Travelling roadshow of Porsche 917s lands at Monterey Car Week
In the August issue of Classic Porsche, we reported on the appearance of 917 chassis 026 as a star lot in the RM Sotheby’s Monterey Sale. Offered with a lower estimate of $16m, the car failed to sell, but it wasn’t the only 917 causing a stir at the show. In fact, no fewer than thirteen other 917s were presented at Monterey Car Week as part of Porsche Success Story at Le Mans, a rolling exhibition curated by the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart and currently making its way around the world.
Every year, Monterey Car Week attracts several thousand visitors to the Californian coastal town, with the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance (held in the grounds of the nearby Pebble Beach Golf Links golf course) being the event highlight. As part of the prestigious competition, the proceeds of which are donated to charity, an expert panel judges a range of immaculate classic cars from different categories, based on their originality, functionality and elegance.
Monterey is just one of fourteen stops on the exhibition roadshow, which celebrates Porsche’s various successes at the world’s most famous endurance race. By the end of the year, more than twenty original overall and class-winning race cars will have travelled to ten countries spread across three continents. In addition to the 917, star cars slated for display include the 962 C and the 919 Hybrid. Destinations include Zandvoort in the Netherlands, the Chinese city of Shanghai, and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
Porsche Success Story at Le Mans celebrates seventy years since the aluminium-bodied 356 SL drove to a class victory at the 1951 daylong endurance race at Sarthe. Since then, Porsche has racked up nineteen overall wins and 108 class victories at the tradition-steeped event.
Though the brand has been absent from the top-flight category in recent years (instead fielding GT cars and concentrating efforts on developing electric vehicle technology in the realm of Formula E), an impending return for Porsche in the new LMDh (Le Mans Daytona hybrid) category will see the Stuttgart squad fight for overall victory in France once again. The star of Monterey’s 917 line-up was the Martini-decorated shorttail bearing the number twenty-two, which made history at Le Mans in 1971, when Gijs van Lennep and Helmut Marko (yes, the very same Helmut Marko now famous for being head of Red Bull’s Formula One development programme) crossed the finish line in first place. The pair covered a distance of 3,315 miles, completing 397 laps at an average speed of 138.13mph, setting records which would remain unbeaten for almost four decades.
The near 600bhp racer claimed the Le Mans ‘Index of Performance’ (an award for the most efficient ratio of fuel consumption to displacement) and was the first Porsche to race with a magnesium tubular space frame. This made the car so light, engineers were able to integrate a fifty-five-litre oil tank benefiting weight distribution and ensuring the sports prototype racer tipped scales at the required eight-hundred kilograms. The car had a short but stellar career: it was completed on 5th June 1971 and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans eight days later, before being retired.
As part of the roadshow, Porsche Experience Centres (PECs) are diving deep into the brand’s Le Mans story with dedicated Heritage Corners celebrating the various victories, cars and people involved. PECs in Le Mans, Atlanta, Franciacorta, Shanghai, Silverstone and Hockenheim have already launched their Heritage Corners and, in Zuffenhausen, fans can find out more along a glass partition providing a view of the workshop inside the Porsche Museum. Also, a selection of impressive Le Mans racers will be on display at the museum while the roadshow works its way around the globe. Meanwhile, the Porsche Museum’s social media channels will be publishing updates, as well as running the Porsche Moments short film series, taking viewers on a journey through time, focusing on a different Le Mans-winning car each episode.