2001 Porsche Rennsport Reunion

Because the 1998 fifty year anniversary events held at Laguna Seca and Watkins Glen were such emotional, artistic and financial successes Porsche wanted to do more, so along with Brian Redman they scheduled what they called the Porsche Rennsport Reunion. The Reunion was this past weekend and Porsche Cars North America and Brian Redman put on a spectacular event at Lime Rock. While not as grand in total number of cars the Lime Rock Porsche Rennsport Reunion was a wonderful event with lots and lots of wonderful Porsches. Because it was not held in conjunction with something like Steven Earl‘s historic weekend it was a much more intimate event. It was more like Brian’s 50/50 held at the Glen in 1998. There were many 956s and many 962s… maybe more than at Laguna Seca in 1998, I don’t know. But at least they got more of them on the track than they did at Laguna Seca. They claimed that they had 23 of these cars at Lime Rock and that this is the largest gathering ever. 

The event actually ran from Wednesday July 25 through Sunday July 29, 2001. Wed started with registration and media rides and interviews and practice by race group. Thursday was more of the same, but with a technical seminar in the evening featuring Alwin Springer (Porsche Motorsport North America), Norbert Singer (Father of most of Porsches race cars after the 917) and Klaus Bischoff (the Porsche Museum Curator and former race mechanic). We didn’t get in until Wednesday evening so we missed all of that early fun and started with Friday‘s activities. Both PCA club racers practiced as well as the historic cars.

Brian Redman and Jacky Ickx

One of my highlights of the weekend, that is aside from just being there, happened Friday after noon when I got to take tow hot laps with Hurley Haywood in the Brumos 917/10. All that I can say is WOW, what a unique driving (riding experience). On that little tight course it felt more like riding on a roller coaster than in a car. After that I also got to ride with Brian Redman in a 996 and at that much reduced pace I could actually get a feel for where the course went. I asked Brian what he thought of the course and he said it was rough and not at all well suited for the 962s and 956s as poor Fred Schwab would later find out.

Roger Penske drove both of the 917/30s that were there, the factory museum car and the car that Dave Morse had and recently sold to the guy in Virginia. He said that the car that was Dave’s was a much better car than the factory car. He was great! He put several laps on both cars and ran right until we ran out of time at 6:00 PM.

Roger Penske

After the days activities Friday there was a Friday night dinner for all the entrants and honored guests. This was Brian’s dinner and most everyone was there. Large group that was a lot of fun.

There were historic cars from all over. The factory brought about ten cars from their Museum, Brumos had a bunch of cars there. There were several other collectors with marvelous collections of cars, and lots of people with two or more cars.

Dale Miller was there with two of his 909/03s that he has been putting together for the past couple of years. Dale drove the one that he built for Rudy Junko and that Rudy raced at Laguna Seca last year. Rudy has lost interest and sold the car back to Dale. The other car was the one finished last fall that is in Martini colors and owned by Phil Daigrepont from New Orleans. Right now there are four of these cars that Dale has Jerry Woods and Big Ron Gruener building, two done and two still in the works. Both Jerry and Ron were there for the race, to have fun and support the cars. The cars both ran great and Phil qualified first for his race group. Both cars looked great out there, but Dale was a lot more cautious than Phil and not a contender. 

Phil Daigrepont

Bruce Canepa and his guys were there with Bruce’s 917/10 and his 935. Bruce ran in the same race with his 935 as Phil with his 908/03. Even though Phil out qualified Bruce, Bruce had the last laugh. Bruce turned up the boost and blew by Phil’s 908 right at the start finish line on the last lap and took the victory. Phil was second and another friend, Henry Payne, placed third with his 907 long tail coupe.

Another friend, Jim Newton, was also there with a bunch of cars both for club racing and for Roy Walzer for the historic stuff. Roy had a 911R, a 911ST, a 914/6 GT and something else. Newton also had his own car a 2.8 RSR that he drove in the Club racing part of the event.

All of the races were held on Saturday because one of the initial requirements for the track when it was built is that they not race on Saturday because of a near-by church.

Saturday night Porsche Cars North America had a small intimate dinner for all of the Porsche celebrities, guests and the press… that’s how I got in. There were about eighty people at this dinner and you almost had to be someone to be there, or at least be with someone to get in. This was a really nice even and even I was introduced as a celebrity… wow.

There were lots of celebrities including; Paul Newman who drove a couple of the Brumos cars, Milt Minter, Vic Elford, George Follmer, Elliott Forbes-Robbinson, Jim Busby, Joe Buzzetta, Rob Dyson, Tony Adamowicz, Bob Akin, Derek Bell, Bob Garretson, Bruce Levin, David Murry, Brian Redman, Roger Penske and my favorite Jacky Ickx. Fred Schwab, president of PCNA, and Leon Mandel, publisher of AutoWeek, were the Co-Grand marshals of the event.

Jacky Ickx and Norbert Singer

Rob Dyson told an interesting story about his car the first air cooled 962 for IMSA racing. They had put it away in 1986 when they quit racing it. They had to take a wall out and lift it out with a fork lift. They cleaned it up and tuned it up for the weekend.

Brumos received the most carnage for the weekend: Fred Schwab whacked their 962, Paul Newman was in an accident, not of his own fault, in their 914/6 GT and sustained serious collision damage. Something else blew up all on Saturday. Bob Snodgrass, President and CEO of Brumos, apologized for being late to diner Saturday night, but he said he had tried to hang himself in the trailer, but the rope had broken.

Fred Schwab wasn’t the only PCNA executive in trouble, Rich Ford, Executive VP of Marketing had the factories road going GT1 off course big time. He thought that he had gotten away with his indiscretion, but he had picked up a load of dirt while of course and dumped it right at start finish for everyone to see. He thought that he had gotten away with it until I told him I saw that he had had a problem with the GT1. He said that he was glad that he hadn’t done it where everyone could see. That was when I told him about the dirt cloud display at start finish.

Sunday was the final event a Concours for the race cars that had participated in the weekend’s race or exhibition events. I was fortunate enough to be invited to judge the 935s and my Co-Judges were Norbert Singer and Judy Boles. We had a great time, and Picked Bruce Canepa’s 935 as our winner, our second place car was a Joest 935 and our third a Kremer K3.

While I was with Norbert Singer I asked him how long he had until retirement. He said a little over three years. So I asked if there were any fun projects coming up and he smiled, got the magic twinkle in his eye and said yes. He would tell me no more. But I traded that knowledge into what I can only guess is what Porsches racing future might be. The stillborn car from a couple of years ago was code named Black Beauty. McNish drove it in September 1999 and said it was good. The rules will change for the WSC class for 2004 and maybe then we will see some car based on Black Beauty or at least the V10 engine from that car in a car racing again... lets hope!

Another Special moment for me was after the Concours judging when I went to the Porsche Hospitality Chalet. We had about a half hour between the judging and Sunday’s lunch and awards banquet. When we walked in Brian Redman and Jack Ickx were sitting at a table reminiscing, as more and more people showed up this became the Brain and Jacky show… great entertainment. Had Brian not been such a great race driver I am sure that he could have made a living as a stand up comedian, he is great. At first he told Jacky Ickx stories and they were all funny. He said that when he first started driving with Jacky that Jacky was twenty and he called him the Brussels Sprout.

They told about racing at Le Mans with Ferrari. Jacky had qualified the car they shared on the pole. Brian said that Jacky came to him before the race and asked Brain to start. Brian asked why and Jacky said that he would race and he know that Brian had preached that a 24 hour race is not a race it is an event. Brian said that there were 10 prototypes and at the end of his first stint they were tenth. At 22 hours they were leading the race, but unfortunately the car broke in the 23rd hour.

