DELWYN MALLETT
MALLETT SEARCHES HIS LOFT IN THE HUNT FOR A MEMENTO TO REMEMBER THE RECENTLYDEPARTED FERDINAND PIËCH BY, RECALLING THE DAYS WHEN RACE CARS WERE ALSO ROAD CARS
Mallett’s mental meanderings
So there I was, browsing through my archive (ok, clambering through the loft) when I unearthed the somewhat battered model of the turbocharged Can-am 917PA photographed below. I could, of course, have cleaned it up before photographing it but with the current fashion for ‘barn finds’ I thought that a 35-year coating of grime adds some character to my ‘loft find’. The visit was prompted by the recent death of Ferdinand Piëch and to search for my large scale Tamiya model of the Porsche 910 that I bought way back when.
It was intended to be a nostalgic trip down memory lane to the the 1960s, when I followed every move that Porsche made on the world’s racing circuits during what for me remains the most exciting period in the marque’s illustrious history – a time when Porsche was always punching above their weight, often winning against the big-engined giants of motor sport like Ferrari and Ford. It was also a time when a young man could still dream of perhaps one day using a pensioned-off racer on the road.
I grew up in an era when retired racing cars became fast, if not always practicable road cars. I even had a chum who was mad enough to have a Lotus 11 as his everyday car. Until well into the 1960s competition cars were invariably road registered and driven to the circuits. Jaguar D-types, registered OKV 1, 2 and 3 were known to every schoolboy, as was Jim Clark’s Aston Martin Zagato, 2 VEV. My ambition was to swan around in some exotic old racer and I vividly recall sticking an, ‘if you want to sell this car …’ note under the windscreen wiper of a 904 parked on the street in Chelsea. (My phone remained sadly silent.)
Piëch joined Porsche on 1st April 1963, a few months before I started art school in Twickenham, not far from AFN’S Isleworth showroom. Although Porsches on British roads were then still a rare sight, on my daily bus journeys I saw more than the average number of ‘jelly-mould’ motors toing and fro-ing. After the acquisition of a Lambretta I became more mobile and I would often detour to do a little window-shopping and get a close-up view of the odd little German sports cars.
Art students aren’t supposed to like cars but I was studying graphic design and I guess if industrial design had been on the curriculum I might well have been studying that instead. The 356, unembellished by extraneous detail, struck me as a perfect example of form following function. Plus, it was esoteric and different and I wanted to be different, and by 1968 I managed to scrape together enough funds to buy a ten-year-old ‘A’ coupé.
While I was busy with paints and pencils, Piëch had started in Porsche’s engine-testing department where he was involved with Hans Mezger in the development of the six-cylinder replacement for its venerable four-pot.
Many years later in an interview Piëch said that ‘It was always my goal to lead a bigger company than my grandfather.’ And at Porsche he was clearly a man in a hurry.
By 1966 Piëch was in charge of the experimental department and responsible for Porsche’s next generation of competition cars. Ambitious and uncompromising, Piëch usurped the position of Porsche’s long-serving and gentlemanly PR man and race manager, Baron Huschke von Hanstein, effectively taking over all racing activity.
His first major project was the 906, or Carrera 6, a replacement for the sublimely beautiful and potent 904, and significantly for me Porsche’s last street legal race car. The Porsche armada unleashed by Piëch – 906, 910, 907 and 908 – dominated the smaller racing classes, constantly snapping at the heels of the larger capacity cars.
Le Mans was the race that loomed largest in Porsche’s ambition and after a run of class wins the 1969 event looked as if the new 4.5-litre 917 could provide their first outright win. In the event the 917s failed but in the final hour the 3.0-litre
908 of Hans Herrmann engaged in a nail biting duel with the 4.9-litre Ford GT40 of Jacky Ickx, swapping position time after time but finally losing the race by a mere 120 metres – the closest ever unstaged finish.
It was mission accomplished the following year when the 917 won. Porsche had finally graduated from underdog to top dog and although I was still a committed fan the dynamic had changed.
No longer was there tension in the anticipation of ‘can they, against the odds, pull off a victory?’ The satisfaction derived from watching a David vanquish a Goliath had gone. In the following years it was a surprise when they didn’t win – a bit like the current F1 situation where one team’s dominance dilutes the excitement.
Piëch was thwarted in his ambition to run Porsche, his disruptive management style creating the internecine conflict that resulted in Ferry Porsche deciding that in future no family members, Porsche or Piëch, should be involved in running the day to day affairs of the company, and an outside managing director would be appointed.
The 917 was not only Piëch’s crowning achievement but also his swan song at Porsche. Sports racing cars had also severed their increasingly tenuous link with road cars. Let’s face it, a 917PA Can-am spyder was never going to replace my Speedster as an everyday runabout.
“IT WAS NEVER GOING TO REPLACE MY SPEEDSTER…”