Johnny Tipler gets behind the wheel of a La Carrera Panamericana 356
This 356A’s latterday competition history includes La Carrera Panamericana; now it’s had a refit, it’s set to re-live its glory days
‘Pan-am makes the going great’ was the 1950s slogan for the pioneering airline, and it’s entirely apt in relation to this fabulous 356A. That’s because it has a competition history that includes four forays on the great Mexican road race: La Carrera Panamericana.
Gallery owner Keith Roberts has owned the car for a couple of years, and it’s just been resprayed and upgraded internally at Norfolk Premier Coachworks. Keith is a fan of historic rallying and had his eye on the market for a while. ‘I’d been looking specifically for a 356,’ he tells us, ‘and I wanted one that was pre-’58, so it would be eligible for the Mille Miglia. I did the Mille Miglia three years ago in a Ferrari 250GT, and I wanted something that could also do that.
‘I knew it needed to be built before ’58, so I tried to buy a Pre-a, but I was priced out of those. But then this car came up, and it had been fairly well modified for the Carrera Panamericana, which it had done four times.’ Its spec includes an Andy Prill-built 1720cc flat-four, 356B gearbox and 356C disc brakes.
Despite the extensive work commissioned by its former owners, Paul and Mary Kane, from whom Keith bought it, he felt it needed modernising. ‘It was a good project, and as well as the driving, part of the fun for me is researching and sourcing the parts, and getting the work done. I worked closely with Premier Coachworks to do the relevant things necessary to bring the car up to date, and I put some of the original features back into the cabin to make it a slightly nicer environment, because it really had been stripped down to nothing. For the Mille Miglia especially, the aesthetics of the car were as important to me as its capability.’
“PART OF THE FUN IS RESEARCHING AND SOURCING THE PARTS…”
Norfolk Premier Coachworks installed the original dash panel – which the Kanes had retained – refitting all the old switches and gauges, including a more precise temperature gauge, ammeter and oil pressure gauge, plus period wood-rim wheel and original badges. Keith located a correct rear-view mirror and travelled to Liverpool to buy it. The headlining was re-trimmed and a blanking plate covers the radio aperture, a location for the switches controlling ignition, fuel pumps and spotlights. The navigator’s Brantz clocks for timing stages are under the dashboard, plus auxiliary lighting and map light, all fully re-wired.
In the cabin, there’s the mandatory roll-cage, though no overhead bar, while Schroth Racing four-point safety harnesses clad period-looking Recaro bucket seats, anchored off one of the back bars of the roll-cage. It has a fly-off handbrake, and it’s running standard 356C disc brakes. The master-cylinder is an early 911 unit, which is adjustable, with the bias towards the back.
Pads are Ferodo DS 3000s, which, Keith assures me, ‘never fade, never overheat, and provide great stopping power. To do the Mille I’d probably need to change the brakes back to drums, though.’ Under the front lid is a huge fuel tank, providing capacity for a 400-mile drive. The fuel and oil lines run through the sills with the oil cooler mounted in the nose. It’s got skidplates under the front and rear valances too, protection against the notorious Mexican ‘topes’, those daunting traffic-calming humps the size of tree trunks.
He’s quietly confident, now the car’s been re-fettled. ‘Having done the Mille Miglia, I feel that I’m halfway there, though I think the Panamericana will be harder as there’s much more endurance required to drive that.’ Indeed, the great Mexican
road race earned its awesome reputation from its inception. In 1947, when Mexico finished building its section of the Panamerican Highway (the whole road runs from Northern Alaska to Southern Argentina) a race seemed like the natural way to celebrate the achievement.
Inaugurated in 1950, the 2000-mile, five-day race quickly earned a reputation as a car-breaker and as the most arduous road race in the world, thanks to its combination of Mexican topography, dangerous roads, powerful cars, a relentless pace and extreme distance. The smaller, fleeter cars did better in the mountain passes, but as the north Mexican landscape opened out, the desert roads favoured the more powerful cars.
Fatalities were inevitable, given the speeds through countryside with unprotected drop-offs, stray animals, tyre and brake inefficiencies and mechanical unreliability. With a handsome prize fund of around £20,000 and plenty of attendant publicity, particularly in the USA, La Carrera Panamericana was an extremely attractive proposition for the major manufacturers’ works teams. Big names of the day swelled the driver roster, including Fangio, Ascari, Villoresi, Taruffi, Lang, Kling, Behra, Farina, De Portago, Phil Hill, Maglioli and Ginther.
