Porsche Carrera E-Book

Johnny Tipler

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Porsche Carrera follows the development and design of the Carrrera car dynasty, from the origins of the Carrera line in the 550 and 356 models through the highly tuned race cars of the 1960s to the largely hand-crafted, air-cooled cars of the 1970s and the 1980s. The book features detailed profiles of all Carrera models, including roadgoing and race models, prototypes, special builds and rare cars; in-depth explorations of the engineering and tuning of the cars and buyer's guides for the different models. Also included are a series of interviews with racing drivers such as Sir Stirling Moss, Derek Bell, John Surtees and Gijs van Lennep, and key Carrera figures such as designer Richard Soderberg and Klaus Bischof, head of the Porsche Rolling Museum. Foreword by Jurgen Barth, and over 400 colour photographs, many specially commissioned.

Leseprobe

PORSCHE CARRERA

THE AIR-COOLED ERA, 1953–1998

JOHNNY TIPLER

PHOTOS BY ANTONY FRASER

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2014 byThe Crowood Press LtdRamsbury, MarlboroughWiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2014

© Johnny Tipler 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 700 7

Frontispiece: Ducktail is an original artwork by Caroline Llong, a Parisian artist based in Marseilles, who specializes in depicting cars, and Porsche and Ferrari in particular. All her paintings are resolutely modern, and characterized by brilliance of colour, depth of light, dazzling reflections and an amazing energy (seewww.e-motion-art.fr). CAROLINE LONG

Previous page: Yuppies’ delight: a non-Sport, Guards Red 3.2 Carrera Targa, living the dream with Munich’s Passo Tourismo beside the Kochelsee in the Bavarian Alps. ANTONY FRASER

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Jürgen Barth

Introduction

CHAPTER 1    DEBUT OF THE CARRERA: LA CARRERA PANAMERICANA (FEATURING HERBERT LINGE AND HANS HERRMANN)

CHAPTER 2    THE CARRERA ENGINE, THE PORSCHE 356 AND ABARTH CARRERAS (FEATURING JOHN SURTEES)

CHAPTER 3    THE 550 SPYDER, 718 RSK AND RS 60 (FEATURING STIRLING MOSS)

CHAPTER 4    THE 904 CARRERA GTS (FEATURING JÜRGEN BARTH)

CHAPTER 5    THE 906 ‘CARRERA SIX’ AND 910 (FEATURING WILLI KAUHSEN, KLAUS BISCHOF AND BRIAN REDMAN)

CHAPTER 6    THE 911 2.7 CARRERA RS AND 2.8 RSR (FEATURING BJÖRN WALDEGÅRD AND GIJS VAN LENNEP)

CHAPTER 7    THE 911 3.0 CARRERA RS AND RSR (FEATURING JOHN FITZPATRICK, HURLEY HAYWOOD AND MURRAY SMITH)

CHAPTER 8    THE 911 2.7, CARRERA 3, SC AND SC RS (FEATURING THE ALMÉRAS BROTHERS)

CHAPTER 9    THE 924 CARRERA GT, GTR AND GTS (FEATURING DEREK BELL)

CHAPTER 10  THE 911 3.2 CARRERA AND CLUB SPORT (FEATURING 959 DESIGNER RICHARD SODERBERG AND GEORGE FOLLMER)

CHAPTER 11  THE 964 CARRERA 2 AND 4, RS, RS AMERICA, C4 LEICHTBAU AND CARRERA CUP (FEATURING WALTER RÖHRL)

CHAPTER 12  THE 993 CARRERA 2 AND 4, S, RS AND GT2 (FEATURING GÉRARD LARROUSSE)

CHAPTER 13  EPILOGUE: THE WATER-COOLED 996, 997 AND 991 CARRERAS (FEATURING JAN LAMMERS)

Bibliography

Contacts

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My father Don went through a hedge backwards in a 356, and I’ve been a Porsche fan since. I even managed to emulate him four decades later, aquaplaning off at ‘the ton’ in my 964. Happily, in neither case was the car badly damaged.

I have also managed to scrape a living as a freelance writer specializing in the marque, having written regularly for the independent 911 & Porsche World magazine since 2000. Other titles dedicated to the marque followed, including Classic Porsche, Excellence, Total 911, Porsche Lifestyle Megascene, and the PCGB publication Porsche Post; and then a couple of years ago The Crowood Press, for whom I have written half-a-dozen books, invited me to write this one.

