Renn and Strudel: David Soares on Lollaporscha 3 at Daytona
This past November I flew to Daytona Beach for the latest tri-annual edition of
the Porsche Rennsport Reunion by way of Atlanta. It felt like my connecting
flight was the Porsche Cars North America charter, as it was full of PCNA
personnel on their way from HQ to staff that gathering, which has become a
very “official” marketing-department event for the company. During the plane
ride it was gratifying for a motorsport history buff like me to eavesdrop on the
young things from the marketing department being tutored in the finer points
of 934’s and 935’s by their bosses before being air-dropped onto an orgy of
Porsche racing heritage (some might accuse me of being a historical artifact
myself at this point in my life, but I’m not owning that one just yet). History
was represented at Rennsport III by literally hundreds of pursang racing cars
from Zuffenhausen and Weissach. Clearly the christening of PCNA’s return
to front-line racing in the ALMS as the “RS Spyder,” smacking the number “6”
on the side, and contracting with Roger Penske to run the thing has been
part of a conscious strategy to move away from Porsche’s “Internet Bubble”
high tech image-making and to return to racing heritage as a marketing hook.
This is a welcome move for fans of international sportscar racing.
Rat wrapper…
Porsche’s North American marketing shift was confirmed upon my return to
the Left Coast and Beserkeley-by-the-Beach with the arrival in my mailbox of
the latest issue of my favorite “food porn” (apologies to Tony Bourdain),
Saveur no. 107. As I flipped through a piece about the soupe a l’oignon at
Au Pied du Cochon near the former site of Les Halles in Paris I was jarred by
a familiar image, slightly out of context. There among the butchers and
Citroen Quinze-légers was a full-page black-and-white shot of the winning
Hermann-Attwood 917K threading the Ford Chicane in the streaming rain
during the 1970 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The page folded out to
reveal a large and colorful image of Timo Bernhard giving Roman Dumas a
champagne bath atop an ALMS podium, accompanied by a magazine-length
dissertation on Porsche, champagne, and victory celebrations. Below all this
was a string of thumbnail shots of Porsche racing history: Ferry in a Gmund
Spyder, the Carrera Panamericana, the Targa Florio, Daytona, the Monte,
and of course Le Mans. The copywriter extols the use of champagne to
celebrate Porsche racing victories. Other than a reference to “the French
SPA” racetrack (I tend to associate Spa-Francorchamps with Chimay Rouge)
the copywriter nails the synergy between Porsche and winning for Saveur’s
“foodie” audience. Is it any wonder that Ratatouille is the best reviewed film
of the year?
Why should readers of SCP care that Porsche is hitting up the Chez Panisse
crowd with a full-whammy of racing heritage worthy of Rennsport Reunion III?
Well, other than the fact that the guy at the back counter informs me that the
factory seems to have renewed interest in parts-support for my air-sucker,
PCNA’s heavy involvement in the Daytona reunion and use of Le Mans
imagery outside the enthusiast press suggests that the mainstream financial
and marketing support desperately needed by the American Le Mans Series
from the manufacturers is finally here. Maybe Herb Fischel and Doug Fehan
of GM aren’t the only guys who “get” ALMS CEO Scott Atherton’s thesis that
there is a synergy between road racing and the high-end customer sportscar
makers want to target.
Broadening one’s horizons…
What this renewed interest in heritage meant for the attendees of Rennsport
III was that Porsche rolled out its most dominant prototypes for the concours
and exhibition laps: the flat-12 917’s of 1969-73 and the ground-effects
956/962’s of 1982-94, along with many of the drivers who made these and
other Porsches famous in period. A dapper Richard Attwood was interviewed
sitting on the Saveur-foldout No. 23 Porsche Salzburg 917K that won
Porsche’s first overall victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Later that car was
front-and-center in the trophy display when it deservedly won the 917 class
later that afternoon.
In case anybody wasn’t making the connection between past and present,
Porsche also rolled out an example of the current P2 champion Penske RS
Spyder of Bernhard and Dumas and the Dyson Racing RS Spyder of Wallace
and Leitzinger. After some un-timed exhibition laps they parked them as the
centerpiece of the race car concours opposite Daytona’s start-finish at the
apex of the tri-oval. The Daytona Prototypes of Alex Job and Brumos Racing
were relegated to a spot down pit road along with the “specials” like the
Bobsy and the Dolfin.
On Saturday morning I wandered into an official photo-shoot making still
more historic connections for the marketing department. This time Roger
Penske’s championship-winning No. 7 RS Spyder was paired with the No. 6
Sunoco-liveried 917/30 -004 now owned by Matt Drendel so that the Penske
crew, in full DHL regalia, could be photographed with the two cars by a
factory snapper from Germany. Drendel’s car is an actual Penske team car
that was constructed to defend Mark Donohue’s championship before the
SCCA slammed the door on the Can-Am making chassis 004 obsolete.
