@wheelsaustralia 77
I feel compelled to touch it, this thing lifted by Carroll
Shelby, Bruce McLaren, Jacky Ickx, Derek Bell,
Graham Hill and countless other legends of the sport.
The engraved panel only runs to Mike Hawthorn’s win
in 1955, but the names prior to that include Nuvolari,
Veyron and Barnato.
Just opposite is a 956 mounted upside down,
illustrating the fact that this car makes enough
downforce at 321.4km/h to stick it to the ceiling.
Theoretically. There’s Bjorn Waldegard’s Safari Rally
911 SC, complete with dings in the front bar that tell
of some unfortunate creature meeting its maker. The
casually knotted bungee holding the first aid kit in
place on the parcel shelf is but one charmingly human
aspect to these cars. Look inside the 1962 Typ 804,
Porsche’s only fully in-house Formula 1 car, and you
can see the light scratches on the gear lever caused by
Dan Gurney’s wedding ring as he piloted the car about
the pits.
The big-ticket racers like the 956, the 917 and the
achingly beautiful 908 are all well documented. A
more fascinating aspect of the museum is the weird
and wonderful, the cars that never made production
or were one-off gifts. The very first 911 Turbo was a
present to Louise Piech for her 70th birthday. You have
to stop for a moment to let that one sink in. This one-
off, narrow-body 911 Turbo, the archetypal scary road
car of the 1970s was given to a 70-year-old woman as a
birthday gift? Likewise one of only two eight-cylinder
914s ever built is on display, a gift to Ferry Porsche on
his 60th. With 221kW at its elbow, this little thing, built
in 1969, must have been seriously rapid, its output only
being eclipsed by the introduction of the 3.3-litre turbo
version of the 911.
There are cars here that are like trick questions for
Porsche fans. The Porsche 968 Club Sport Cabriolet,
for example. Or how about the 1981 911 Turbo 4x4
Deja vu?
The truly sharp-witted amongst you may well recall a
four-page feature we ran upon the museum’s opening
back in March 2009. We decided that almost a decade
on, it was worth returning to and devoting a few more
pages given Porsche constantly rotates the 80 display
exhibits from its heritage stock of over 400 cars. If
you’re in the locale on October 13th, Porsche is hosting
Sound Night, where many of the exhibits are fired up
and given a few thousand rpm.There are cars here that are like
trick questions for Porsche fans