I would especially like to thank 911 & Porsche World’s editors, firstly Chris Horton and, since 2005, Steve Bennett (aka ‘The Dear Leader’), for commissioning me to write the relevant features, in the course of which I’ve attended and reported on many big-time events, driven lots of fabulous Porsches, and interviewed legendary Porsche racing drivers, as well as specialist tuners, builders and garagistes. You will read about and hear from many of them here, with relevance to the Carrera saga, and I’m most grateful to Steve for permission to quote from, and to refer to, related features and interviews.

The Peppermint Pig pauses at Reims pits, en route to Monte Carlo, covering the Historic Rally with Fran Newman, January 2012. JOHNNY TIPLER

Referring to the contemporary report in Motor Sport magazine, Sir Stirling Moss recounts racing the 718 RS60 in the 1961 Targa Florio to Johnny Tipler. The Porsche’s transmission failed on the last lap when Moss had a comfortable lead. ANTONY FRASER

As for the photographs, over the years I have mainly worked with two professional photographers on my Porsche features: Peter Robain in the early days and, since 2005, Antony Fraser. I learned a lot from watching these maestros at work and can produce a decent picture myself when covering historic races and rallies for the specialist press (though a good camera certainly helps!). Antony has extremely kindly and unstintingly provided the bulk of the modern photographs for the book, and is credited accordingly on the cover. My friend Andreas Beyer also came up with some exciting shots from covering La Carrera Panamericana. Another PanAm friend – as well as 930 owner and Ronnie Peterson confederate – Kenneth Olausson, supplied Porsche Carrera shots from his own considerable library.

The archivist at Porsche’s Zuffenhausen HQ, Jens Torner, was extremely diligent in picking out an amazing variety of Carrera photos, most of which are new to me, going back to 1953. As far as the text is concerned, my sidekick sub-editor at the comet-like Car Week newspaper, mid-1990s, John Dalton, diligently subbed the whole thing, with no threat of the punishment that we endured in the bad old days. Pete Robain delved back in time to produce some lovely shots which feature here and there in the text, and my daughter Zoë helped locate the images throughout the script.

I would also like to mention some of my contacts and friends who have been involved in some context or another, in no particular order, and however fleetingly: Laurie Caddell, Johan Dirickx, Mike van Dingenen, Laura Drysdale, Peter (PeeJay) Jonkers, Andrea Kerr, Ian Heward, Ed Poland, Jude Haig, Alois Ruf, Paul Stephens, Fran Newman, Sarah ­Bennett-Baggs, John Hawkins, Pedro Diogo, Kenneth Olausson, Roman Caresani, Adrian Crawford, Caroline Llong, Willy Brombacher, Sarah Rope, Jon Kent, Andy Prill, Adam Lichtig, Angelica Fuentes, Jules Tipler, Ruth Wright, Kobus Cantraine, Stephen Mummery, Lars Eise, Mauritz Lange, Natalie Cook, Wayne Parker, Keith Seume, Mick Pacey, Dirk Sadlowski, Thomas Schnarr, Lee Sibley, Bill Hemmer, Jared Sindt, James Puttock, Matthew and Martin at Au-towerke, Nick Perry at Porsche GB, Gina Purcell, Lasse Hansen, Emma Stuart and Théadoa Lecrinier.

Interesting factory shot featuring the saw-tooth north light construction, and in the foreground a Porsche 356B 1600 GS Carrera GTL Abarth, in 1961. PORSCHE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

FOREWORD

By Jürgen Barth

The names ‘Porsche’ and ‘Carrera’ are bonded like a really long love affair: like a young couple who formed an inexor­able partnership that has blossomed over fifty years.

The man responsible for the match was Huschke von Hanstein, who, in the early days of the Porsche Factory in the 1950s, was a close friend of Ferry Porsche and fulfilled multiple roles, advertising and press officer as well as sport and competitions director. He instigated Porsche’s ­international racing history by entering cars in the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Mexican Carrera Panamericana. The fantastic results achieved in those early races formed the basis of the ­company’s Customer Racing Department, and provided the springboard for the first Carrera engine, the four-cam, 4-cylinder engine designed by Professor Fuhrmann. The love affair took off when these engines were installed in the 550 Spyders in 1953.

