The Chicane

I’ll take 5 cans, please.

The Porsche 904 once owned by renowned collector/museum curator/tycoon/lucky bastard Yoshibo Matsuda is currently among the cars for sale by German dealer Jan Lühn. Ordinarily the non-racing owner of a car doesn’t improve it’s provenance terribly, but Mr. Matsuda is no ordinary car collector. In the 1970s and 80s, Matsuda started pickup up exotic Porsches: the first Porsche to win outright at LeMans (a 917), a 910 Spyder, a 550 Spyder, an RSK Spyder, a 906, 908. The guy’s collection was no joke. So fantastic was it, that he opened a historic Porsche museum in Tokyo. After several years, Mr. Matsuda decided to shake things up and sold off the bulk of his collection and replaced them with historically significant Ferraris and hung a new sign on the door of his museum. I understand that he’s now sold off the Ferraris as well.

But getting back to Porsche 904-092. The car was originally delivered in 1964 to gentleman F1 driver, Count Carel de Beaufort. This 904 was his third—he also owned 904-019 (which he raced at Sebring), and 904-072 (which was crashed by his friend Gerard van Lennep).

The Count only owned 904-092 for a short time before selling it to England, where it was raced by Patrick Godfrey and Alain DeCadenet. After a short time in the states, Matsuda picked up the car in the late 70’s.

Such was Mr. Matsuda’s love for the 904, that he wrote an absolutely marvelous book on the history, development, and current whereabouts of the remaining 904s. I spent several years trying to track down a copy of “Porsche 904 GTS Great Cars of Great Collections Volume 3″, with little luck. I finally tracked down a copy at online bookseller T.E. Warth Autobooks, but $180 seemed a bit steep. Ultimately I was able to order a copy from the publisher at cover price. Go order a copy right now, it’s an amazing book - and the price is fantastic when compared to the odd prices it’s fetching in the secondary market.

Mr. Matsuda sold the car at RM’s Monterrey Auction in 2000—for the now astonishingly low price of $264,000. (Is it wrong for me to hope that the current financial market causes classic car prices to tank and once again become attainable?). After that sale, however, the story becomes even more interesting. The Floridian buyer repainted the car to its original Silver color and shortly thereafter sold the car to a man in Germany. Incredibly, the German tracked down the car’s original twin-cam 4 cylinder Koenigswellen engine, which had been spending some time as a decorative piece in a retired Porsche engineer’s home. Now that is an art piece I’d love to have in my living room.

So now, impeccably maintained and newly reunited with her original engine after 25 years apart, Porsche 904-092 is available. Jan Lühn doesn’t list a price, but I’m sure they’ll be receptive to an offer of the $264,000 that this car fetched in 2000.
Sure they will.

I just stumbled across some footage on YouTube of Porsche 910-25 (which we’ve featured here on The Chicane last week) at the Zippo Vintage Grand Prix at Watkins Glen from September 2005. Enjoy.

Walking the paddock at any vintage race is half the fun of attending. There are scores of wonderful racing cars and dozens of friendly drivers happy to chat about them. At this year’s Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival, we did even more chatting with drivers than usual, as Paul is on the hunt for a vintage Formula Vee. One car this year, however, stopped me dead in my tracks—along with everyone else that passed—the Porsche 910.

Parked among some of the most arresting cars of the weekend, a Maserati 250 and a Cooper Formula car, it was the only car I can think of that could draw all attention away from these 2 other iconic cars. Immaculately restored in 2001, this car has competed recently in such estimable races at the 24 Hours Lemans Classic and the Monterrey Historics.

But of course the truly remarkable story of this prototype racer begins much earlier than that. The 910 series was originally conceived of as a hillclimb car, but quickly found success as an endurance racer. Think about that for a moment. Hillclimbs are short sprints up a mountainside. One way, one trip. The fact that this hillclimber was readily adaptable to endurance racing speaks volumes about Porsche’s late-60’s engineering. That a car designed for short bursts of speed could also run competitively for 24 hours is simply staggering.

