Feature: Porsche 962 GTP

The Porsche 962 is arguably the most iconic and most successful sports prototype car of all time. Its successes, which stretched years beyond what anyone would have ever expected, are numerous and likely never to be equaled. Perhaps what's most impressive is that the 962, like the 956 before it, was not just successful in the hands of the factory. After all it's one thing for a factory, with their seemingly bottomless pockets, to bring a car into the winner's circle time after time. It's an entirely different thing for a private team to take a turn-key race car and do the same thing. With the 962, this was possible.

There's obviously been quite a bit written about the 962 over the years, and there is not honestly that much that I have to offer on the subject. I have some inside connections to be sure, but there are those much more well connected and in the know than I. Still, when I was at Watkins Glen for the U.S. Vintage Grand Prix this past weekend I couldn't help but be taken with the lone Porsche supercar on hand. I had to take pics, I had to inspect it up close, and naturally, had to talk about it.

Although the car was stated to be a 1985 962, I had a bit of a hard time figuring out exactly which car this was. Clad in the legendary orange Jagermeister colours, it would appear to be one of the ex-Brun team cars. The bodywork however is late-model 962C spec, with a short tail and separate rear wing, and it was running a single turbo GTP spec motor. I did some internet sleuthing and managed to track down the beast's origins. First I stumbled upon a mention of the car having no racing history on URY914's Flickr account. (which has an AMAZING cache of vintage GTP pictures by the way) A few more google searches, based on the name B. Hawe residing on the side of the car, turned up the chassis designation 962 AR-1, which is not on any of the official 962 chassis lists out there, and finally brought me to yet another Flickr page, which finally had the full story.

Apparently this car was built from a spare tub back in 1996 by Kevin Jeannette from Gunnar Racing. The car was to be put on the street but was ultimately sold as a vintage racer, wrecked, purchased by Bill Hawe, and finally rebuilt once again with a 3.0 flat six made to IMSA GTP spec.

So maybe the car doesn't have any racing provenance, but that's really neither here nor there when it comes down to it. To have a proper 962 being used as it was intended, on a track, at speed, rather than sitting in some dark, grim warehouse somewhere, hidden away from the world. Clearly I'm not the only person who feels this way. I bet this vintage Camel GT banner has been proudly displayed every year since the lucky owner decided to rip it down off of some fence back in the 1980s....

More to come from The Glen, including many more Porsches, a historic Jaguar GTP car (which did not take to the track) and a smattering of old VW's. If anyone out there thought pristine condition Scirocco 1's were hard to fine, you clearly haven't been to a vintage race in the northeast.

Check out the full selection of 962 pictures over at the Wolfsburg RS Flickr page. On a side note, I've updated my copyright license so now you can actually see the full sized larger images. Took me a while, but I finally figured that one out.

_WRS

Wolfsburg RS Flickr page

Tomorrow: U.S. Vintage Grand Prix at Watkins Glen

Just a heads up for anyone in the greater N.Y. / Pennsylvania area, the U.S. Vintage Grand Prix is this weekend at Watkins Glen. Blaksquirrel and I are headed up super early tomorrow morning and I hope to have some great photos to share of cars like this wild Lotus...if you haven't been to a vintage race I highly recommend it. It's really an experience to see these cars of yesteryear being hustled around a track at top speed. Very much worth the effort and entry fee...see you there!

_WRS

Pic post: Film just looks better

After my session of scanning in photos last night, I came to a bit of a realization. Old school film looks better. Well, perhaps not better, but more natural. To me it should have been pretty obvious I suppose, as I'm a long time believer that vinyl records sound more natural, and for a guitar nothing is better than a tube amp...solid state has no place in a serious guitarist's rig.

Now, the thing of this is that film certainly doesn't appear to be more accurate, much like a vinyl record isn't more accurate than a compact disc, but it looks like you think it should, just like a record gives that warm sound like a band at a perfect venue. It looks like a memory...which is what pictures are really supposed to be I guess, but in these days of digital SLRs where you can set it to "rock and roll" and just fire away, pictures almost seem to have become less than they were just a decade ago. A good picture is still a good picture, but it's too easy to just snap snap snap...the two pictures on this page were both taken with my old, beloved, and still occasionally dusted off Cannonette G-III rangefinder. Neither are perfect, but to me they look just right....

_WRS

Expand your mind, man

I'm all for learning new things. It's like I always say, if you're not learning something new you're just getting dumber. (or is it more dumb? I never claimed to be an English teacher) Also, I have made no secret of the fact I like sports car and endurance racing in general. One of the cooler sites around, for those who are technically minded anyways, is Mulsanne's Corner, which centers around sports prototype / Le Mans racers in the LMP categories. Much of the site is dedicated to aerodynamics and the details of car design, and it's endlessly fascinating to a nerd like myself. The how's and why's of a new car, flaws that are never discussed until years after the fact, an inside look at a lot of the really classic cars from the last 20 plus years. There are interviews with drivers, designers, and multiple pages on nearly every car you can think of....and probably some you've never even seen!

I've been checking out the site for a few months, and finally my curiousity has gotten the best of me and I bought a book about aerodynamics. I want to know exactly HOW those aero add-ons work, and why I should or shouldn't use similar devices on my street car. Don't think I'm going to go around putting ridiculous spoilers and rear diffusers on my Mk3, or even the Scirocco, but it would be interesting to put some of this stuff to the test. Maybe those DTM splitters from back in the 90's will make the front end stick more...who knows? I highly recommend checking out Mullsanne Mike's page...it's a good read.

