In Sicily with Vic Elford and other legends
John Simister travels to Sicily for the Targa Florio and the chance to co-drive with greats from Porsche’s past. This is what he learns
In 1973, a Porsche 911 RSR won the last Targa Florio to be run as an International race, a round of the World Championship of Makes. The drivers were Gijs van Lennep and Herbert Müller. Now, more than 40 years later, we’re in Sicily to contemplate a battery of past Porsche racers, all past Targa participants, some of them winners, all of them representing the marque’s 11 wins between 1956 and 1973.
Van Lennep is eyeing an RSR, not his 1973 winner (although it now has the winner’s colour scheme, its roof pragmatically brush-painted in Martini’s red and blue) but the third-place car of Leo Kinnunen and Claude Haldi. The LEO number plate adds a nice touch of tribute. ‘You are a big hero if you win the Targa,’ muses van Lennep, ‘and if you win the last one you’re a hero forever.’
Should we meet our heroes? Depends on the hero, be it person or anthropomorphised motor car. Four are with us here: Targa winners van Lennep and Vic Elford, and two who came close to wins here but were thwarted: Herbert Linge and Günter Steckkönig. They are back to taste again, through the historic race cars, what the Targa Florio was like and to share their thoughts with us.
But first, Octane needs to sample some of the roads that made up the 45-mile Madonie circuit as pounded by the Porsches. Today, the Targa Florio is a wideranging festival of motor sport, with four events over the whole weekend. It culminates in a hillclimb for historic racing cars (including the Porsche contingent) on the Sunday, from the old paddock and startline at Floriopoli up to Cerda in the mountains, but before that are a historic road rally, a round of the current Italian Rally Championship – and a Mille Miglia-style regularity run, albeit open to cars right up to the late 1970s. And in that run, thanks to the Porsche Museum, is Octane’s entry. FRIDAY MORNING, PALERMO University. Close to the automotive engineering school, fittingly; beyond the doors is a fine display of pedestal-mounted engines through the last century, and glass-fronted cases of the components that make them work. But there’s no time to lose myself in this, because our start-time is fast approaching and soon the first of 78 entries will be heading towards the Madonie.
German journalist Alexander Voigt and I have start number 156, the first to leave being number 101. (A posse of Ferraris, mostly oversized new ones, occupies the first 100 numbers in its own section of the event.) Our number is applied to the metallic blue flanks of a deliciously restored Porsche 911S 2.2 Targa from 1970. It has the early soft roof section, but that’s folded away and stashed in the boot. A Targa ready for the Targa, a celebration of the car that celebrates the race.
This low-mileage, one-previous-owner 911S has been restored (by the museum), but not deeply because it didn’t need it. It looks and feels like the original, well-maintained, lightly-patinated machine it largely is, and it promises the 911 experience in a very pure form. That means the same modest tyre size on all four wheels, a gearbox with a dogleg first, the visual delicacy of the narrow-arch, pre-impact-bumper body.
And in the tail is the revviest, most powerful 911 engine of the time, all the snappier for its high compression ratio before US emissions regulations forced an efficiency-sapping drop. Our Targa gives us 180bhp from its 2195cc, reached at a giddy 6500rpm with the torque peak of 147lb ft not until 5200rpm.
Our route is 330km long. That’s 205 miles, roof open under the insistent Sicilian sun. I am to drive first, and at exactly 8.58am we head off into the Palermo traffic and almost immediately get lost. Similarly baffled by the apparent disconnect between roadbook and reality are the crews of the Porsche Museum’s two other entries, a 1958 356A Speedster in silver and a 1973 911 Carrera RS in vivid yellow, but soon we’re out of Palermo’s assertive traffic and on the eastbound superstradale.
Soon we’re heading south-east into the hills, towards the first timed regularity test at Polizzi Generosa, 88km into the route. The 911 is proving to be even more fabulous than expected, its steering light and liquid as it telegraphs every nuance of loading and grip-shift, its suspension coping brilliantly with the sometimes savage surface breaks in Sicily’s often land-slipped roads.
This is the 911 idea not as nailed-down, hightraction, development-over-design time traveller but as a machine so talkative that you always know what it is going to do, so you can act and react accordingly. Its mode of movement, be it braking too late into a bend or powering out of that bend with this revvy engine in its sweet spot, demands your attention but rewards your interaction. You can relax with it and flow with it, because you feel so at one with it.
‘THE 911 IS PROVING TO BE EVEN MORE FABULOUS THAN EXPECTED, ITS STEERING LIGHT AND LIQUID’
The engine is happy enough when ambling, if not very energetic, but above 5000rpm its character changes, the throttle response sharpens, the Porsche flings itself forwards and the tailpipe howls the metallic howl of a thousand Porsche 911 drive stories. Maybe this is the 1001st, but our Targa is an utter joy on these twisting roads. Even the gearbox is proving co-operative, dogleg and all.
In this sunshine, in this setting, suddenly the Targa makes sense. I’m not normally a fan, believing that a 911 is meant to be a coupé, but despite its oddly upright aesthetic this is a great-looking period piece. The bodyshell is pleasingly rigid, too, an impression helped by the supple suspension. For this event, at least, I might just have lucked into the ideal classic 911, eponym or not.