Brian told another story about the two of them again with Ferrari, this time at Nürburgring. The team orders were that if one of the Ferraris was leading at half way the other team members were not to pass. Towards the end of the race the same aggressive Italian, who Ickx was afraid he would race with earlier at Le Mans was attempting to catch and pass Ickx and Redman. On the others cars last pit stop the three largest crew members pried his fingers from the steering wheel and pulled him out of the car so that his co-driver who would follow the team rules could finish the race. Our Duo won the race and Jacky said that he had never heard the story about their competitor being forced from the car. The entertainment progressed from racing stories to Brain reading us from the Stanley Holloway Monoloques. The first he actually had memorized. All and all a wonderful weekend.

Canepa's 962 Powered Porsche Speedster

Flat 6 Magazine

In the last issue we had the ANDIAL Carrera 4 with the water cooled 962 engine and now we have another contender for the ultimate street hot-rod, a 1989 Porsche Speedster with an IMSA version of the 962 engine installed. We actually have a number of good Porsche tuners in the United States and one of these tuners is an old friend of mine Bruce Canepa, of Canepa Design in Santa Cruz, California. Canepa has just finished a 1989 Porsche Speedster that may just be the ultimate street hot rod Porsche. 

Bruce Canepa has been involved with Porsches as a business, in racing and as an enthusiast for years, but recently Canepa and his company, Canepa Design, have been known for their aerodynamic truck conversions and specially outfitted racing trailers. Canepa says that they have built about seventy percent of the large semi trailers that are used in racing here in the United States. They have built them for most of the Indy car teams, IMSA teams, vintage racing, stock car racing and drag racing teams in the country. Canepa' s trailer company, Concept Trailers, custom outfits the trailers that haul racing cars. The equipment that they install in these trailers ranges from the elevators used to load the cars, the tents that mount on the side where the teams' mechanics work on the cars at the races to completely outfitting the interior like a motor home. 

In addition to building trailers for racing teams they custom outfit trucks and trailers for a variety of other applications A few years ago the built the truck and trailer rigs used by Porsche Cars North America, Inc. for their Driving Experience program. The Driving Experience was a program where they would take prospective customers for the new cars out to a site where they could drive the whole model range. The trailers were outfitted like a dealers sales room where they showed videos showing all of the features of the various models to the prospective buyers and tried to close sales. 

One of the things that Canepa Design is doing now is making portable motion based theaters comparable to the motion based theaters at Disney Land and Disney World where they are able to give rides that simulate space ships, a F 16, a race car or blood traveling through arteries, etc. The portable version has been made possible by the development of movable self contained two passenger seats. These seats can do a lot more, faster than the big moving floors in the regular motion based theaters can do. It can tilt forward steeper, tilt backwards steeper and move left or right faster and steeper than the movable floor in the Disney theaters can do. All of the responses are controlled by a computer signal which is related to the visual action displayed on the screen and the pair of seats can do more faster and more accurately. Concepts Trailers designed and built the theater enclosures to put these seats into. Two semi trailers lock together and become one theater with a sixteen foot movie screen. They slide the seats in and lock them down to the floor and then hook them up the computer feed and they are ready for action. If you have not been in one of these motion based theaters yet you should try one. They are so realistic that you feel like you are in the cockpit of an F16, or a space ship or a race car or whatever the simulation is, "because your really are". 

Canepa Design did a lot of Porsche slope nose conversions when they were all the rage here in the United States in the nineteen eighties. Canepa said that they developed their own slope nose conversion in 1983. He said that he felt that they could do as well and maybe even better than the factory conversions. All of the brackets and mounting hardware for the Canepa Design slope nose conversions were made of stainless steel to prevent corrosion. They used the factory fenders that they did the slope nose conversion on and then re-zink coated the fenders for rust prevention. They ended up doing a lot of the slope nose conversions while they were still the fad. They even did one car for a customer in Australia. 

In the mid-eighties Canepa Design decided that if their conversions were good enough for Porsches they would surely be good enough for trucks too and there are a lot more trucks than there are Porsches so they started designing custom aerodynamic body kits for Kenworth and Peterbuilt trucks. And while they couldn't do slope nose conversions to the trucks they could clean up their aerodynamics using side skirts, wheel covers, flush mounted head lamps and smooth bumpers with their conversions which greatly improve the trucks appearance and fuel economy. These kits have been so successful that the truck manufactures themselves have used Canepa to redesign their trucks. Canepa says that he and his employees are all really car guys and that they just treat the trucks like big cars, they just take up a little more room. He says that they have added a level of quality and finish to them that the truckers are not used of seeing. 

Canepa Design has always done restorations on Porsches and in the late eighties they were fortunate enough to have a customer that wanted a 935 and a 936 restored, which Canepa said, really allowed them to hone their restoration skills. One of the latest restorations that Canepa Design did was an extensive restoration of a 906 that was little more than a valid set of serial numbers when they started and took nearly 4,000 hours to complete. This car turned out really well and won the Santa Barbara concours and has been featured in several magazines articles since it was completed. 

Canepa has always been a Porsche guy and has had his own Porsches since he was a teenager starting with a 1968 911L that his dad, a car dealer, took in on trade. Canepa bought his first new Porsche in 1970 and wrecked it in the rain finding out ho fast he could go around corners. He drove a 911R to college that he bought from Dick Smothers of the Smothers Brothers. Canepa now has an RSR, a 934, a 935 and a 959S. He raced the 934 and 935 back when they were contemporary race cars placing third with Rick Mears in 1979 at the Daytona 24 hour race. Bruce Canepa also had one of the Holbert built 962s which he restored, raced and then sold. The 962 was really one of the things that led to the building of this hot rod Speedster. The 962 had a spare engine that was worn out and a good candidate for detuning for use in a street hot rod. 

The hot rod Speedster that Canepa Design just finished belongs to Gary Primm a casino owner in Las Vegas, Nevada. Primm is a car guy with a large collection of cars, but he was not a Porsche enthusiast and when he bought the Speedster he was disappointed with the performance and quickly became bored with it(the car had less than 100 miles on it when he turned it over to Canepa for its transformation). Primm was introduced to Bruce Canepa by AMG and they talked about what could be done to the Speedster to both improve its looks and make it a really exciting fun car to drive. 

Primm and Canepa sat down about a year and a half ago and talked about what the car could and should be like when Canepa was done converting the car. Cane pa said that he felt that since all of our US 911 Speedsters had the turbo look bodywork and suspension that they should have been turbocharged. He said that he thought that the performance should be like a modern update of the old Carrera four cam Speedster, a car that was great fun to drive in its day. Canepa's idea was to scale that sort of performance and fun up to contemporary levels of performance. 

Canepa had the spare 962 engine that he knew could be made over into a wonderful street car motor. He told Primm that they could change the whole car over into something that was exciting and would be an incredibly fun street car. It would have a lot of power, it would handle, it would stop, it would ride well and have a stiff chassis, but not be too stiff in terms of the ride. Primm said go. 

Originally Canepa said that he wanted the car to look stock except for a large DP (Design Plastic) rear spoiler, but then he decided that he would need larger wheels and tires for the cars potential performance envelope than would fit under the stock turbo look bodywork so his concept for the car changed. He said that he felt that the appearance of the car would probably be unbalanced with the oversized DP rear spoiler. Canepa likes the looks of the 934, and adapted some of the design characteristics of the 934 to the Speedster. Canepa says that he likes the design because it maintains the Porsche tradition, but I suspect that it was as much because he has a 934 himself and he just likes the car's looks. Canepa says that he feels that the 934 looks very competitive yet subtle, and pretty classy, but at the same time is very serious looking. 

In any case they decided to use the 934 fender flares and the 934 front spoiler. A DP rear wing was used because something larger than the original Porsche 934 wing was needed because they would have to fit the huge intercooler of the 962 engine under the wing and they also wanted to keep the air conditioner which required space for the AC condenser in the wing. 