Jürgen Barth at home, surrounded by Porsche treasures and souvenirs from events such as the East African Safari Rally. ANTONY FRASER

Jürgen Barth on Schauinsland Hillclimb, Freiburg, in his 911T 2.0 in 1969. JÜRGEN BARTH

When the results of these first race successes were broadcast round the world, the reputation of the Porsche brand as the producer of fast, reliable sports cars was sealed. Winning the Sport Menor class in the Carrera Panamericana over the rough Mexican highways gave competitions director Huschke von Hanstein the inspiration to endow Porsche’s special racing and road cars with the race name ‘Carrera’! From thereon, the Carrera models have amplified the company’s slogan, ‘Driving in its purest form.’

And that’s what we find in Johnny Tipler’s beautifully illustrated book: an overview of every air-cooled, Carrera-badged model produced during the last four decades of the twentieth century. That’s a long time for a love affair to flourish – but equally significantly, it continues to endure to the present day.

Jürgen Barth, May 2014

Jürgen Barth drives a 3.0 Carrera RS on the 2013 Tour Auto. PETER AUTO

INTRODUCTION

Carrera: it is such an iconic word, with so much baggage attached, that I can’t resist endorsing the epithet and having my 964 adorned with Carrera side-stripes. Just like the 1970s originals, the current retro zeitgeist means I have even replaced its electrically motivated rear wing with a 1973-style ducktail spoiler, like the one applied to the 2.7RS icon.

And yet the Carrera name has become so ubiquitous that its origins have become obscured. Porschistas know well enough that it applies to current models – though we refer to C2 and C4S without mentioning the Carrera word, which is what the ‘C’ prefix relates to. We know they are descended from the 2.7RS that ruled the sports car roost from 1972 to 1974, spawning the ‘for general consumption’ 2.7 Carrera and the Carrera 3 of 1974 and 1976, and paving the way for the durable 3.2 Carrera from the following decade. The interim 911 SC’s ‘SC’ suffix stands for Sport Carrera, whose meaning is not generally recognized.

We probably have a hazy idea that the Carrera moniker has antecedents in what was regarded as high-end engine technology that figured in the 356 models from the 1950s. Porsche in fact adopted Carrera from the great Mexican road race – La Carrera Panamericana – in 1953, following a class win by Guatemalan driver Jaroslav Juhan in a 550 Spyder. And therein lies the meaning: ‘Race’ in Spanish, providing Porsche with a handy designation to apply to its emergent competition cars.

The Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 RS is the archetypal Carrera, and this is the very rare 2.7 RSH ‘homologation’. ANTONY FRASER

Porsche 550 Spyder, ex-Hans Herrmann from the 1954 Carrera Panamericana, at the 2008 Solitude Revival. The car is part of the Porsche Rolling Museum based at Zuffenhausen. ANTONY FRASER

Porsche 550s of Hans Herrmann (left) and Jaroslav Juhan perform a dead heat at the end of a stage on La Carrera Panamericana 1954. PORSCHE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

Several Porsche 904s ran at 2010’s Le Mans Classic. ANTONY FRASER

In the early 1950s the company was on a roll, and the new four-cam flat-four motor designed by chief engineer Ernst Fuhrmann not only gave the cars an edge in racing, it raised the marque’s status by taking it into a higher technological banding. Outright cubic capacity was not yet Porsche’s goal, so while it was no rival for Jaguar, Ferrari or Aston Martin in terms of outright speed, and therefore victory, there was fierce competition with similar class contenders such as Siata, Borgward, OSCA and, soon enough, Lotus and Alfa Romeo. Porsche was content with class wins in the category where it could gain sales for its street models.

The Carrera series is traceable from the four-cam Carrera engine being fitted in the 550 Spyder from 1954, and the model badged as the 356 Carrera from 1956. The 550’s successors, the 718 RS60 and RS61, were also dubbed Carreras, and though the 904 was also thus designated in-house, it was the 906 that was the best known bearer of the name in the mid-1960s, and popularly identified as the Carrera Six.