Companion Alexander navigates on many rallies, and he’s happy driving the roadbook and stopwatch. He also seems happy that I’m not about to pitch us off the edge of a mountain, so we reach the excellent conclusion that I shall do all the driving and he the navigating. Our first two timed tests go well, but the third involves averaging 40km/h over 18km of fabulous bends. Why, in a Porsche 911S, would we want to do that?
Patience is snapping all around us. An Alfa Giulia GTA comes snorting past, followed by a Porsche 912. There’s a Lancia Fulvia doing rather more than 25mph too. We’re not going to win against crack local crews, anyway, so let’s join in the amusement. So it is that we slice speedily along the most fantastic roads, bend after bend, between Geraci Siculo and Castelbuono where, 143km now on the tripmeter, we have the usual greeting from cheering townspeople lining the streets. It’s truly a mini-Mille Miglia.
The rest of the run continues in this vein, via a seafood lunch on the coast at Cefalù, a run back inland to Collesano and back out to the coast at Campofelice di Rocella, all names from the Targa Florio’s past. Then it’s back to the finish at the University, somehow arriving half an hour late despite our irregularly rapid regularities.
But that really doesn’t matter. Tomorrow we’ll be back on a section of the original route with the men who did it for real.
BEFORE THIS event, I’d watched a 1972 video of Vic Elford practising for the race he had won in 1968 after clawing back an 18-minute deficit, driving (with Umberto Maglioli) a Porsche 907. There he was, longhaired and laidback, grinning that wide grin. And yesterday evening I’d met Quick Vic, now 84 years old, for the first time. His hair is shorter, greyer but still plentiful. The grin is the same.
The video began with a blast just after the coastal straight, taking several very fast curves before tightening a little. It’s the end of the lap, leading up to Floriopoli where the paddock and pits still stand. Remember those bends.
We have gathered at Collesano, up in the hills where the race cars once roared through the streets. I am installed in the 1963 356B 2000 GS-GT Abarth that finished third in the 1963 Targa Florio. Herbert Linge and Edgar Barth drove it then, and Linge shortly afterwards became the first driver of a production(ish) GT to lap the Nürburgring’s Nordschleife in under ten minutes.
Linge (now 90) is not driving it today, however. That task falls to Günter Steckkönig, who blats away from Collesano with the neat, precise movements of a racer used to getting the best from cars without a surfeit of power. That said, this 356 weighs very little thanks to its aluminium body and tubular chassis, the joint work of Ferdinand Porsche’s friend (and Cisitalia collaborator) Carlo Abarth and of Zagato. And it has the 2.0-litre, four-cam, 356 Carrera engine.
So of course it goes well as Steckkönig (never a Targa winner but several times a competitor) blips up and down the gears, flat-four blattering away behind us. ‘This race was like a hillclimb everywhere,’ he says, ‘and so much different from all the other circuits. The spectators sat on the stone walls, their legs hanging down just where the ideal line was. I approach, the legs go up. I look in the mirror, the legs are down again…’
We’re on the coastal straight now, near the end of what used to be the lap. ‘It’s a little bit relax for the driver after 6000 curves. We would do 150km/h here, maybe more.’ Not the 50 or 70km/h now mandated, then. ‘The roads were in much better condition back then, but Sicily has no money now. It’s a shame.’
Soon we turn off and aim for Floriopoli, along the Elford video road, and on to the Cerda turn-round point. There are the same bends, the same trees. In Cerda I’m installed in the RSR with Gijs van Lennep who, by the smile on his face and the glint in his eye, is ready for a re-run of that final victory, even if our return to Collesano will run in the opposite direction.
We chunter off, transmission chattering, then as we pass the Floriopoli startline van Lennep gives a big burst of revs to unleash the 3.0-litre engine’s 330bhp. He just can’t help himself; let’s hope for a clear run, given that the road is open to the public just as it used to be even during Targa Florio practice.
‘This car feels good, but the road is slippery from the dust so it’s understeering a bit. You can’t cut the corner if you can’t see round it, but the corners are very quick if you have the right line. The gear ratios aren’t right for here, they’re too long. You need a long
first, short second through to fourth, and a long fifth for the straight.’
Never mind; the RSR sounds fantastic, a bellowing blare as the revs rocket despite token silencing, nudging 7600rpm along the straight. The exhausts were open for the real race, of course. We leave the straight at Campofelice and squirt around the ring road’s roundabouts, the RSR’s tail flicking outwards with a Rrraaaah! from the engine. ‘We used to go straight through, along the main street,’ and I imagine every upstairs window open, faces drinking in the sights, the sounds and the smells below.
And now we’re on the twists, turns and savage, earth-moved ridges and dips of the road back up to Collesano. Racing speeds would be impossible here now. ‘It’s more like a rally,’ van Lennep observes as the revcounter’s needle nudges 7800rpm on a very short straight. ‘The tyres have got warmer and the car feels great, just like I remember apart from the gear ratios. We didn’t get airborne in the race, though.’
Unlike now, it seems.
