Busman’s holiday

From the Pacific Coast Highway to the Daytona banking: that’s a couple more ticks on Josh Sadler’s bucket list

THIS IS A ‘RESURRECTION’, as its owner puts it, of a very special car. And it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday because Josh Sadler, one of the world’s experts on early air-cooled 911s, was too busy to build it all the time he was running Autofarm, the Porsche specialist he founded in 1973. Only handing over the reins of the company released the time to get it all together. The aim was the Fi&h Porsche Rennsport Reunion at Monterey in September, with the added frisson of tackling the Daytona banking at night in the HSR Classic 24 Hours in mid-November.

‘We bought it as a badly damaged car in 1979. It was built in 1969 and the factory kept it two years but, never undersealed, it was already rusty. I knew it was something special as it had an odd chassis number. The ’70 model prototypes seemed to start 110 (it had been 118 and 119 for 1968 and 1969), whereas the production 1970-on cars all had a 9 added in front of the number, though this one didn’t – perhaps there wasn’t room on the chassis plate.’

That made it a 2.2S prototype, a lightweight special stripped to the bone. ‘Interestingly, the one pictured in Ludvigsen’s Excellence Was Expected is on Dunlop Racing tyres, and the Fahrzeugbrief for this one specifies 930kg and Dunlop racers… but we’ll never know if it’s the same car. When Porsche sold it they put a 2.2T motor in, engine number 1. Went well for a 2.2T…’

Other features included a 10,000rpm revcounter and aluminium wings: ‘I stuck the damaged wings in the stores when we were at Amersham, but we hadn’t space to keep them when we moved to Tring.’ Such is life.

Selling his Allard in 2006 meant Sadler had the funds to do something with the car, and by 2008 it was time to start getting this rare prototype, squirrelled away for almost 30 years, back together: ‘We built it specifically for historic competition, adding S/T flares and a cage. Mark [Henderson, from Autofarm] came in to help me build it. It’s got twin-plug heads, and a pair of Weber 46IDAs that I’d had forever. The gearbox came out of my ’72S that I’d been racing with the HSCC. It didn’t get on the road until 2013.

‘The Rennsport Reunion was the natural place to take it. I’d been there in 2004 and 2007 and it was just mind-boggling – there were enough 917s to have their own race. But I’d missed the boat, literally, for 2015. Luckily we found that, when it’s jacked up on pallets, there’s just enough room for a 911 to go sideways in the hold of a 747. I delivered it to Heathrow, flew out and met it at San Francisco, then drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to Laguna Seca. Driving your own race car down Highway 1 is very special, and I kept stopping to take photos. I joined Phil Bagley of Klub Sport Racing, who was fantastically helpful and has become a dear friend, and he does it right: at Monterey he had a line-up of 18 proper early historic racing 911s.

‘Laguna was good fun. Everyone talks about the Corkscrew, but the corners before and a&er are more challenging.’ In the Eifel Trophy for 911s up to 1972, Sadler finished 8th of 45 entrants.

But it’s not as challenging as the big, banked oval out east. ‘It was always going to go to Florida as it’s cheaper to ship a car home from there. Phil had a space on his truck, so I flew back out later.

‘Compared with Daytona, Laguna Seca is like a run to the shops. On the Tri-Oval you’re really honking, and it’s steep. I was geared for 167mph and the shi& light was coming on well before the corners. I’d asked Jürgen Barth for tips and he said “Follow the car in front”.

‘In our group we got it up to seventh overall and third 911 home, running with Lola T70s etc. We worked out that, with testing and practice, we’d done nearly five hours on the track, so it had pulled max revs in top twice a lap for some 125 laps. But a&er all that I could have put the dealer plate back on and driven it to the airport.

‘I wanted to build a historic racer that had a story. Something very special would have to come along to persuade me to part with it.’