While the 2007 champion wore the number 7 rather than the 6 of 1973,
Donohue’s “T” car wore 7 in ‘73, as did George Follmer’s super-sub
championship car for Penske in ‘72. After the formal poses the engine lids
were lifted and the Penske crew seemed more interested in asking motor-
magician Jerry Woods about the 917/30’s turbo flat-12 than in showing their
machine to the curious Alex Job and Brumos DP crews eyeing the RS
Spyder’s inner workings.
Everybody at the Rennsport weekend wanted to get next to (or in) that
gorgeous car. Marino Franchitti, whose brother won this year’s Indy 500 and
whose sister-in-law is one of Hollywood’s most beautiful people, was a
wowed choir boy invited to the Sistine Chapel for a personal papal audience
when he was offered a chance by Kerry Morse to sit in the driver’s seat of
Matt Drendel’s big blue 917/30. Marino was born four years after Donohue
won the Can-Am championship for Penske in the Porsche, but there could be
little doubt that he felt that he was sitting in the greatest sportscar of all time.
Matt and Marino clicked immediately and the respect and awe held for the
panzerwagen was obvious.
The car itself is a stunning and sympathetic restoration – I’m old enough to
still have Kodachromes of the championship chassis ( 917/30-003 ) in the
paddock at Laguna in 1973 for comparison. A tribute to the quality of Matt
Drendel’s racing Porsches was that another of his “Big Ron” Gruener/Jerry
Woods restorations won the RSR/934/935 class at the concours.
Bluebirds over the sea…
Some groused about Rennsport III being held within the family seat of
NASCAR instead of at Lime Rock or Laguna, but to me Daytona International
Speedway is an appropriate place on many levels. Big Bill France didn’t just
happen on that piece of swamp by chance. Daytona Beach was put on the
map by Gilded Age millionaire Willie K. Vanderbilt, who thundered down the
smooth-packed sands at nearly 100 mph his 1903 60 hp GP Mercedes, by
Sir Henry Seagrave in the Golden Arrow, and by Sir Malcolm Campbell in his
massive Bluebird LSR machines. Stuck in my usual time machine, after the
Zuffenhausen crowd trailered-up I drove my rented New Beetle (wrong image
for me maybe, but somehow apropos a Porsche gathering) for a few miles
along the sands leading to the measured mile of the old Daytona Beach Land
Speed Record course.
I reflected on the history of four decades beginning with the dawn of the
automobile when Daytona Beach was where the Beautiful People, many in
European machinery, sought to be the fastest men on land. Those days
didn’t last. Presaged by ’26 Indy-winner Frank Lockhart’s ultimately fatal
surfing expeditions in the Stutz Black Hawk, the fast crowd had de-camped
to the broad expanses of the Bonneville Salt Flats in not-so glamorous Utah
by the mid-Thirties. Local businessmen like gas station owner Big Bill
France wanted to re-capture the lost glories (and tourist business) of the
Land Speed Record years and came up with Depression-appropriate stock
car racing further down the beach as a substitute for LSR runs. The course
ran along the sands northbound and then back down Route A1A, with left
turns at either end. When things got too crowded along the Beach by the
mid-Fifties, France partnered with the local government for some cheap
swampland and bulldozed the sandy mud into the tri-oval for safer left-turn
racing. The rest, as they say, was history.
Red Desert
If even good ol’ boy NASCAR was born from nostalgia for a bunch of super-
rich guys racing European cars, I’m even more convinced than ever that Scott
Atherton of the ALMS is on to something. Now Porsche in North America
has glommed-on to the fact that the Germans no longer have a monopoly on
high technology in cars (although they retain the advantage of being able to
do development at the Nurburgring and on the Autobahn). Heritage sells, and
they have it in spades. The Porsche Rennsport Reunion appeals to me
because the car owners and caretakers are beer-drinkers in blue jeans, not a
bunch of swells on the lawn wearing blue blazers and Panama hats, but they
do care about races like Le Mans and the Targa Florio. Saveur doesn’t
target the stuffy three-star crowd either. There is a synergy with the romance
of these places and Saveur’s back-to-the-farm paeans to authentic French
and Italian food and wine that somebody at PCNA can and should want to
tap. The home office may be trying to sell 4x4’s for Siberia and the Gobi
Desert, but here in America Porsche has the opportunity to shift three
sportscar lines to consumers of luxury goods. It’s not just about the product;
it’s about selling the dream.
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