So I decided, since I was talking about WSC / LMP sports prototypes, why not drag out the old photo album from the 2000 Rolex 23 at Daytona, scan in some pics, you know, just for the post? Well...I got a little carried away and I scanned in a ton of pics, only a few of which are posted here. Is that an Enron sticker? Probably so, since the Risi team is based in Texas...

Check out the Wolfsburg Rennsport Flickr Page for the full set. Please. Enjoy, I spent a lot of time with the damn scanner tonight...Some of the cars, such as the short-lived Cadillac LMP project, are probably fairly rare to see, and I was happy to add to the few that are around of that car while it actually raced.

The rest, such as the Ferrari 333SP, are more readily uncovered, but it makes for a nice little stroll down memory lane. Cool stuff abounded at the older Daytona races...before they threw out the real race cars and made it an exercise in boring, with ugly spec racers taking to the high banks. Me? I'll take something like this Porsche 917 any day of the week. (this car was the Le Mans winner in 1970...)

I suppose there are some times when the good old days really were better...

_WRS

Wolfsburg Rennsport Flickr Page

Pic post: CCVW 1985 GTI, over the years

Well, I was getting myself all geared up to start ranting about something and it turns out that I was totally wrong. So here I am without anything particularly interesting to say, and I figure I may as well throw up some pics of my old Mk2. (which was previously Blaksquirrel's old Mk2, which eventually became Kevin W's new Mk2, and is now no longer with us) This car was a trooper, and can be seen in it's previous incarnation on the CCVW post from a few days ago. Although the odometer stopped working somewhere in the 220,000 mile range back in the late 90s, the car generally did between 20,000 and 25,000 miles a year....Josh drove this thing a LOT. I would say that the original engine and transmission had at least 350,000 miles on it before I traded it for a newly rebuilt 8v. (the first motor I ever did without any help from a more experienced builder)

Super rare USA spec Hella smoke / red tail lamps. Sold to Robert, who then sold them to some kid who wrecked the car (Jeff / Robert's 1992 GTI 8v) they were on...arg on both counts.

From there it did another 30,000 miles with me before I sold it to Kevin W, and god only knows what it did from there. I would bet the chassis had well over 400,000 miles when it was finally deemed "un-salvageable" by Kevin, thanks in no small part to somewhat half-assed bodywork and the ocean air of south Florida. It was a great car, and spent the vast majority of its life slammed to the ground on a set of H&R coilovers, which never came close to leaking or failing by the way, and was really a key car in our little crew of people. Lots of late night runs, parties, hauling records to some DJ gig or god knows what else, and I don't think it ever broke down, not even once.

So these pics are bascially how the car looked just before I got it, and then after the rebuild in 2004, completed just before H2O International. I have to say, I miss my old Compomotives too, but at least I still have the pictures....

I didn't bother repainting the bumpers, I have no idea why. Probably money.

This reminds me: Kevin I want that front license plate back! ...it can go with my collection of my old front plates. =) (actually Josh deserves the old DST 785, come to think of it)

_WRS

Must see video: The Tommy Milner in car experience

I've become quite a fan of the Speedhunters site over the past 9 months or so that I've been following their posts. Sure it gets a little drift heavy sometimes, which I don't mind per say, but sometimes it's a little bit much...the main thing they do exceptionally well which no one else manages to do, is gain access to some incredible places of the automotive world. Whether that be the fantastic retrospective posts from John Brooks, (and another one) access to the Porsche archives and Norbert Singer, or a very inside (and very freaking cool) look inside the Rahal Letterman Racing shops, and their current Factory-backed ALMS BMW M3 effort, it's all very interesting, and well, very exclusive stuff. It's amazing what you can achieve when you have the power (and money) of the EA video games empire behind you. The nice thing is that it seems like the parents over at EA are perfectly content to let the kids do what they want...

And what do they want? Well luckily they want to bring us some of the best in-car footage I've seen in quite a while, maybe ever, namely "The Tommy Milner in car experience" from inside that BMW M3 of Rahal Letterman. I really can't say much else but go check it out go check it out go check it out go check it out go check it out go check it out . And as Rod says, do yourself a favor and download the 720P HD file. It'll take a minute or 10, but it's well worth it. Now excuse me while I go watch the film again...

_WRS

Photo: Rod Chong / Speedhunters

Crazy like the Fox! Minor update

It's been a slow couple of days here at the WRS, so we're going to just update with a few daytime shots of the Fox project. Jason went back and did some more inspections on the car, and was pleased to report that overall things appear to be in better-than-expected condition.

Popping the top off the airbox / carb revealed a clean air filter, and the main areas of rust aren't quite as life threatening as expected. The tops of the strut towers do show some corrosion, but it appears to be mainly on the surface, meaning that the few dollars which are going to be thrown at this project can go towards the more important stuff, like suspension and getting the engine running, rather than reconstructing the whole unibody.

Here's Jason sitting in the car. He's making "vroom" noises in this pic, you just can't hear it.

As I mentioned in the first Fox post, the interior is pretty clean. It's full of junk, as the car has managed to become a bit of a storage unit over the last 15 years, but aside from a crack or two in the dash it's not bad. Not full of mold or dirt or anything wet, which is always a good sign when it comes to the electrics. Moisture on the interior would not bode well for grounds and similar connections, as I can tell you from first hand experience with my own projects that had been sitting before I put them on the road.

So that's it for the moment. Jason and I have been discussing some options on the cheapest way to lower the car without resorting to cut springs and a beyond terrible ride. I think eBay may hold the solution we require, but we'll see if any Mk1 or Mk2 parts will swap right on before doing anything too drastic.

_WRS