There are 934s, and there are 934s… The Porsche 934 has long lived in the shadow of its more powerful sibling, the Porsche 935. This is a shame. Not only was the 934 faster than the Carrera RSR that it supplanted (naturally!), but many 934s went on to have very...
Development of the 1979 Kremer-Porsche K3 Kremer Racing, headed up by the two brothers Erwin and Manfred, from Cologne, Germany, had been heavily involved in racing 911s since 1965 for their customers. They used various factory racing 911s, such as ST, and RSRs as a starting point and they started...
Ed note: The history of specific chassis used in notable races decades ago can be hard to verify but are significant to fans of Porsche and vintage racing enthusiasts. Information presented are the thoughts, data, and opinions of the author. Enjoy! This is the story of what happened to a...
Porsche 356 SL bodies lined up in the Reutter workshop (Werk 2) in 1951. This facility was used as the Porsche race department in the early days The date was 23 June 1951, and sixty race cars lined up at 16h00 for the start of the nineteenth running of the...
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...
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....
British GP meeting which Nick Faure led outright, starting from the second row, against the Falcons and BGG Escorts. But the fan belt came off due to a rag left in the engine by my mechanic! Nick Faure was one of the first to race a 911 in Britain: he...
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...
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: The Carrera Dynasty by Glen Smale © Glen Smale A Spanish noun, ‘carrera’ can mean road, track or race and since the 1970s ‘Carrera’ has been a model name synonymous with Porsche. In fact, and as the author explains, Porsche had been using the name ‘Carrera’ since 1954 to...
Racing Porsche with Style © Stéphane Coradi This is Stéphane Coradi’s third publication, and the third of his books that I am reviewing. It must be said that Stéphane’s enthusiasm for his work is so irrepressible, it’s contagious. But that is refreshing, because he really encourages the contributors to show...
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...
The winning drivers from Porsche’s first Le Mans 24 Hour victory on 14 June 1970 (from L-R) Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood (2019) Today, Porsche can boast a total of 19 overall victories together with countless class successes in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s most respected and...
SportErfolge: by Tony Adriaensens – page photographs by © Virtual Motorpix/Glen Smale Simply titled, SportErfolge (English: Success in Sport), this book came my way quite by surprise. It is not a book I knew anything about until I spotted it on the internet, and decided to look for a copy....
Porsche 356 Cabriolet competing at an aerodrome race in the USA, ca. 1952/1953 America has for decades been Porsche’s biggest market, and this was important for the young and growing company. In some ways, the importance of this market even influenced the development of certain models. In this feature, Porsche...
Porsche 356 – Made by Reutter: by Frank Jung © Delius Klasing Verlag When the second edition of this fine publication was released back in April 2019 in German, I enquired immediately as to when the English edition would be available. I was told it would be coming onto the...
1957 Porsche 356 A Speedster – looking chocolate box pretty! It was Max Hoffman, the New York-based Porsche importer, who was instrumental in getting the factory to produce a lightweight sports car for local competition in the USA. Hoffman’s clients were demanding a stripped-down factory version of the 356 to...
A huge banner adorns the side of this high bay warehouse in Werk 2, announcing the 25th anniversary exhibition of Exclusive from 1st March to 1st May 2011 Rolf Sprenger was a versatile engineer whose Porsche career was founded almost entirely on customer service. “If I want a trailer (caravan)...
The Ultimate Book of the Porsche 356 by Brian Long © Veloce Publishing Limited Brian Long’s original book on the Porsche 356 was published in 1996, and this was later printed in softback form. A few years later a revised version of this book was published which included more colour...
1976 Porsche 924 Coupé It is a fact that most of us with an interest in roadgoing or race cars, will have a favourite model that holds a special place in our memory for some reason. That reason might be something significant that happened in your life where a certain...
Lined up for the photo shoot following scrutineering for the 1982 Le Mans 24 Hours are the three works Group C Porsche 956s – they would finish the race in the order of their racing numbers: the #1 finished first, the #2 was second and the #3 third In the...
Le Mans 24 Hours, 13-14 June 1981: Team photo following a successful technical inspection A lack of testing proved to be the downfall of the Porsche-Lola T600 in the 49th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1981. But let us not get ahead of ourselves… The 1981 season...
Toine Hezemans in his Brussels home, 2015 One of the Netherlands’ most successful racers, Toine Hezemans is part of a motorsport dynasty that began with his father who raced Porsches in the 1950s. This family tradition continued with Toine who began racing 911s in the late ‘60s, but after his...
Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: Just after the start of the race, the #15 Richard Lloyd Racing Porsche 962 GTi of Steven Andskar, David Hobbs and Damon Hill passes the pits When you were last with Richard Wiley, we were hurtling around a damp La Sarthe in 1988...
Mid-Atlantic American Sports Car Races 1953-1962: by Terry O’Neil © Dalton Watson Fine Books This is the beginning of a series of book reviews on early American racing, written by some very committed authors and published by Dalton Watson Fine Books. Mid-Atlantic American Sports Car Races 1953-1962 is the first...