Goals for the car were that it be very, very fast and still had to retain all of the comfort features of a street Porsche. One goal was to have at least 500 horsepower and another was to have a top speed in excess of 200 mph. Because of the speed potential they installed a low profile roll bar for safety. The roll bar is tied into to a side bar structure that is tied in from the back of the car all the way to the front tower assembly for chassis rigidity. 

They felt it was necessary to stiffen up the chassis because the stock Speedster is a fairly flexible car and as result the car doesn't ride as well as it should or could with a stiffer chassis. The chassis should be rigid like Porsche coupes so that the suspension can work properly. In addition to the roll bar and side stiffening bars they also reinforced the chassis by boxing in the rocker box area and developing an extra monocoque substructure, raising the floor level from the seats back to get some additional strength in that area. The result is that they created a very stiff "tub". For a open car it is very impressive, and they couldn't have asked for more without putting a roof on the car. 

They used 935 center lock hubs and nuts so that they can use center lock wheels. They used the new BBS GTP wheels 9 1/2" in the front and 12 3/4" in the rear. BBS designed a new wheel because they needed more strength for the slide loads of the GTP cars. The new wheel is a cleaner design with bigger spokes than the older style BBS wheels. The tires are the new Goodyear GSC tires 275/40 ZR17" in the front and 315/35 ZR17" in the rear. Canepa said that they are going to trim and fit a set of BBS racing wheel fans before they deliver the car to Primm. 

Originally they had planned to use coil over suspension. Canepa says that although the coil over suspension works fine for race cars that it is not the right compromise for a street car. In the middle of the Speedster project Canepa Design had the opportunity to do a Porsche Club race track car for someone who was going to both use it for street and track use. He said that when they chose a coil over spring rate that would work well for the handling it was too stiff for a good quality ride. They did a lot of testing of spring rates and found that they could make a car handle well and ride well on very smooth roads, but the fact is there aren't many smooth roads left anymore and the car just plain rode horrible. When they softened up the spring rates enough so that the ride qualities were acceptable the handling went away. Canepa feels that this is because of changing where the load is transmitted into the car's chassis from where the loads were absorbed from the torsion bars. 

As a result of their testing they decided that for the Speedster, they would not to use the coil over springs, but instead they chose to use torsion bars because they work well on all pavement conditions providing a good ride and handling that will allow you to take a corner as fast as your fear level will take you. The whole chassis and suspension plans for the Speedster were based on their experience with other cars that they had built. They used riffle drilled torsion bars made by Stevens Machining, 33 mm diameter in the rear and 23 mm diameter in the front. The front and rear sway bars are 22 mm "Charlie Bars" made by Wrightwood Racing. The shock absorbers are custom valved Bilsteins. Canepa says that the Speedster handles better than any street Porsche that he has ever driven. He says it actually handles as well as his RSR, but for the fact that it does not have racing slicks on it. He said that it is the only street Porsche that he has driven that handles as well as the 959. He says that he feels that the car really rides well, as smooth as the brand new Carrera or Carrera Turbo on all of the different type of roads that they have tested it on. 

The oil system is designed like a racing Porsche with the oil tank in the front trunk. The system holds 28 quarts of oil. The engine breather "breaths" into an accumulator tank back in the rear fender well. The accumulator separates the oil from the oil fumes and pumps the oil back to the tank and lets the fumes breath into the oil tank under the front hood like the Porsche racing cars. 

The brakes are the big Brembo calipers like the ones used on the 959 or 928 GTS with 935 rotors mounted to the 935 hubs. They didn't want to give up the power brakes so they designed and fabricated a vacuum storage tank using the 962 engine for the vacuum source. They were able to retain the comfort of power brakes with the stopping power of a race car. 

Almost everything in the car had to be moved around or changed somehow to make all of this work. For example they chose to use rear ducts similar to those use on the 959 because they were attractive and functional. These rear fender ducts are used for the inlet air to the turbos. A hose goes from the intake duct back over the wheel wells to the rear of the fender up by the taillight where there is a K&N filter in a canister on each side. From the air filter canister the air is ducted directly into the turbo charger by a tube that rolls right down into the turbocharger inlet. 

They used the G-50 five speed from the 1989 911 Turbo, but they shortened it by and inch so that it would fit into the Speedster chassis. The axles and CV joints are made by Super Boots, the company that makes the Indy Car racing axles. 

The spare motor from Canepa's 962 was used because he felt it would make a good starting point for their Speedster hot rod. Unlike the World Endurance Championship 956 and 962 engines which had water cooled heads and then towards the end were completely water cooled the IMSA version of the engine was an air cooled evolution of the 935 engine. Canepa wanted to use the IMSA 962 engine with the flat fan to bring the better cooling of the racing flat fan to an air cooled engine in a street car that would be producing well over 500 horsepower. Canepa said that he also wanted to use the flat fan for esthetics and because, he says he thinks that they sound so neat at idle. 

They got together with Jerry Woods who Canepa feels is the best Porsche motor guy around. They talked about building a motor that was a street motor with a lot of torque, a lot of bottom end power and as little lag as possible so that it would be driveable all the time. It would have to be something that you could drive all around town and then go out on the freeway and go as fast as a race car. That is exactly what they ended up with, a 600 hp (actually 581.5 hp. at 1.1 bar boost) motor that you only have to turn up to 6,500 rpm. It can light the tires in first, second and third gears. Canepa says that it can literally fry the tires in the first three gears if you aren't careful and that is with 13" wide sticky Goodyear tires. On the freeway at 2,000 rpm he says that it accelerates like a 450 cubic inch V8 powered car does. Well it should with the torque curve that this engine produces. At 2,000 rpm the engine produces over 300 lb. ft. torque, and from 2,500 rpm to 7,500 rpm the engine produces in excess of 400 lb. ft. torque with a peak torque of 550 lb. ft. at 4,000 rpm (see: Speedster 962 engine for torque and horsepower curves for the 962 engine with 1.1 bar boost.). The engine performance was measured with all accessories in place including the muffler. The engine was also tested at higher boost levels where it produced in excess of 600 hp, but the 1.1 bar boost level was chosen as a practical boost level for a street driven engine. 

The turbo lag is well below 1,500 rpm. Canepa said that he cruised all around town for a couple of hours one day just to see what it was like and to see how it would perform. It is smooth, it is everything that you could ask for. Jerry Woods converted the 962 engine to 3.3 liters by using 100 mm pistons and cylinders the 70.4 mm stroke crankshaft. He chose to use the HKS electronic waste gate control with two preset positions and a variable position instead of the manual valve traditionally used on modified turbocharged Porsches. Woods used a programmable twin ignition system that he has developed himself and a prototype of a new Haltech fuel injection management system. The Haltech injection management system takes advantage of the existing 962 intake manifolds which used twin staged injectors. The engine runs on one set of injectors while the engine is running normally aspirated and the second set of injectors is phased in when the engine comes up onto the boost. This system with staged injectors provides better control over the fuel mixture under all operation conditions so that the car runs better as a street car. 

Canepa Design had to design and build their own exhaust system to do what they wanted it to do and fit everything into the car where they wanted it with the twin turbos and all. They were originally going to try to use one of the stainless steel systems that are on the market, but it just wouldn't work for their application. The made their own stainless steel exhaust system and that gave them the opportunity to put the turbos behind the rear tires alongside the motor, which let them keep the primary header pipes short for better performance. Their turbo placement also gave them a straight shot up through the car to connect to the large intercooler that they used. By keeping all of the plumbing short they were able to cut the turbo lag considerably. The turbos that they used were the original K26 turbos that came on Canepa's 959S. The turbochargers are sized for low end or overall performance and driveability rather than peak power as you would with an engine used for racing. 

