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Porsche launches classic racing program with restored 917k

Porsches is launching a historic racing program to support private owners of its competition classics. The program will offer customers support restoring and repairing their racecars. It'll also help get vintage vehicles up to spec for modern safety equipment. The company is developing a network of trusted specialists, and will continue supplying spare parts and trackside technical assistance at major historic events. Porsche will also offer to store and maintain privately owned classic racers at its facilities – like the new Porsche Experience Center that's soon to open in Los Angeles – putting them on display for visitors to admire and even transporting them to and from the track for racing events. To highlight the newly enhanced program, Porsche is showcasing this restored 917K. This particular example, resplendent in iconic Gulf livery, won the thousand-kilometer race at Spa in 1971, and was entrusted a few years ago to Porsche Motorsport North America for restoration. It'll be participating in the Rennsport Reunion at Laguna Seca this weekend, but whether or not you'll be in Monterey for the event, you can check it out in the image gallery above. Restored Porsche 917K returns to US race track after 40 years Porsche provides new services for historic motorsport Stuttgart. Historic Porsche race cars represent many victories at the 24-hour classics of Le Mans and Daytona. And they also celebrated memorable successes at 1,000-kilometre events on storied circuits such as the Nurburgring and Spa-Francorchamps. To ensure that these vehicles can still be admired at race tracks today, Porsche now also offers customers a comprehensive service for historic motor racing in Germany and the USA. The priorities of the new business field are to restore vintage race cars as true to the original as possible as well as to repair and maintain them. "These vehicles have written motorsport history and have gained in value, at times markedly, in recent years," says Jens Walther, President & CEO of Porsche Motorsport North America in Santa Ana/California. "The historic motor racing scene has an extremely strong following in the USA, but many of these vehicles can also be seen on European race tracks. An increasing number of owners are now recognising how important it is for future gain that such vehicles undergo a true to original restoration." The figurehead for the new business service is the now completed restoration of a Porsche 917K.

Porsche ready to pick itself up after Le Mans failure

It's safe to say that things for Porsche didn't go quite as well at Le Mans this year as it might have hoped. After a sixteen-year gap, the winningest manufacturer in endurance racing history returned to the Circuit de la Sarthe this year hoping maybe not for outright victory in its first time back, but definitely a strong finish on which it could build on for next year. All the while it undoubtedly hoped its 911s would hold their own in the GT classes.
Unfortunately for Porsche, neither happened. After racing around the clock, and despite actually leading the festivities for some time, the best its 919 Hybrid could manage was an eleventh-place finish, lagging lamentably behind not only the other LMP1s (like the race-winning Audi) but also a handful of LMP2s. Meanwhile the LMGTE Pro and LMGTE Am titles went to the factory-backed teams of its arch-rivals Ferrari and Aston Martin, respectively.
Not a stellar result, in other words, but Porsche is taking it all in stride - accepting that it has a ways to go while congratulating its vanquishing rivals in the video below. It's good sportsmanship if we've ever seen it. Next year's race starts now.

Magnus Walker drives 911 Turbos old and new

It's been forty years now since Porsche released the original 911 Turbo. And as many things that have remained a constant, a lot has changed, too: the engine has gone from air-cooled to liquid, moved up to nearly a midships layout, and drives almost exactly double the original's output to all four wheels instead of just the back set through a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission instead of a five-speed manual. It'll also reach highway speeds about twice as fast as the original. That's progress for you, and who better to compare Porsche Turbos old and new than Magnus Walker. The outlaw of the 911 scene may not look the part, but to those in the know, he's got the last word when it comes to Porsches. After searching for some time, Walker recently got his hands on a cherry of an original 930 Turbo from 1975 – the first year it was made – and had it shipped from Australia to California to add to his collection. eGarage caught up with Walker and brought along a new 991 Turbo for juxtaposition. Fortunately it also brought along a video camera or two to document the experience, so check it out in the latest video above.