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Up to seven rare and important racing Porsches from the company’s Museum in
Stuttgart, Germany, are expected to be seen and heard at the Shannons 2007
Phillip Island Classic historic race meeting.
This follows Porsches inaugural support for this year’s ‘Classic’ in
February, when six special Museum Porsches participated in parades and
Regularity events, watched by an estimated 20,000 spectators.
Appropriately, the Victorian Historic Racing Register’s Phillip Island
Classic from 9-11 March 2007 will be celebrated as a ’Tribute to Porsche’, with
up to 100 special Porsche road and racing cars spanning more than 50 years
either on track or on display.
The Museum cars heading to the meeting will include famous Porsche Formula 1,
Targa Florio road race and Le Mans 24-Hour endurance race winners.
Heading the list is the Porsche’s first and only wholly-produced F1 car – the
Type 804that raced in only one season,1962.
Featuring a 1.5-litre eight-cylinder air cooled engine producing 132 kW, the
Type 804 weighed just 452kg and had a top speed of 270 km/h.
American racer Dan Gurney gave Porsche its first F1 Grand Prix win in the
French Grand Prix at Rouen and a week later beat Jim Clark’s Lotus to win again
in front of 300,000 spectators at the Solitude circuit near Stuttgart.
After its brief F1 foray, Porsche concentrated its energies on sports car
racing, developing a series of legendary 908 eight-cylinder sports cars in the
late 1960s.
Two of the most famous of these racing 908s are also heading to the Shannons
Phillip Island Classic – the 1969 Targa Florio-winning 908/02 Spyder that
contributed to Porsche winning is first World Championship for Makes the same
year and the famous 903/03 Spyder that won the Nurburgring 1000km and
Targa Florio in 1970, delivering Porsche its second successive Sportscar title.
Both are powered by naturally-aspirated 3.0-litre eight cylinder air cooled
engines developing around 270kW.
Joining this trio in Australia will be two equally famous Le Mans 24-Hour
race winners.
When the Porsche 936 won the French endurance classic in 1976, it marked the
first Le Mans victory by a turbocharged Porsche. However it is the 936/77’s
victory the following year that is regarded as perhaps the most memorable of all
Porsche’s Le Mans successes.
Heroic drives by Belgian Jacky Ickx, German Juergen Barth and American Hurley
Heywood saw the 936/77 Spyder claw its way back from a discouraging 41st
place to take a stunning victory in the 1977 race, with the car’s two final laps
completed with the car’s 400kW, 2.1-litre twin turbo engine running on only five
of its six cylinders.
Also coming is the car that gave Porsche victory in its last factory assault
on Le Mans in 1998 – the all conquering911 GT1, based on the 911 road
car.
The lightweight, hi-tech GT1 was powered by a 400 kW turbocharged 3.2-litre
engine and blitzed the field to score an emphatic 1-2 for Porsche in its 50th
year, bringing total Porsche victories at Le Mans to 16.
For classic Porsche enthusiasts, perhaps the most stirring of the Museum cars
visiting Phillip Island is the 550 Spyder – the genesis of all Porsche
customer racing cars. This very special 550 Spyder was a member of the factory’s
pivotal 1-2 class win in the 1954 Carrera Panamericana, a notorious border to
border race across Mexico .
Rounding off the rare collection is the 356 B Carrera GT of 1960 – a
famous car that won the then-new Classic Category in Targa Tasmania in 1998 and
was running an amazing third outright with dual World Rally Champion Walter
Roehrl at the wheel amongst all cars built up to 1982 in the 2000 Targa Tasmania
before suffering a minor gear linkage failure that dropped it out of contention.
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