Most of the engine accessories had to be relocated because the 962 was a mid-engined car and the engine faced the opposite direction in the 962 from what it does in the 1989 Speedster. Fred Garretson supplied the large intercooler core for the engine conversion. Canepa Design built their own intake plenums and intercooler plumbing so that they would all fit under the DP rear wing and engine lid. Everything was designed to be functional and look good when you opened the engine lid. They wanted to be able to use all of the standard engine lid mounting and latching hardware. They built the rear motor mount plate so that they could mount the air conditioner compressor on the back side of the motor plate where there was still some room. They specified a reverse direction compressor so that it would work facing backwards in the car. They built their own stainless steel muffler with two large rear outlets to look like the tailpipes on the twin turbo 935 engines. The muffler kills most of the noise, but the car still sounds great. 

They had to develop their own heater system because there wasn't room for heater boxes on the headers. They used the gas heater that Porsche uses in their rally cars. The heater works well and will allow the owner to warm the Speedster up on a cold day in the desert area of Las Vegas. 

They also had to design their own emergency brake system because with the 935 brakes they didn't have an emergency brake. They designed a system that uses an Accumulock to apply pressure to all four calipers when it is in use. To apply the emergency brake you pump the brake pedal and hold up the lever on the Accumulock and it sets all four brakes. When the brake is set it will safely hold the car on a hill, park the car on a hill and it isn't going to go anywhere. 

Canepa Design put in a good set of TRW four point competition belts. They put a slot in the headrest so that the shoulder belts can come through the seat from the right height for safety very much like the new sports seats for the Carrera Cup cars from Porsche do. 

I asked Canepa how fast the car was and he said he wasn't really sure because he hadn't had it flat out, but that he had it up to 6,800 rpm in fifth gear and that Jerry Woods calculated that to be 202 mph with the gear ratios and tire sizes that they were using. The car uses a 959 speedometer, but the with the different wheel and tire sizes the 959 has different final drive ratio so the speedometer is not accurate and it read only 190 mph at 6,800 rpm. He said that at 200 mph the car feels pretty comfortable. It is noisier than anything that he has driven before because it is an open car, but otherwise it feels fine. The car is geared to go over 210 mph and should have plenty of power to pull the gearing.

Allen Henderson

Flat 6 Magazine

My friend, Allen Henderson, is the founder and president of Westcor, which is a division of Vicor Corporation. Allen tried to get his previous employer involved with Vicor and as a result of those meetings Vicor asked Allen if he was interested in starting up a west coast division for them, which is what he did thirteen years ago. Westcor business utilizes the DC to DC converter made by parent company Vicor and designs and makes total solution power supplies or complete power supplies for a variety of products and markets. They sell their power supplies to Hewlett-Packard, Schlumberger, Boeing, and GE among others. Westcor is roughly a thirty million dollar a year business with about 100 employees. 

Allen Henderson got his first Porsche right after he graduated from Brown University where he received an electrical engineering degree in 1970 and went into the United States Navy. While he was in college, he was in the Naval officer training program, one of his fellow college students had a Porsche. Although Allen didn’t know anything about Porsches he liked the way they looked and decided that he had to have one. His first car was an Irish green 1964 356 C coupe that he paid $2,275 for. He said that he should have bought a better car than the one that he bought. He said a the same time he could have gotten a 356 SC Cabriolet for just $300 more than he paid for his car and the Cabriolet was perfect, but at the time the $300 dollars difference seemed like a lot of money. 

Allen said that while he was driving his new to him Porsche back to the Navy base he heard a funny noise that turned out to be a failing connecting rod bearing. The result was that he had to rebuild the engine as soon as he bought the car. Fortunately for him the fellow who ran the Navy Hobby Shop on the Naval base where he was stationed had worked with his father in a Porsche and Volkswagen repair shop so he helped Allen rebuild his engine. They removed the one rod and went in with crocus cloth and polished the crankshaft and installed a new rod bearing. I cringed when he told me this story, but the engine lasted for several years until he had to rebuild it because of other wear and tear. 

He took the 356 coupe to Spain with him while he was in the Navy for three years and then brought it back to Pensacola, Florida where he was stationed next. Allen was a Navigator of DC Super Constellations in the Navy flying reconnaissance missions. He was in Spain for three years and in Florida for one more year before getting out of the service. After the Navy he returned to college at Duke University to get a Masters in Business. By then he had both the 356 and a 1970 911T Targa, which he bought when he moved back to Pensacola while he was still in the Navy. While he was in graduate school he sold the 911T and replaced it with a 1970 914/6. When he moved to California in 1978 he sold the 914/6, but kept the 356 and moved it to California with him. While he had the 356 he did a restoration went clear though it and repainted the car and completely restored the car, he also did his first complete engine rebuild. 

Soon after he moved to California he sold that first 356C and bought a Grand Prix White 1974 911. He put quite a few miles on this 911 and ended up nursing it along to 115 thousand miles. But, by then the 911 leaked everywhere and used about a quart of oil for each tank of gasoline. In about 1982 he installed a rebuilt 911S engine in his 911, with and auxiliary oil cooler, which made a really nice car out of his 1974 911. He sold his 1974 in 1983 and replaced it later with a 1979 911 Turbo that was a beautiful cinnamon red special order paint. Not too long after he bought the Turbo his wife told him he couldn’t afford it so he sold it so that they could remodel their house. In 1986 he bought a European 356SC sunroof coupe and completely restored during the two years he owned it. He rebuilt the engine and repainted the car its original ruby red and then sold it in 1988 to someone who exported it to Germany. 

In 1991 I found a really nice original 1972 911S at a local swap meet that I almost bought myself. I wanted the car as the basis for a project car and felt that this particular example was probably too nice a car to start with for what I had in mind. I told Allen that I thought it would be a great car for him and he bought it. As with many of his other cars Allen went completely though this car completely disassembling the car and having it repainted. Everything was painted, polished or replaced. Allen took one of our engine overhaul classes and then rebuilt the engine in his 1972 911S. When he bought the car it was an original, silver, non-sunroof coupe with the original paint. The paint was tired and it really needed repainting, but you could tell the cars whole story just by looking at it . The only drawback at all to this car was that it was a four-speed. In addition to all of Allen’s other renovations was the addition of a freshly rebuilt 915 five-speed transmission. 

Next in 1994 Allen found a really nice 1959 356 coupe that Allen has also gone through completely cosmetically and rebuilt the engine and front suspension. He completely disassembled the body and had some friends repaint the metallic silver paint. He then had upholstery completely done by one of the local upholsterers noted for their Porsche work. The car turned out really nice. 

The latest addition to the Henderson stable is a brand new 1999 996 model, that he special ordered as soon as he could place an order for one of the new 911s. His car is a special order paint form the late eighties called: Diamond Blue Metallic, which is actually a misnomer, the car is of a violet than a blue. To complement the Diamond Blue Metallic paint he ordered the space gray interior. Allen’s car has the new three spoke air bag steering wheel, which is much more attractive than the standard four spoke version. He ordered the Tiptronic because it works better with a bad knee that he got from playing Tennis. He ordered the wheel with the standard seventeen inch wheels, and then replaced them with a set of the 18" "Technology wheels" from the narrow body 993. The advantage of these wheels to Allen is that at the time he ordered his 996 they were unsure that they could deliver the eighteens and the fronts are 1/2 inches wider than the similar wheels that are being offered for the 996. This was the first Porsche that Allen had ordered new and he knew exactly how he wanted his car when he sat down to spec it out and he made sure that he got exactly the car he ordered. 

Though Allen would love to have one of the Gmünd built cars and he is up to the restoration, he will probably stick with his forty year old 1959 356 and his 1999 996 model cars forty years apart. 