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 – The Golden Years: Leonardo Acerbi © Virtual Motorpix/Glen Smale It is always a pleasure when a top-quality book lands on my desk, so when Porsche – The Golden Years arrived at the Porsche Road & Race offices, I was especially pleased. We had the pleasure of reviewing Ferrari...
Le Mans 24 Hours, 23-24 June 1951: In the foreground of the workshop at Teloché is the #46 Porsche 356 SL driven by Edmond Mouche and Auguste Veuillet, while in the background is the #47 Porsche 356 SL which was damaged in practice by Rudolph Sauerwein Porsche has been represented...
Ernst Fuhrmann at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, 12 June 1977 Porsche’s first CEO is frequently maligned as the man who tried to kill off the 911. There is far more to his Porsche career than this misconception as he was the inspiration behind the 911 Turbo. This Porsche...
Daytona 24 Hours, 4-5 February 1989: The #86 Porsche 962 of Klaus Ludwig, James Weaver and Sarel van der Merwe, makes its way along the Daytona banking I was really looking forward to the 1989 Daytona 24 Hour race. I had been working as a weekend warrior for Bruce Leven’s...
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...
Kieron Fennelly sitting behind the wheel of his 993 Owning a sports car is a compromise: on the one hand, it doesn’t have the space of a family estate, and for some it is slightly less practical as a daily run around. On the other hand, it has superior performance...
Geneva Motor Show press days, 2-3 March 2010: Porsche 918 Spyder Concept Study It was eight years ago, in March 2010, that Porsche presented its first hybrid supercar, the 918 Spyder Concept Study, at the Geneva Motor Show. I was fortunate enough to be present at this launch, and what...
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...
Marathon de la Route, Nürburgring, 22-26 August 1967: Getting ready for the 1967 Marathon de la Route outside Werk 2 in Zuffenhausen – in the centre is Vic Elford, one of the winning drivers that year The Marathon de la Route, an 84-hour epic endurance race run between 1965-1971, was...
1993 Porsche 968 Turbo RS The story of the fabulous 968 Turbo RS, one of Porsche’s sweetest front-engined racers, might be full of ‘what ifs’ and ‘if only’ but it is also certainly a story of lost opportunities. The end of the 1992 motor sport season saw the curtain fall...
12 Hours of Sebring, 18 March 1978: The #9 Dick Barbour Racing Porsche 935 driven by Brian Redman, Charles Mendez and Bob Garretson In the early to mid-1970’s I had been working part time (race weekends) as an IMSA tech inspector at some of the races, mainly the ones that...
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...
Weissach – Porsche Werk 8 – on 9 June 2016 By the late 1950s, the German Wirtschaftswunder was well underway and as the economy grew, so traffic density increased. This was particularly noticeable around Stuttgart often making testing on local Autobahnen inconvenient and it caused Ferry to think about creating...
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...
Tilman Brodbeck poses with a 1973 911 Carrera RS 2.7 Coupé (left) and a 911 Sport Classic (right) – 21 September 2009 To be able to write on your résumé that you worked for one of Porsche’s CEOs would be quite an achievement. Tilman Brodbeck can however do a little...
The formidable Carrera 6 outside the Porsche headquarters, Stuttgart Zuffenhausen, 1966 The Carrera Six, as Porsche officially called the 906, was a radically different car from its predecessor, the 904 GTS. The 904 was a sleek glass fibre bodied racer penned by Butzi Porsche, and it took over as Porsche’s...
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...
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...
Peter Falk sits on the sill of the famous #23 Porsche 917 KH Coupé, winner of the 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours. On this occasion it is located in the Porsche Museum Workshop on 28 June 2010 In a 34-year career at Porsche, the influence of Peter Falk – Porsche’s...
The inspired engineer behind so much of Porsche’s success, Helmuth Bott has long remained the company’s eminence grise, but little has been written about him. Now, Porsche Road & Race, looks at both the professional and private life of one of Porsche’s most devoted servants, revered by his subordinates, but...
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...
A design that demonstrates sportiness in every fibre. A chassis equipped for any challenge. And a twin-turbo horizontally opposed engine that brings racetrack performance to the road. Combined fuel consumption in accordance with EU 6: 911 GTS models: 9.7-8.3 l/100 km, CO2 emissions: 220-188 g/km. Learn more about the features...
Hans Stuck at the wheel on the way to winning Sebring in 1986. His co-drivers were Jo Gartner and Bob Akin. (Porsche 962 chassis #962-113) The 2.6-litre Porsche 956 which raced in the 1982/1983 seasons in Europe, was not accepted for racing in the USA, and so the 962 was...
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...
Valentin Schäffer (1978) Another keen young recruitee to Zuffenhausen in the early 1950s, Valentin Schäffer, would become Porsche’s racing turbo specialist and engineer the induction systems that endowed Porsche sports racers with a dominance that lasted decades. The compact figure of Valentin Schäffer trotted up the steps of the Porsche...
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