These, though, were racing cars, and when the road-going 356 went out of production in 1965 the Carrera suffix was dropped, reappearing seven years later on the 911 Carrera 2.7RS. Since RS stands for Renn Sport – Race Sport – the translation of Carrera is muted, and the designation became a word in its own right, meaning ‘up-specced’ rather than ‘Race’. Other firms to cash in on the name include the Tag Heuer wristwatch company, and car-accessory chain Halfords, marketing a line of Carrera-branded bicycles.

Porsche 356 Carreras at the Internationales Porsche-Treffen Meran Porsche 356 A 1500 GS Carrera Cabriolet, 14 October 1956. PORSCHE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

The Porsche 906 was also known as the Carrera Six; this was the first 906 imported into Great Britain in 1967, and fabulously lively to drive, if totally deafening! ANTONY FRASER

Porsche Type 356 A Carrera 1500 GS Coupé, 1956, posed for a press photograph across the Brenner Pass in the Italian Tyrol. PORSCHE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

Ian Gepts drives a 3.0 Carrera RS at Abbeville, 2012. ANTONY FRASER

Reflections: a 911 Carrera 3.2 circulating at a wet Chobham. ANTONY FRASER

Tipler’s 964, known as The Peppermint Pig, quayside at Santander en route to Portugal. JOHNNY TIPLER

Porsche 993 Carrera RS, last of the air-cooled RSs, in the North York Moors. ANTONY FRASER

The Carreras tobacco company, founded by Don José Carreras Ferrer, flourished from 1788 to 1958, when it merged with Rothmans. Otherwise, Porsche has the most enduring claim to adoption of the word: from the 1970s and 1980s, Carrera 3.0, SC (Sport Carrera) and 3.2 Carrera, all subsequent normally aspirated Porsches, have been branded Carreras. The 964, 993, 996, 997 and 991, are all badged as Carreras. Without getting into the idiosyncrasies of any one individual model, they are fine cars, but it is not heresy to suggest that the magic that encapsulated the Carrera’s original racing pedigree, its connotations of pioneering boldness, gaiety and adventure, has been seriously diluted.

As with any book, there has to be a cut-off, and I have selected 1998 and the end of the 993, last of the air-cooled 911s, so it encapsulates more or less four decades-worth of Porsche evolution, plus a tailpiece to bring it up to the present so the reader isn’t left stranded in the last century.

It isn’t by any means a definitive book on Zuffenhausen output during that time, more like a glimpse at key models with one or two left-field observations, gleaned during my life as a fan and a motoring writer. The main thrust of this potpourri, then, is the original Carrera series, rather than its modern water-cooled successors, of which all normally aspirated ‘911s’ incorporate the badge. It is a proud legacy, which new owners should recognize, because Porsche’s reputation as a world-leading sports car maker is anchored on its race-bred Carreras.

Johnny TiplerArégos, Portugal, May 2013

CHAPTER ONE

DEBUT OF THE CARRERA: LA CARRERA PANAMERICANA

DEBUT: LE MANS 1953

PORSCHE’S FIRST PURPOSE-BUILT racing cars made their debut in 1953. At Le Mans in June 1953, Jaguars were on the rampage. Porsche, in only its third year at the 24 Hours and its second with works entries, were midfield runners, quicker than the tiny Panhards but without the power to tackle the big Ferraris, Jaguars and Nash-Healeys. They had fielded a 1090cc 356 SL coupé, bent on a class win, and a pair of mid-engined Type 550s running sohc 1495cc flat-fours giving 98bhp at 6,000rpm; these cars were the starting point for over half a century of evolutionary sports-racing engineering.

Though the Fuhrmann-designed four-cam engines were available for that 1953 Le Mans, fuel quality was unreliable, so Porsche elected to run the sohc engines, each cylinder-bank fed by vast Solex 40 PII downdraught carbs. The cockpit was so confined that the steering wheels were removable to make it easier for the driver to get in and out – though presumably any driver doing the Le Mans sprint start had to make the best of it.

Designed by Porsche race engineer Wilhelm Hild, and clad in aluminium panelling made by C. H. Weidenhausen of Frankfurt, the purposeful, low-slung 550 coupés were crewed by Helmut Glöckler and Hans Herrmann in 550-01 and journalist/racers Richard von Frankenberg and Paul Frère in -02. The two 550 Coupés went round in tandem, and as twenty-four hours’ hardcore racing drew to a close, team manager Huschke von Hanstein lined up the two cars for a dead heat for fifteenth place. The organizers were not impressed, however, and gave the von Hanstein/Frèrecar fifteenth and the Glöckler/Herrmann car sixteenth place, on account of -02 having travelled slightly further because of being further back on the starting line-up.