Allen is married to a Swedish woman and he and his wife, Lena, and daughter, Sara, go back to Sweden to visit every year. Through the Swedish club here in the United States Allen and Lena have gotten to know Lasse Jönsson who has the Porsche-Center in Kalstad Sweden. Part of their visit to Sweden each year includes a visit to the Lasse Jönsson Porsche-Center. Through this association with Lasse Allen has had the opportunity to drive a 959, a Ferrari F40, a 1973 RS and a ride in Lasse’s 956. He was supposed to get to drive both the 956 and Lasse’s SuperCup car last summer at a local race track, but it rained and spoiled their fun. Lasse Jönsson has a website that is www.Porschecenter.com.

936 Race Car

Excellence, Flat 6, 911 & Porsche World

The 936, one of Porsche's most successful racing cars, was developed because Porsche felt that they were forced to build a car that they had not intended to build. In 1976 there was a new form of rules that governed Sports and GT racing. Initially there were only supposed to be classes for production based cars in Groups 1 through 5. The World Manufactures Championship would be determined by the "Silhouette" formula for Group 5 cars and Group 5 is where Porsche intended to race with their 911-based 935. Porsche had done all of their development work in 1974 with the with the Carrera RSR turbo in preparation of running Group 5 cars in the new World Manufacturers Championship. These new rules were supposed to take effect in 1975, but they were delayed a year until 1976. In 1975, almost as an after thought, the FIA decided to add an additional World Sports Car Championship class to the series as the Group 6 type sports cars, so instead of one World Championship there now there would be two World Championships. 

The Automobile Club de L'Ouest, who puts on the Le Mans 24 hour race each year also preferred the open prototype cars from the earlier prototype racing formula and opened their Le Mans race to both group 5 and group 6 cars. Porsche feared that FIA would also run races that would allow both Group 5 Silhouette cars and Group 6 sports prototypes to race against each other in the same race. They knew that if this happened that the sports prototypes would dominate the overall standings and obscure whatever success the silhouette cars had. Porsche was not willing to compete in the Group 5 World Manufactures Championship, a championship that they felt confident about winning only to be beaten for the overall victory in the races by the Group 6 sports prototypes, so to be sure that this would not happen Porsche decided to build their own Group 6 sport prototype the 936. Fortunately FIA never race d the two championship classes together so the only place that Porsche's group 5 935 had to compete against the faster group 6 sports cars was at Le Mans. 

Under the new FIA rules the classes which pertained to Porsche were Groups 3, 4, 5 and 6. Group 3 was for GT cars with a minimum production of 1000 cars per year. Group 4 was for GT cars with a minimum of 400 cars in two years, and group 5 was a very liberal "silhouette formula based on cars which were homologated in Groups 1 through 4. These Group 5 cars competed for the World Championship of Makes. The Group 6 class and the Sports Car World Championship was created ostensibly to give cars from the previous 3.0-liter sports prototype class a place to compete. 

When the FIA created this new championship for the Group 6 cars it appeared that the Alpine-Renault and Alfa-Romeo teams would be the only competitors in this class and that the Alpine-Renault would probably run at Le Mans uncontested, Porsche rose to the occasion, producing yet another new car, the 936 to compete in this Group 6 class. The 936 would prove to be a very successful effort, winning the Group 6 World Sports Car Championship, Le Mans and giving Porsche a double World Championship for 1976. The 936 prototype was a blend of the 908/3 and the 917 sports cars which used the engine from the 1974 Carrera RSR Turbo. The engine from the Carrera RSR Turbo was used because, like the 3.0-liter prototype class where the 1974 Carrera RSR Turbo had raced, the Group 6 cars had an engine size limitation of three liters, and for the turbocharged engines, there was also a 1.4 multiplier which limited the engine size to 2142 cc in displacement. 

The decision to build a group 6 car was a last minute decision made by Ernst Fuhrmann, Porsche's managing director in September 1975. It has been said that only a dozen people, the people actually building the cars, knew of the 936 project. One reason why Ernst Fuhrmann had decide to go ahead with the 936 is that because it used so many components from other sports racing cars that Porsche had already built it could be developed quickly and it would be relatively in expensive to develop and produce. The 936 engine was borrowed from the 1974 Carrera RSR Turbo, most of the running gear parts could be borrowed from the 917/10 or 917/30. The transmission was a Type 920 five-speed from the 1970/71 917 endurance racers. All that remained to be done was to design and build an aluminum tube frame chassis, suspension components and to design and build a body of fiberglass which would conform with the new Group 6 regulations. The go ahead for the project was given late in September of 1975 and the first car was built and testing at the Paul Richard circuit in February 1976. The test car was painted black in the hopes that nobody would notice it and taken along to test a test session for the group 5 935 at the Paul Richard in France. 936 001 was used in the wind tunnel at Volkswagen to develop the body shape to influence the lift and drag characteristics. 936 001 was also used for most of the development work for the 936s, a second car 936 002 ran most of the races in the Sports car World Championship series except the first race of the year Nürburgring and Dijon where 936 001 was used. From the second race, at Monza, the cars were painted white with red and blue Martini racing trim instead of flat black with the red and blue trim. Only one 936 was raced in all of the Sports Car Championship races in 1976 and the only place where Porsche raced both cars was the non championship Le Mans 24 hour race. At the seasons first race at Nürburgring the 936 001 suffered a jamming throttle cable which would be its only serious malfunction of the season. Fortunately Reinhold Joest won the race with a turbocharged 908/03 saving the day for Porsche as Stommelen placed fifth in the new 936. In the remaining six races in the Sports car championship the 936 reliability was exceptional and the 936s proved to be unbeatable and won all of the remaining races. 

In 1976 both 936.001 and 936.002 ran the Le Mans 24 hour race. The 936 002 was revised for Le Mans with a high rear deck and a large air scoop above the rear deck. The pear-shaped opening in the air scoop provided cooling air for the engine and the intercoolers. Jacky Ickx and Gijs van Lennep qualified on the pole and led from start to finish in 936.002. The car had a mostly trouble free race with the exception of a cracked exhaust pipe which made the turbocharger inoperative and required a half an hour pit stop to replace it near the end of the race. Even with this half hour stop this car was never in danger of loosing its lead position. However, their extended stop to replace the exhaust delayed them long enough that they did not beat the race record set by Matra in 1973. 

Jurgen Barth and Reinhold Joest were running second with the 936.001 car until it stopped out on the track after 15 hours with both a sheared drive shaft and a seized rocker arm which also damaged a piston. 

After winning all of the races in the 1976 Sports Car Championship and the championship itself in 1976 Porsche did not compete with the 936 racers for the championship again and they were only used for selected races, primarily Le Mans each year. For 1977 both 936 001 and 936 002 received twin turbochargers and revised more aerodynamic bodywork. The twin turbos greatly improved the throttle response and raised the power from 520 to 540 horsepower. The modifications to the body included decreasing the front and rear track width so they could make the body work narrower to reduce the frontal area. They used a short nose piece and a long tail extension for reduce drag on the long straights at Le Mans. Both cars now had the high rear deck and air scoop and they looked the same again. 

The 1977 Le Mans 24 hour race was a real test for the Porsche team. 936 001 entered for Jürgen Barth and Hurley Haywood had problems with the injection pu mp little more than an hour into the race when the mechanical injection pump had a failure that necessitated a 28 minute stop to replace it and dropped 936 001 to 41 place. There was an even worse fate in store for 936 002 which was driven by Jacky Ickx and Henry Pescarolo for it had a connecting rod failure after only 2 hours and 50 minutes of racing and was out of the race. Porsche moved Ickx into 936 001 with Barth and Haywood and the three of them brought the car back into first place after eighteen hours of driving. But at 3:14 with just 36 minutes left to race 936 001 had a head gasket fail and Hurley, Haywood came in with the car only running on 5 cylinders. Fortunately all of the real challengers were out of the race by then or so far back that they could not catch 936 001 even if it sat in the pits for the rest of the race. So that was what it did with the exception of the last two laps so that it would qualify as a finisher .The team disabled the fuel and ignition to the one bad cylinder and at the end of the race Jürgen Barth took 936 001 out for two slow laps and Porsche's fourth victory at Le Mans. 

