim about something unusual. In...
Kremer Porsche 935 K3/80 (chassis #0013) In the mid-70s, Porsche developed the 935 model, a race car homologated on the 930 road car and aimed at the Group 5 ‘silhouette’ series created by the FIA for the 1976 season. As the records will show, the 935 was a formidable race...
Mark Webber being interviewed at the Geneva Motor Show 2014, on the occasion of the world debut of the Porsche 919 Hybrid Porsche’s return to the top category of the World Endurance Championship (WEC) was announced by Wolfgang Hatz, Porsche AG Board of Management Member for Research and Development, on...
Roland Kussmaul
Except perhaps at one or two retirement parties or other formal occasions, no one ever saw Roland Kussmaul wearing a suit and tie. Racing or workshop overalls, Porsche’s pit lane uniform perhaps, even a mere pair of grubby shorts in those shots of the sweltering Dakar where he raced during...
If you think post-war sports cars or muscle cars from the late 1960s are the staple of the collector car industry, it’s time to broaden your horizons. 80s and 90s enthusiast cars have recently forged their own niche in the collector car world, and appreciation of the period’s shining stars...
Over a hundred years ago, Ferdinand Porsche designed an extraordinary race car, the Austro-Daimler ADS-R, in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. Today, Christophorus and 9:11 Magazine brings the former Targa Florio class champion, whose nickname is Sascha, back home. Following a vigorous turn of the crank, the gas pedal is applied ever...
Dr. Ulrich Bez (1988) Hailing from the Bad Cannstatt district of Stuttgart, Ulrich Bez, who as Porsche Technical supremo hatched the 993, had two significant stints at Porsche. During the 1970s he worked in research and was responsible for establishing Porsche’s crash test programme; in the 1980s, he followed Porsche’s...
John Fitzpatrick during practice for the Sebring 12-hour race in 1980
Bob Garretson in #009 00030 during practice for the 1980 Daytona 24 hours. This is the original 1979 factory configuration on this car By the time that we reached the IMSA Riverside Los Angeles Times Grand Prix in April, the Dick Barbour Racing team’s IMSA GT championship season had been...
Goodwood Members’ Meeting to celebrate 75 years of Porsche with spectacular on-track demonstrations Goodwood is delighted to announce that the 80th Members’ Meeting presented by Audrain Motorsport will host a spectacular on-track demonstration celebrating 75 years of Porsche. Just as Stuttcars has covered previous Porsche outings at Goodwood, we’ll be...