‘An excellent performance from a car developed from the utility Volkswagen,’ said Motor Sport in its July 1953 edition – such was the meagre perception of Porsche at the time.

Any surviving 550 chassis are significant relics of Porsche’s past as the manufacturer’s very first attempt at racing. Designated Project 550, they demonstrate a sense of purpose regained after the war, when it had become clear that modified 356 coupés were not going to be competitive in international racing.

Works Porsche 550 Spyders of Fernando Segura/Herbert Linge and Hans Herrmann plus the 356 of Ernst Hirz at a service halt, 1954 Carrera Panamericana. PORSCHE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

LA CARRERA PANAMERICANA

The 550 was to show its true quality later that year on the other side of the Atlantic. The Porsche Carrera name was not something dreamed up by Zuffenhausen’s marketing department, a convenient, raunchy-sounding Latin name: in fact Porsche earned the right to use the word after winning its spurs in the legendary Mexican road race, La Carrera Panamericana, with a class win in 1953. It was not even a works driver at the helm, and the car had recently been pensioned off. That mattered not – a class win is a win, and as ever, race success had a direct impact on showroom sales and marque status.

The Panamericana story is crucial to the Porsche Carrera story, and it is a fascinating tale. When Mexico finished building its section of the Panamerican Highway in 1947 (the whole road runs from Northern Alaska to Southern Argentina), a race seemed the obvious way to celebrate the achievement. Inaugurated in 1950, the 3,220km (2,000 mile), five-day race quickly earned a reputation as a car breaker and as the most arduous road race in the world, thanks to its combination of Mexican topography, dangerous roads, powerful cars, a relentless pace and extreme distance.

With a handsome prize fund of around £20,000 and plenty of attendant publicity, particularly in America, La Carrera was an extremely attractive proposition for the major manufacturers’ works teams. The 1950 event ran north to south, starting the Mexican side of the Texas border at Cuidad Juarez and finishing at El Ocotal on the Guatemalan border. The last leg, 270km (170 miles) from Tuxtla-Gutierrez, was unpaved. Billed as ‘an open test of speed’, La Carrera entries were stock cars (that is, cars from dealer stock) of which more than fifty units had been produced and a further 500 units were on order.

The 132 competitors were mainly from Mexico and the US, and most cars hailed from Detroit with fifty-six GM products (twenty-two of which were Cadillacs) and thirty-five Fords (including sixteen Lincolns), though a pair of Alfa Romeo Freccia d’Oros, a Jaguar, Hotchkiss, Talbot and a Delahaye upheld European honours. The final stage, a gravel road from Tuxtla to El Ocotal, allowed twenty-two-year-old Herschel McGriff to deploy his off-road truck-driving expertise to win outright. The Cadillacs of Deal and Al Rogers came in second and third, with Taruffi’s Alfa fourth and Bonetto eighth.

Taruffi was back in 1951 when the race was run from south to north, as it has been ever since. The prize fund doubled, though the entry was down to 105 cars. Runner-up in pre-war Mille Miglia and Targa Florios, Taruffi persuaded Enzo Ferrari to release a pair of Ferrari 212 Inters – four-seater GT cars were now eligible, but the distinction between these and the grand tourers that ran in 1950 was marginal: sports cars had been excluded in 1950 as they were about half the weight of the average stock car. Consequently the American Auto Association boycotted the event, although plenty of NASCAR teams signed up. Alberto Ascari and Luigi Villoresi handled the second Ferrari, while Lancia sent a couple of B20 Aurelia Berlinettas, aluminium bodies sporting lowered roof-lines, crewed by ‘hot shots’ of the day Giovanni Bracco and Bonetto.

Fatalities were inevitable, given the speed of the racing cars and the topography, with unprotected drop-offs, stray animals, tyre and brake inefficiencies and mechanical unreliability. On Day 1 a Packard plunged 180m (600ft) down a ravine when its brakes failed, and both driver and navigator were killed; and the following day an Alfa 8C 250 0SS was pushed into a cliff by a passing Jaguar and its co-pilot died as a result.