For the 1978 season the 936 had a newly developed version of the 901/911 engine which was similar to the Moby Dick 935 engine with four valves and water-cooled cylinder heads for increased power and reliability. Each bank of heads had its own water pump and the coolant was circulated from the bottom of the heads to the top, from the exhaust to the intake side, ensuring more even cooling. Each individual cylinder head was electron beam welded to its individual cylinder. This was done to eliminate the cylinder head gasket failures which had become the weakness of these engines when running in long races. These engines were significant in that they were the basis for all further development of 911 racing engines right up through and including the third pace at the 1992 Daytona 24 hour race. 

In addition to the two old cars Porsche built one additional all new 936 for 1978, 936 003, They also modified 936 001 to the same configuration as new 936 003. The body work on both 936 001 and 936 003 was modified to include two large NACA inlets to duct cooing air to the radiators required by the water cooled heads. The vertical fins were replaced by what they called a rear Dornier airfoil with vertical extensions on either side. The air box was made a little smaller and the ducting was changed because the cooling requirements for the engine were different with the water cooled heads. The front nose section was again also made longer in an effort to improve the aerodynamics. 

All three cars were entered in the 1978 Le Mans 936 003 for Jacky Ickx Jochen Mass and Henry Pescarolo, 936 001 updated to 1978 specifications was entered for Jurgen Barth, and Bob Wollek, and 936 002 which was still to 1977 specifications was entered for Hurley Haywood, Peter Gregg and Reinhold Joest. The strategy was to run the cars with a tall final drive gear and a conservative turbo boost, but unfortunately they underestimated the capabiliti es of the Alpine-Renaults. It was obvious right away in the race that the four Alpine-Renaults were faster as the lead Renault had built up a lead of eleven seconds over Ickx on the first lap of the race. And then it got worse for Ickx stopped on the second lap with a throttle pedal that was slow to return and then after 77 laps, the fifth gear pinion broke. Ickx was moved into 936 001 with Wollek and Barth. At the pace that the three drivers drove this car it might have won the race, but it too had a fifth gear pinion failure that took 37 minutes to repair. This car surely would have been the winner had in not been for the transmission failure and after the problem was repaired soldered on to finish second some 80 km behind the winners Jean Pierre Jaussand and Didier Piroini in their Renault-Alpine. 

Henry Pescarolo and Jochen Mass drove 936 003 up to tenth place before its retirement in the 19th hour of the race because of a collision with Mass driving. Haywood, Greg and Joest drove 936 002 to a third place overall even though they were delayed by some minor trouble including a turbocharger failure. The mechanics replaced the turbo in a exceptionally short 13 minutes. 

The two 1978 specification 936s were entered in the 1979 Le Mans race when Essex oil company owner David Thieme offered to sponsor the team for that one race only. The cars were Painted the Essex colors white, blue and red. 936 001 was entered for Bob Wollek and Hurley Haywood and 936 003 was entered for Jacky Ickx and Brian Redman. Unfortunately both cars failed to finish. 936 001 driven by Bob Wollek and Hurley Haywood retired in the nineteenth hour after being in fifth place the proceeding hour. 936 003 driven by Jacky Ickx and Brian Redman in the 1979 Le Mans race. It was disqualified in the seventeenth hour after being in sixteenth place in the preceding hour. It was disqualified because Ickx received outside assistance in the form of a crew member who dropped a pump belt where Ickx could find it out at the edge of the track side where he was trying to repair the car. 1979 was the year that private teams won Le Mans with 935s. Kremer Brother's German team were first with Klaus Ludwig and Bill and Don Whittington as drivers and Dick Barbour's California team was second with himself, Paul Newman and Rolf Stommelen driving. 

The fourth 936 was built for Joest Racing for the 1980 Le Mans race where it was driven to a second place finish by Reinhold Joest and Jacky Ickx. The Joest 936 was a copy of the 1977 version of the 936; but it was not originally called a 936, but instead it was called a 908/80. The car was entered by Joest and sponsored by Martini Racing for Joest and Jacky Ickx to run in the 1980 Le Mans race. There reason given for the car being called a 908/80 was that the car was built as a replacement for the 908/3 and the new c ar for Joest was originally built as an updated 908/3 using a 936 chassis, chassis parts, transmission, engine, fuel and oil tanks, pedals etc. Therefore a new 936 was built and the only difference was that for tactical reasons it was called a 908/80 because Porsche did not want to be in the business of selling 936s to customers and did not want to be pressured by their other racing customers. Later they allowed Joest to call their car 936 004 and provided the Joest and Kremer teams with all of the drawings and data necessary to duplicate the 936s and the Kremers built 936 005 and the Joest team built their 936 C coupe. to run in group C races. 

For the 1980 Le Mans race the Joest team underestimated their competition the Rondeau's. Nobody expected much reliability from the Ford-Cosworth Formula 1 engines powering the Rondeaus. As a result Joest and Ickx ran a pace that was not fast enough. Many feel that the team lost the race in the early stages by running too conservative of a pace when they should have been running a faster pace to build up a safety margin. When team lost fifth gear in the nineteenth hour they had not built up a large enough lead to allow them to regain the lead and the Rondeau of Jean Rondeau and Jean-Pierre Jaussand beat them to the finish by only four minutes. 

For 1980 Porsche AG was planning to go Indy racing with the US. Interscope racing team. The engine for this car was a 2650-cc development of the four valve water-cooled-head engines used in the 936 and Moby Dick in 1978. Porsche, as it turned out, attempted to enter championship cars racing at the wrong time in history, right in the middle of the USAC and CART feud, and the rules for Indy racing changed right out from under them. Porsche had been told that with their six-cylinder engines that they would be allowed to run with a turbo boost of 54 inches of mercury. At the last minute the turbo boost requirements were changed to 48 inches, the same as for the V8 engined cars. Porsche felt that with this last minute change, they did not have time to comply and they probably could not be competitive with the eight cylinder, turbocharged engines and withdrew. Porsche was beaten before they started, not on the track but at the conference room table. 

Porsche didn't let the engine they had designed for the Indy car go to waste though. For 1981, on Peter Schutz, Porsche's managing director's, orders, they dragged the 936s out of the museum once more and updated them to comply with the liberalized Group 6 rules by installing the Indy version of the engine in them. The Indy engine was converted to gasoline and used twin turbochargers for a power output of 620 horsepower. This combination won Le Mans for Porsche for the sixth time in 1981. 

The 1981 running of Le Mans would be the last Le Mans race that the 936 would be eligible for, because from 1982 the race would be for Group C cars. Both 936 001 and 936 003 were again updated for the 1981 running of Le Mans using the more powerful "Indy" engines. Because the five-speed transmission had proven to be problematic they utilized the stronger four-speed version that had originally been developed for the turbocharged 917 Can-Am cars. The two 936s roadsters qualified on the front row, first and second. The 936s were painted in the colors of their new sponsors "Jules". 936 001 was driven by Jochen Mass, Vern Schuppan and Hurley Haywood and 936 003 was driven by Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell. The Mass, Schuppan, Haywood car had a number of problems including a bad spark plug, a faulty injection pump and a clutch failure that required an hour and ten minutes to replace, but they did finally complete the race, but back in twelfth place. This car, 936 001, is now part of Dave Morse’s collection. 