910-25
This example ran the Targa Florio in ‘67 (a race won by fellow works drivers Paul Hawkins and Rölf Stommelen in 910-08), and won the 1000km at the Circuit of Mugello with Gerhard Mitter and Udo Schuetz at the wheel. Sadly, 910-25 didn’t complete the Sunday race at Road America, dropping out of competition in the 1st lap. The car was hauled out of the track on a flatbed, but I didn’t see any signs of damage. Does anyone know what happened?

Here’s a photo of 910-25 as she appeared at the ‘67 Targa Florio.

Update:
This article in Washington CEO Magazine shows that the current owner of Porsche 910-25 is AEI Music Founder and Real Estate developer Michael J. Malone. Congratulations, Mr. Malone, on one fine automobile.

And this is mine. The Porsche 550 Spyder is the slipperiest little roadster I could ever want. One has recently come available - now i only need $1.6million. donations?

This particular example was piloted by American Zora Arkus-Duntov and Frenchman Auguste Veuillet to a class win in the infamous ‘55 24 Hours of LeMans. For that race, this Spyder chassis #550-0048 averaged over 137kph fitted with a 1100cc motor. Smaller than the typical 1500cc 4-cam. This particular year’s 1100cc class was fairly heavily contested, with Coventry-Climax entries from Kieft, Lotus, and Cooper.

550-0048 also went on to take an overall win at the Swedish Grand Prix with Richard von Frankenberg at the wheel. An astonishing win, besting much more powerful cars including a Mercedes 300SL, Jags, and Maseratis. You can see why these early racing models earned Porsche the “Giant Killer” moniker.

Later, the car was campaigned in the ‘56 Mille Miglia and was road tested by Road & Track. For these, it’s engine was upgraded to the 4-cam 1500cc. The car then fell out of the public eye, reappearing now on Kidston’s site. The Kidston listing for this car says she is supplied with 2 engines - is it both the LeMans class winning 1100 and the magnificent 4-cam?

This photo shows 550-0048 bearing racing number 49 in the wet conditions of the ‘55 Le Mans. Could you ever want anything more beautiful for your garage?

Be sure to check out the informational pdf at Kidston for complete details on this example, including many more period photos of 550-0048 in action here.
Thanks to Octane for posting about this marvelous car.

Update: 550-0048 sold at Coys’ Légende et Passion auction in Monté Carlo on the 10th of May for an astounding £708,338. Congratulations to her new caretaker and I hope you get her on the track some time.

Well the boys from Stuttgart are finally drinking from the Sebring victory cup once again. Porsche can add another notch to their “Winningest Team at Sebring” belt, after 18 years since their last overall win in Florida.

Penske drivers Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Emmanuel Collard piloted their RS Spyder to the overall win in a monstrous race that saw 27 lead changes, and featured 3 cars finishing on the lead lap — a close race indeed after 12 hours. The win also makes Penske the only race team in history to win both the Sebring 12 Hours and the Daytona 500. Team Dyson’s RS Spyders finished 2nd and 3rd for a 1,2,3 Porsche finish in LMP2. Lovely.

Prior to this win, Porsche hadn’t finished on the top of the podium since 1988, when Klaus Ludwig and Hans-Joachim Stuck took their 962 to victory. The 1988 win was the final race in a 13 year winning streak for Porsche. 13 years!

Porsche also won the GT2 class with victory from the Flying Lizard Motorsports team in a GT3 RSR piloted by Joerg Bergmeister, Marc Lieb and Wolf Henzler. The Flying Lizards also finished 2nd. Not a bad weekend for Porsche, 1,2,3 in LMP2 and 1,2 in GT2. Congratulations to Porsche!

I’m an unapologetic Porschephile. So in celebration of Porsche taking control of over 50% of Volkswagen, here’s a lovely video I stumbled across on YouTube. By “stumbled on”, I mean “found during my regular several hours a week of combing through YouTube for historic motorsport video”.

This incredible film from 1948 shows the first 356 roadster test drive with Ferdinand Porsche alongside an MG TC.

Magic.