MotorSportWorld.TV

By: By Bill Oursler / Photos courtesy of John Davison

Think of Porsche today and you most likely envision powerful sportscars. However, in the beginning, Porsches were anything but powerful. In fact, the company’s first car, the four-cylinder 356 was essentially a hotrodded Volkswagen with a more aerodynamic bodyshell.

 

That link was a not so surprising given the fact that family patriarch Dr. Ferdinand Porsche had designed the VW Beetle for the German government in the years immediately prior to World War II and had proposed building more sporting versions of “the Peoples’ Car” even before the first production model rolled off the line in 1939.

 

Above Right: The Gorgeous and the Ungainly: the 904 on the far transporter, and the less-than-successful Kangaroo up close, looking more like a Meyers Manx dune buggy than a Porsche race car.

 

Even so, in light of the humble origins of its aircooled VW engine, and the limited power that could be extracted from it, the performance needed to make the 356 a sales success would, have to depend less on the four’s output, and more on light weight, combined with quick handling, good braking and its then-quirky, but drag-reducing body lines.

 

In short, Porsches were all about balanced performance rather than outright speed; a formula carried forward when the German manufacturer began to produce its famous line of mid-engined competition Spyders that started with the appearance of the first 550s in 1953.

Ferdinand Piech, Ferry Porsche’s nephew who was given control of the company’s racing department in 1965.

 

These cars, obviously more removed from the 356’s Volkswagen roots, were made even more so by the introduction of a new four-cam, four-cylinder powerplant introduced in late ’53 and designated as the Type 547. Created by Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann, who would in the early 1970’s become the company’s president, the sophisticated four would, in various configurations, reside in the engine bays of virtually every competition vehicle built by the factory through 1965.

 

Such was the perfection of the Type 547 equipped 550s and their successors, the Type 718 RSKs and RSs of the latter part of the decade, that Porsche drivers were virtually unbeatable in the lower displacement classes that constituted their home territory. Indeed, so commonplace were those successes, whether they came in the small, unimportant club events, or the premier showcases of Sebring and Le Mans, it was only news when a Porsche didn’t win, rather than when it did.

 

Even so, because of the Type 547’s relatively anemic horsepower, it was fairly uncommon for Porsches to step beyond the lower displacement universe and challenge the headlining Ferraris, Maseratis, Aston Martins and Jaguars for outright victories. As with the production 356s, the Spyders couldn’t defeat the “big boys” on outright speed . Rather, when a Porsche did beat them, it was at a venue like the Targa Florio which stressed the factory’s core concept of “balanced performance.”

 

The Ferdinand Piech-designed Kangaroo in the 1965 Targa Florio, in which it placed a very respectable second.

Unfortunately, courses such as the Targa were almost nonexistent by the 1950’s, thus keeping Porsche and its Spyders locked in their roles as supporting players on the world’s sports car stage. Still, there was one series where the Zuffenhausen-built cars could be stars; this being the FIA’s Mountain, or Hillclimb championship which debuted in 1957.

 

Run in the treacherous European Alps, these uphill paved course events, generally no more than 12 to 15 miles in length, stressed overall performance rather than simply massive horsepower. To win, a car had to be nimble. And, Porsche’s Spyder brigade was exactly that, a fact demonstrated by the results which saw the factory claim the championship and its sales-related marketing benefits all but two times between 1957 and 1968, when the company quit the series.

 

The two times that Porsche didn’t take home the title, Ferrari did. The first of those losses coming in 1962 when Ferrari swept Porsche away with one of its early rear-engined prototypes, Thankfully, from the Germans’ viewpoint, Ferrari’s World Manufacturers contender confined itself to a single season raid on Porsche’s turf before returning to its duties on the FIA’s Makes tour. Thus, while Porsche’s pride was hurt, little else changed as the German car maker returned to its winning mountain ways in 1963, still running its now increasingly aged Spyders.

 

The fact that Porsche was still bound to a vehicle so clearly out of date was due to the simple fact that it had nothing else to use. The cause of this unhappy situation was Porsche’s less than successful venture into the single seater world of Formula One, which drained almost all of the company’s motorsports resources from the sports car scene.

 

Not until Ferry Porsche himself ended the factory’s ill-fated Grand Prix adventure in the fall of 1962 did his firm’s attention return to the two-seat arena with a dedication that would produce its first all new befendered competition model since the RSK Spyder of 1957. This new model was the legendary 904 GTS, a groundbreaking fiberglass-bodied coupe bonded to a perimeter steel frame that would again put Porsche at the forefront of the small displacement sports racing battlefield for its customers and itself.