The Ickx-Bell car achieved its target and dominated the race from the start and finished fourteen laps ahead of their closest rival, a Rondeau. This victory gave Porsche six wins at the Prestigious Le Mans 24 hour race and three of those races were won by the 936s. 

The 908/80 (936 004) was also entered in the 1981 Le Mans race with Technocar sponsorship by Reinhold Joest racing for Reinhold Joest and Dale Whittington. It was withdrawn in the fifth hour after being twenty fifth in the proceeding hour because of an accident at the Tertre Rouge S-bend with Dale Whittington driving. 

Inn 1982 the 908/80 was rechristined 936 004. Porsche allowed the 908/80 to be renumbered as 936 004 to be consistent with the other 936s numbering. This car won the 1980 Kylami race and the 1982 German Championship with Bob Wollek driving. 936 004 also helped Bob Wollek to win the 1982 Porsche Cup. This car, 936 004, is now part of the David Morse collection in Campbell California. 

Also during the winter of 1981/1982 Porsche Kremer Racing built 936 005 using the 1981 factory style bodywork. Porsche provided the Kremer's with the 936 drawings and parts necessary to build their 936 005. Rolf Stommelen raced 936 005 in the German Championship in 1982 where they did well and won Wunstorf outright June 6, 1982. Stefan Bellof drove 936 005 for his first turbo drive in the 1982 Hockenheim race. The Kremers still have this car in their collection race ready and beautiful. 

The Kremer brothers also built a couple of Group C cars that they called the CK5 that were largely based upon the 936 components that they raced in the Gro up C races and the German championship. 

Joest also used the drawings and parts from Porsche to build their 936 C which they built in their own workshop. The 936 C ran its first race at Monza in 1982 with Bob Wollek and the Martin brothers with Belga cigarettes as sponsors. 

The Joest 936 C raced at the 1982 Le Mans 24 hour with Belga sponsorship and Bob Wollek and the Martin brothers and made it until the 24th hour when they retired after being fourth the previous hour. The Joest Racing team also entered the 936 C in the 1983 Le Mans for the Martin Brothers and Duez, but an insolvable fuel injection problem forced an early retirement only two hour into the race. The Joest 936 C was raced extensively until 1986 when its current owner, Ernst Schuster, retired The Joest 936 C to his collection. 

936 002 is still in its 1977 Martini Racing configuration and 936 003 in its 1981 Jules configuration and both are part of the Porsche Museum collection and are usually either on display in the factory's museum or on display in some other collection. 936 003 is currently on display at the Porsche racing car collection in the French Musée National De l' Automobile.

Dave Morse's 934

911 and Porsche World

In 1976 FIA changed the international rules for Group 4 cars requiring that instead of production of 500 cars being required in one year that only 400 were required to be built over a period of two years. The rules change also reduced the modifications that were allowed and applied a weight scale that was relative to the engine size instead of homologated weight as it had been before. This new weight rule had two purposes: one was to reduce the manufactures cheating on the homologation weight and the other was to allow more luxurious cars that would naturally be heavier to be competitive in the restructured class. With this new rule change there was no longer a need for special lightweight models of a production model such as the Carrera RS 2.7 and RS 3.0 because the weight would be based on the engines size and not the homologation weight. So as a result of these new rules any car could be lightened to the limit determined by the engine size. There was also a scale limiting the tire width proportional to the engine capacity for the Group 4 category as well. 

Porsche introduced the 930 Turbo Carrera in 1975 as their basis for a Group 4 race car. Their intent was to build 400 of the 930 Turbo Carrera over the required two year period. The rule changes finally came in 1976 and Porsche produced two new 911 race cars for the new classes that were based on the production 930 Turbo Carrera, the 934 and 935. The 934 was homologated as a Group 4 car and sold to racing customers for GT racing. The 935 was a Group 5 car and as such was required to be based on a production car that homologated in groups 1 to 4. For 1976 the Porsche factory built and raced two 935s and raced the cars exclusively themselves and won the 1976 World Championship of Makes in the Group 5 category. 

The basis for the homologation of both the 934 and the 935 was the series production 930 Turbo Carrera and the requirement was for 400 to be produced in two model years. Because the 934 was supercharged with a turbocharger the displacement of the engine had its actual displacement multiplied by 1.4 and considered to be a 4.2 liter engine. Because of the 1.4 multiplier for turbocharged cars the 934 Turbo RSR could not be considered a light weight model like its predecessor the 3.0 RSR had been. The multiplier placed the 934 in the 4001 to 4.500 cc class requiring the cars weight to be 1,120 kg (2469 lbs). The 934s had power Windows and still required 88 lbs of lead in the front trunk to bring them up to weight. A new Porsche 934 sold for DM97,000 ($28.000 US) in 1976 delivered ready to race. 

Because of the Group 4 rules the 934 was very closely related to the production 930 Turbo Carrera. The most obvious visual changes were the added on fiberglass fender flares and the front fiberglass air dam with openings for the oil cooler, brake ducting and the water radiators for the engines intercooling. The rules allowed extending the front fenders by 50 mm and the rear fenders by 100 mm which was approximately 2 and 4 inches respectively so these fender flares extended all around the standard openings by 50 mm in the front and 100 mm in the rear. The 934s had an aluminum roll cage and some aluminum cross bracing to structurally increase the torsional strength of the body. A large 120 liter (31.7 gallon) safety fuel cell and a front mounted 22 liter (5.8 gallon) dry sump oil tank filled up most of the front trunk area. 

The interior was simplified, but retained most of the interior features of the production series 930 Turbo Carrera including a standard headliner, the power windows and Leatherette upholstery on the door panels. The rear seat was left out and the dash was simplified, and a Porsche racing seat and six point seat belts were added in place of the standard driver and passenger seats. The standard gauges were used for tachometer, oil pressure and temperature and additional gauges were added for fuel pressure and fuel injection system pressure. The windows remained glass because the rules required that the original material be retained. 

The suspension was based on the standard 930 Turbo Carrera torsion bar suspension, but suplemented with Bilstein shock absorbers fitted with coil over springs. The suspension was stiffened by the addition of Delrin bushing on the front A arms in place of the rubber used on the series production car and in the rear they used a spherical joint on the inner end of the cast aluminum trailing arm and a ball bearing race around the outer end of the rear spring plate. The larger disc brakes from the 917 and Carrera RSR 3.0 were used with large radially vented and cross drilled brake rotors and the heavily finned aluminum calipers. The brake bias was controlled by a dual master cylinder pedal assembly with a bias bar adjustment. They also used the same center lock hubs that had been used on the Carrera RSR 3.0 They went to a sixteen inch wheel and tire combination to provide a larger foot print and adequate room for the large brakes. Because no Porsche cast magnesium wheels were available in the sixteen inch size they had BBS make modular wheels with a cast center for the 934s. 

The engine and transmission were also based on the production 930 Turbo Carrera, units. The crankcase, crankshaft, rods and were essentially the standard 3.0 liter Turbo parts. The engine had a flat fan in place of the standard vertical fan for improved cooling. The flat fan was driven by a horizontal shaft up through a set of bevel drive gears to drive the fan. An adaptation of the Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection was used on the initial 934. While the original 930 Turbo Carrera did not use an intercooler the 934 used a pair of water to air heat exchangers one above each intake manifold which reduced the charge air temperature from 150°C (302°F) to just 50°C (122°F). The water was circulated by a water pump mounted on the right bank of cylinders, and driven from the end of the camshaft, to a pair of front mounted water radiators. Porsche used a KKK turbocharger and wastgate that similar to what they had used on the 917 Can-Am cars and the Turbo RSR. They used a couple of different racing camshafts for turbocharged racing engines as they developed the engine and initially with 1.3 bar boost the engine produced around 485 horsepower, later versions of the engine with mechanical fuel injection produced as much as 600 horsepower. 