VIC ELFORD IS not happy. He has been driving the lemon-yellow RS and he can’t get the seat far enough forward. The steering is heavy, too, and the front suspension feels too stiff so there’s too much understeer. The Porsche people look a bit downcast, but Vic, of all people, should know how a 911 ought to be. And now it’s my turn to ride with him. Why don’t we go in the Targa instead? I’d love to know what he thinks of the car I enjoyed so much yesterday.
So we do. I am about to be driven by perhaps the most versatile man ever to inhabit motor sport’s highest echelons. Rallies, Formula 1, endurance races, Elford shone in all of them. He ascribes his successes partly to a photographic memory, which enables him to remember every feature and landmark and thus the best line past them. He favours rear-wheel drive
‘THE MOST VERSATILE MAN IN MOTOR SPORT’S HIGHER ECHELONS: ENDURANCE RACES, FORMULA 1, RALLIES, ELFORD SHONE IN ALL OF THEM’
and a precise style, although he did rally a front-wheeldrive Lancia Fulvia (which he didn’t like much), his first rally drive was in a Mini, and he is no stranger to power oversteer. Obviously.
What am I expecting, as we set off in the 911S? Not quite the calm, measured way we’re cruising down the road, given what I saw in that 1972 video, but then Vic has nothing he needs to prove. He even points to the Targa’s opening quarterlights. ‘I used to smoke like a chimney,’ he says, ‘and these are great. Oh, and it’s got a proper gearbox, with first down to the left.’
We speed up a bit, now that we’re past the worst of the ridges and well on the way to Campofelice. ‘It was very fast here, and going downhill was my speciality. I asked Pïech [Ferdinand, the race engineer, Ferdinand Porsche’s grandson and later head of the Volkswagen empire] if I could have my own gear ratios, because I knew the track better than the others and was quicker. I could ignore the marble dust and keep flat, because I knew where it ended. It helped that I came from rallying originally.
‘See, I can heel-and-toe in this car, but I couldn’t in that RS. This is how a 911 should feel, light and precise. And it has a lovely gearbox. I never used to like Targas, but things change. I’d like to take this one home with me.’ So would I, Vic, so would I…
Now we’re on the straight. ‘It’s not really a straight when you’re doing 185mph,’ Vic explains, in between pointing out various recommended restaurants, ‘but it’s still flat-out through the gentle bends. Finally, here’s a left-hander, brake and go down a gear… Soon we’ll be at a curve with a line of trees, on and on past the trees and then at the final tree, turn into the corner. We used to call it Tree Corner.’ Yes, just as it was on the video, driver and all.
Vic is full of Targa tales, but I like the one from 1969 when he swerved to avoid a rock in the road in his 908 Spyder and clouted another rock, which broke a steering arm. That was the end of Vic’s race, the remainder of which was spent being entertained by a Sicilian family. ‘I got back late to the Porsche dinner after the race, and there was Pïech at one end of the long table. I laid the two pieces of broken steering arm in front of him. ‘Is that all that has broken,’ he asked, ‘or all that is left?’
NOW BACK AT Cerda again, I squeeze into the Porsche 718 RS60 Spyder that finished third in the 1960 Targa Florio. A sister car won, driven by Jo Bonnier and Hans Herrmann, while this one was shared between a very busy Herrmann and Olivier Gendebien.
Herbert Linge is driving it now, its engine dyspeptic below 4000rpm, super-sharp from there to 6500rpm, with five gears to make the most of it. The engine is an earlier 1.6-litre version of the four-camshaft engine designed by Ernst Fuhrmann, with enough power to take the RS60 to victory in two European Hillclimb Championships in 1960 and 1961.
Race cars, clearly, had much more forgiving suspension back then. Linge, the engineer who set up Porsche’s Weissach research and development facility as well as being a very useful racing driver (second place here in 1964, driving a 904 with a broken rear wishbone), can’t hide his surprise. ‘I expected it to be much worse over the bumps,’ he declares on the ridged and rutted run into Collesano, ‘but it rides over them really well.’ And with its exhaust note rat-a-tatting against the rockface to our right, we arrive back at our base.
And there we’ll end with a tale from Günter Steckkönig, a driver we know little of in the UK, but who was a stalwart of Porsche’s efforts in sports car racing. He was entered for the 1973 Targa Florio in a factory RSR, but on arrival in Sicily discovered that it had been damaged in practice by co-driver Antonio Pucci (co-winner in 1964 with Colin Davis in a 904).
‘I thought my chance had gone, but Norbert Singer [Porsche’s racing chief] said we should try to prepare the muletta practice car. So the mechanics worked right through to Sunday, the race day, but one said ‘I don’t want to drive this car. It doesn’t go straight’. I said you just need to learn how to drive it.’
Steckkönig and Pucci finished sixth, one of five RSRs in the top eight, but then there was the problem of getting it back to Germany.
‘It had been driven to the race, so I said I’d drive it back. I dropped Ferry Porsche off at the airport in Palermo and headed for the ferry to the mainland. But the car had some problems, and it needed a spare battery to start it. This was too complicated, so I had to keep it running all the way back to Germany, even on the ferry and at the service stations.’
Imagine doing that with a Le Mans car now.