 

The Kangaroo’s graceless lines are evident in this side view at the Norisring in 1965.

So good was the 904 that it dominated the two-liter production sports car division for more than two years before being replaced by the tubeframed 906 Carrera 6 in 1966. It is that latter car which is generally considered to be the true starting point for the series of Porsche prototypes that reached its zenith with the awesome 12-cylinder, 230 mile-an-hour 917 that would change the fortunes not only of Porsche, but sports car racing forever. However, in truth that assumption is wrong. All of this is rooted in the 1965 appointment of Ferry Porsche’s nephew, Ferdinand Piech, as head of the company’s racing efforts.

 

Piech’s takeover marked a strategic change in the way the factory approached the sport. Where before there was conservatism both in monetary expenditures and goals, now Piech went on a spending binge aimed at making Porsche and himself the outright stars of the sport. Moreover, those goals didn’t include the 904.

 

As far as Piech was concerned there were two reasons why it was passé. The first was that it was too heavy, an anathema for Piech who was trained as an aeronautical engineer. The second, and perhaps more important, was that it was designed by his cousin Butzi, Ferry’s oldest son, who Piech was out to eclipse along with the rest of the Ferry-led “old guard.” Conveniently, Ferrari’s decision to re-enter the still important mountain championship arena with a new lightweight modern prototype provided Piech with the right circumstances to stage his coup.

 

That confluence was the result of the 904’s deficiency as a hillclimber, a venue where it was handicapped by its weight. In fact, such was its lack of competitiveness that factory driver Edgar Barth was forced to use the last of the Spyder line, the RS61 WRS, fitted with the F-1 derived two-liter Type 771 eight, to win the title against only light opposition in 1964. Clearly something would have to be done if Porsche were to retain its crown in 1965.

 

Thus, Piech set his engineers on a mission to find a solution. What they came up with was the idea of stripping way the coupe’s overly heavy body  (perhaps the most beautiful of all of Porsche’s racing models), and replacing it with an ugly dune buggy-looking substitute, that was only a fraction of the weight. What resulted was the “Kangaroo”, which was both ugly and unsuccessful.

 

The basic problem with the unlamented Spyder lay in the fact that the 904’s torsional rigidity – needed for acceptable handling – was dependent on the stiffness of its combined body and frame structure. Because the dune buggy Spyder variant’s bodyshell was anything but stiff, the open topped racer was an ill-handling flexible flyer. And, while it did place second in the Targa Florio and did win the opening Mountain championship rounds which Ferrari did not attend, once the Italians arrived, the game for the “Kangaroo” was over. If Porsche were to beat its red-painted rival it would need something better – much better.

 

Gerhard Mitter in the 904-derived tube-framed Spyder.

Piech, unafraid of asking for the impossible, ordered his team in mid July to create a new tubeframe Spyder for the Ollon-Villars hillclimb in early September – just six weeks off. A major part of this complicated exercise was the need to rid the new car of the 904’s antiquated suspension with its narrow 15-inch rims that precluded the use of the latest competitive tires.

 

With so little time, and needing a shortcut, the engineers traveled in early August to the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring where they purchased a set of hubs, brakes and 13-inch wheels from Lotus, which had been brought as spares for Jim Clark’s F-1 title contending Lotus 33. Whatever Clark’s misgivings, the Porsche engineers drove off with their purchases firmly in hand, ready to move forward with their work.

 

Using the pieces to fashion a thoroughly modern suspension, their little white-painted Spyder was completed on time for the Ollon-Villars event, from which it took its name. Had this been a Hollywood drama, rather than real life, it would have won. It didn’t. Happily, though, the defeat wasn’t the cause of any design flaw, but ironically because of a wrong choice of tires. To prove its point, the following year, fitted with a roof, and using the correct choice of rubber, the car fulfilled its mission as Gerhard Mitter swept away the opposition to reestablish Porsche’s mountain superiority.

 

Fitted with Lotus suspension as the most expeditious way to create a properly-handling car, the tubeframed Spyder went well in the Ollen-Villars hillclimb but didn’t win due to a wrong choice of tires.

Still, the record of the Ollon-Villars Spyder is of lesser significance than the fact that it formed the pattern for both the 906 and the subsequent 910 fiberglass tubeframed “Plastic Porsches” that started the company on its way to becoming a sportscar motorsport legend; something to which it continues to add, and something which has helped make Ferdinand Piech a powerhouse in automotive history.

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