The transmission was essentially the standard 930 four-speed transmission that had been developed for the production Turbo. They added and gear driven oil pump and mounted an oil cooler for the transmission up in the rear wing where the A/C condenser mounted in the production 930. The rules only allowed three different ratios for each gear set so Porsche offered three different rations for each of the four gear sets plus three different final drive ring and pinion sets. The differential was a ZF limited slip with a 80% locking factor. 

Thirty one of these group 4 934s were produced for Porsche's racing customers. Most of these cars remained in Europe and competed in the Group 4 category, where the 934 was an immediate success and Toine Hezemans won the European GT Championship for 1976. 

Several of the 934s were used in Group 5 category and Porsche supplied a kit that consisted of wider fender flare extensions to cover the wider tires permitted by the group 5 rules as well as a larger rear wing like those used on the later customer version of the 935s. These cars were considered by the entrants to be Group 4 1/2 cars running in support of the factory entered. 935s. 

The car in our story, chassis number 93060700155, which now belongs to California Porsche collector Dave Morse, was originally purchased by Egon Evertz and driven by himself and Leo Kinnunen in the 1976 world championship events as wells Group 5 races in Germany. 

Evertz and Kinnunen had a successful debut in the orange 934 at Mugello, Italy, March 21, 1976, winning the group 4 category and placing third overall behind the factory 935 and Kremers Group 5 Turbo Porsche. This was the first 934 to win in Group 4 competition in the first race of this new formula. They were not so lucky at the second race at Valleunga, also in Italy , where about half way through the race the dropped out with and engine problem. The third race of 1976 was Silverstone where the car was entered with its Group 5 conversion kit. Evertz and Kinnunen actually lead overall several times before falling back with a misfiring engine. In the fourth race of the season at Nurbürgring they went out after two hours with transmission problems. 

At round five at the Osterreichring Kinnunen qualified the car second to the factory 935 driven by Jacky Ickx and Manfred Schurti. The factory 935 was delayed when the throttle cable broke and Porsche put their driver, Manfred Schurti, in the Group 4 1/2 934 in place of car owner Egon Evertz in an effort to make up time after and early pit stop by Kinnunen when he had a puncture. This was not a legal substitution since Schurti had not qualified in the car and the car was disqualified and retired. After Osterreichring Porsche was ahead in the World Championship of Makes, but just barely, leading BMW by 82 to 78 points. So, for the sixth round in the championship at Watkins Glen in addition to the normal entry of Ickx and Mass Porsche added a second 935 driven by Stommelen and Schurti and supported the entry of Kinnuen/Evertz/Hexemans in Evertz’s converted 934. The factories effort paid off with their Stomelen and Schurti 935 winning, and Evertz’s converted 934 placing second driven by a Finn, a Dutchman and a German just ahead of Mass and Ickx in the other factory 935. 

Porsche left the US leading the World Championship of Makes over BMW 102 to 88 with only one championship race remaining at Dijon, France. Evertz and Kinnunen placed fourth at Dijon behind three other Porsche 935s.

The 934 as sold to Kannacher at Krefeld, but returned to Evertz and raced very little during the 1977 season. The next owner was Kenneth Leim who bought the car without the Group 5 conversion parts to contest the Group 4 category. Leim rebuilt the car to Group 4 specifications in Sweden and painted it white. Leim ran the car with Kurt Simonsen at Nurburgring in 1977 where they finished 9th. 

Kenneth Leim still owned the 934 in 1978 and he and Simonsen ran the car again at the third race of the season the Dijon, France 6 hour race where they placed 9th overall and second in the Group 4 class. For the fourth race of the 1978 season at Silverstone Leim partnered with Italian lady driver, Lella Lombardi placed 15th overall. Kenneth Leim and Kurt Simonsen appeared in other rounds in 1978 with disappointing results. 1979 was not much better for the Leims team, but with an 8th at Silverstone and 16th at Brands Hatch showing that the car was still competitive. 

In late 1979 the 934 was purchased by Richard Cleare. The Autofarm crew stripped the car to a bare chassis and did a comprehensive rebuild of the chassis, suspension, transmission and engine. By the time they got the car it was showing signs of the wear and tear and four seasons of racing. They had the car ready by the March 1980 race at Brands Hatch looking resplendent in its new red paint. Driven by owner Richard Cleare and Tony Dron the car was leading the Group 4 class when it had to be withdrawn with a suspension failure with Dron at the wheel. The team was more successful at their second race, Silverstone in May 1980 where Cleare and Dron placed 8th overall and won the Group 4 class. Their next race was Vallelunga where Cleare and Dron again won the Group 4 class and placed 10th overall. Their final race for the 1980 season was Dijon where they again won the Group for class and placed 11th overall. In its fifth year of international competition the 934 had shown itself to be competitive and reliable winning the Group 4 class in 3 of the 4 races that they entered. 

Richard Cleare ran the 934 again in 1981 partnered at Silverstone by Andy Rouse. At the first race of the season at Silverstone Cleare and Rouse were running second to one of the then new 924 GTR Turbos when an oil line came lose and a resulting engine fire put them out at five hours. Partnered by David Kennedy Cleare‘s next race with the 934 was Nurburgring. An accident early in the race resulted in an off course excursion and the hot engine refused to restart and the team lost 30 minutes before it refired and Kennedy was able to get back to the pits where Cleare took over the driving chores. The car was finally placed 49th after the raced was stopped because of a fiery accident that cost the life of Porsche 908/3 pilot Herbert Muller. The next race in 1981 was Brands Hatch where Richard Cleare and David Kennedy were second in class after a stuck fuel catch bottle dropped them to second place a lap behind the Group 4 class winning Canon 924 GTR. 

In preparation for the 1982 Season Cleare returned the 934 engine to the factory where the cylinder heads were modified and mechanical fuel injection was fitted in place of the original CIS system. The result was a power increase from 500 hp to 600 hp. Tony Dron returned to the team for the 1982 season and in their first race at Monza they placed 9th overall and won the Group 4 class. While they were at Monza the team learned that after three years of trying that they had finally been accepted for the 1982 Le Mans 24-hour classic. This was the seventh season of racing for the 934 and the car would finally see its first 24 hour race. After some difficulties with the transmission Cleare and Dron placed second in the Group 4 category and 19th overall at the May Silverstone race. They also had some handling problems which were traced to changes that they had made in the cars ride height to extend the life of the rear axles. The CV joints were showing excessive wear because of the engines extra power and the axles were having to be replaced after each race. 

For the 1982 Le Mans, probably the most significant race of the 934‘s illustrious career, Tony Dron turned a time of 4.04.08, which was the fastest time ever turned at Le Mans by a Porsche 934. The team had a few problems during the race and had to replace both rear axles, but even so the 934 driven by Richard Cleare, Tony Dron and Richard Jones completed 2466.97 miles for and average of 102.79 mph winning the Group 4 class and placing 13th overall in the 1982 Le Mans race. 

At Spa in September 1982 Cleare and Dron places second in the group four class and 16th overall. The next race was at Mugello and Porsche persuaded Richard Clear to take his 934 because of its reliability. Porsche promised to supply new axles, but none were available and after five hours the 934 dropped out when the right axle failed. The 1982 Brands Hatch race was the final outing for the 934 in a World Championship race where the car again won the Group 4 class and placed 14th overall. Thus ending the racing career of seven seasons of the most successful 934 to race in international competition. 

Dave Morse bought this 934 in the summer of 1985 and has run it in an number of club events beginning and extensive restoration a few years ago. The car was restored to its original condition in the original orange color and completed in time for the 1998 Monterey Historics where his son Mark Morse drove it in the fifty year event at Monterey.