Project Petrolhead

Catching up on some of the news from Monterey Car Week, I noticed that Porsche had pulled the covers off something called the 911 Flachbau RS. It’s supposed to be a tribute to one of Porsche’s great racing cars of the 1970s, but for my money, there’s only one 1970s Porsche that stands above them all. 

As Ferrari and Ford traded blows at Le Mans throughout the 1960s, a small sports car manufacturer from Germany was beginning to make a name for itself. Now normally when I do the whole “a small company you’ve not heard of” joke, it’s because it’s a massive globally recognised company, but in this case, Porsche really were a tiny sports car maker, far from the behemoth we know them as today. It was a small engineering team headed up by Ferdinand Porsche (not to be confused with his father, Ferdinand Porsche) and his son, Ferdinand Porsche… That won’t get confusing… Oh, and the chap in charge of the racing division? Ferdinand… not Porsche. His name was Ferdinand Piëch – a name you might recognise as one of the most influential men in motoring history – not bad for an upstart. 

Towards the end of the 1960s, the FIA made a change to the Sports Car racing regulations. In an attempt to curtail the dominance of the ridiculous 7.0 litre V8 Ford GT40, and reduce the speeds at Le Mans to prevent horrible, fiery deaths, they imposed a limit on maximum engine size of just 5.0 litres, almost immediately killing off cars like the GT40 and Lola T70, while curiously leaving Ferrari’s 4.5 litre V12 (which was just as powerful) entirely unaffected. How about that. For Porsche however, this presented an opportunity. You see Porsche almost exclusively built small-engined lightweight sports cars with engines no bigger than 3.0 litres, so with the big boys out of the running, they suddenly found themselves in a much more competitive position, and told their engine man – the legendary Hans Mezger – to push their engines further than they’d ever gone before.  

Taking two of Porsche’s venerable flat-sixes and joining them back-to-back at the crank, with power take-off coming from the centre of the crank to reduce end-to-end vibrations, Mezger devised a 4.5 litre, 180-degree flat-twelve, putting out 550 horsepower, some 60 horsepower more than the old GT40. By 1971, that number would rise yet again, as the engine was bored out to the maximum allowed 5.0 litres, achieving almost 630 horsepower. With the power more than satisfactory, the engineers turned their attention to the rest of the car. To make sure the chassis was strong enough to deal with the power, but still light enough to be competitive, the team opted for a spaceframe, with a fibreglass body draped over the top, and then decided that – to make sure the chassis remained strong – the hollow spaceframe should be pressurised. That way, if it ever lost pressure, you’d know that the chassis was cracked or compromised. Combine that with an utter disregard for driver comfort, leading to the designers shrinking the frontal area of the cabin, and you have a car that weighs just 800kg, and with over 600 horsepower on tap, Porsche had created a monster. 

Again. Normally when I do a bit of hyperbole like that, the “monster” in question is usually just a normal car that’s quite fast. But no. The Porsche 917 was damn near undrivable. At Le Mans in 1969, none of the 917s finished the race, with their impossible handling claiming the life of British driver John Woolfe. Something had to be done, or the 917 would be relegated to the history books as one of motorsports biggest deathtraps. Salvation came in the form of another Brit, this time engineering genius John Wyer. Wyer was something of a Le Mans expert, having secured a win in 1959 as team manager of Aston Martin, and developing the original Ford GT40 prototype before the project was passed to Carroll Shelby, he seemed like exactly the man that Porsche needed. Of course, Wyer managed to diagnose and fix Porsche’s issue, with a little help from a swarm of gnats. After a long test session with the 917, Wyer noticed that the front of the car was covered with splattered insects, but as he traced back over the body of the car, the insects appeared less and less frequently, until he reached the tail of the car, where there weren’t any at all. From this, Wyer determined that the airflow of the car was all wrong, with the 917’s low-drag tail barely touching the air and therefore generating little to no downforce. You see, Le Mans most iconic feature is the 3.7-mile long Mulsanne Straight, so the 917 had been designed specifically to achieve a maximum speed of over 220mph, but the lack of downforce meant that getting to the straight in the first place was a big ask. 

With the entire rear-end of the car redesigned, the brand-new Porsche 917K (for Kurzheck or “Short Tail”) entered the 1970 24 Hours of Daytona up against Ferrari’s latest and greatest, the V12 512S, and absolutely dominated. Securing a 1-2 finish, the lead 917K finished 48 whole laps ahead of the fastest Ferrari of the day, immediately cementing Porsche as contenders for that year’s Le Mans. And so, just a few months later, Porsche arrived at the legendary French circuit once more hoping this time so secure the ever-elusive victory with two different versions of the 917, the race-proven 917K and the experimental 917LH (Langheck or “Long Tail”, designed for a higher top speed) painted in the iconic “Psychodelia” livery. 343 laps later, the trophy was raised by team number 23, a 917K driven by Hans Hermann and Dickie Attwood.  

1970 was Porsche’s first Le Mans win, but certainly not their last. To date, Porsche has won Le Mans more times than any other manufacturer on earth, and it all started with a deathtrap and a couple of blokes called Ferdinand.