As well as Lincoln and Chrysler, European makes including Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Lancia, Porsche, Borgward – and even Volkswagen – dispatched entries. In 1952, two Porsches made the marque’s Pan Am debut, competing in the sub-1600cc Sport Menor class. They were a 356 coupé 1500 and 356 hardtop cabriolet 1500 belonging to Prince Alfons von Hohenlohe, the Mexican VW concessionaire, crewed by Count Constantin von Berkheim and Herbert Linge, and Prince Paul von Metternich and Manuel de Teffé.
The World Manufacturers’ Championship was introduced in 1950, and in 1953 La Carrera Panamericana joined the race series alongside the Sebring 12 Hours, Mille Miglia, Le Mans and Spa 24-Hours, Nürburgring 1000kms and the RAC Tourist Trophy at Dundrod. Ten Porsches ran in the ’53 Carrera Panamericana’s Sport Menor class.
The 1500cc works Porsche 550 Spyders were entered by New York agent Max Hoffmann for Karl Kling and Hans Herrmann and supervised by Huschke von Hanstein, while the Guatemalan 550 coupés – fresh from Le Mans – of Jaroslav Juhan and José Herrarte were joined by countryman Giulliermo
“FATALATIES WERE INEVITABLE, GIVEN THE SPEEDS…”
Suhr’s aluminium-bodied European Rally Championship-winning 356. Other 356s were driven by Manfredo Lippman, British actress Jacqueline Evans, and Fernando Segura. José Herrarte gained the class win, and it was this success in Sport Menor that inducted the Carrera name into the Porsche lexicon.
The following year was the final race in the original Pan-am chronology, and Hans Herrmann’s 550 Spyder steadily overhauled Jaroslav Juhan’s similar car as the race unfolded. Juhan’s teammate Segura handed over to Herbert Linge. By the time the race reached Chihuahua, team manager Huschke von Hanstein was counselling prudence, since the prospect of a Porsche class win and its attendant publicity was too appealing to blow away in a race incident.
It went down to the wire, Herrmann and Juhan crossing the Juarez line almost side by side. Having started one minute later, and with only a 23-second deficit on his rival, Herrmann got the Sport Menor win – and, remarkably, was third overall with Juhan fourth. It was heady stuff.
The event was revived 34 years later, in 1988, and though the route alters slightly from year to year, depending on which provincial cities’ tenders are most attractive to the organisers, but it is still a gruelling 2000-mile hack from one end of Mexico to the other, over spectacular cactus-clad mountains and deserts.
I wanted to explore our 356A’s previous competition career, especially in the modern Carrera Panamericana. Having covered this totally awesome race two years running as a journo, and then driven it in 2011 in a 914/4 (placing 95th with Sarah Bennett-baggs co-driving), I can vouch for the stamina, commitment and reliability needed to survive the arduous conditions – whether climatic, mechanical, geographical (meaning it’s not difficult to get lost, as well as having to change carburettor jets at high altitudes) and, yes, gastral – and that’s just the co-driver….
So, I spoke to the 356A’s previous owner Paul Kane whose wife Mary drove the car to fourth in the Sport Menor class in Mexico in 1992. ‘The 356 was really my wife Mary’s car,’ he admits. ‘In 1989, I went to Mexico, with Mary’s brother Douglas, in our ’54 Jaguar XK120, to do our first ever event of any kind, anywhere. Mary came along in the support crew, of which we had very little but, once she saw what was going on, there was no going back, and Mary only had eyes for a 356, period.’
They didn’t hang around, either. A few months later, the Kanes found a black 1957 356A, in decent condition, and bought it, despite Paul knowing nothing except Jaguar maintenance. ‘I’d seen what upside-down 356s looked like on our first year there, so her car was fully caged to my spec.’ It also ran a 1720cc big bore kit coupled to a 356B gearbox, and 356C disc brakes. They entered both cars – XK120 and 356A – for the Pan-am four years in a row, 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993. ‘We didn’t ship them down there, because we knew that, in the ’50s, manufacturers often drove their cars to the start. The round trip, including the actual event, was about 7000 miles, starting and finishing at Sarasota.’
There are usually as many as eight different classes in the event, ranging from Historica A, B, C and Original Pan-am, plus Sport Menor and Sport Mayor. Mary ran the 356A in the Sport Menor class for in-period sports-gts, vying with MGAS, Morgans and Alfa Giuliettas. ‘When we bought the car it was black,’ says Paul. ‘We had it painted Carrera Blue in ’91, and they loved the colour in Mexico. We fitted a flat, business-like dash, copied from the track guys, an Accusump oil accumulator for extra lubrication; and the rear three-quarter window had an air scoop leading directly to the fan shroud in the engine compartment.’ Fuel and oil lines ran inside the car with an extra-large bladder fuel tank.
Mary also carried the necessary tools, spares and jack. She would swap the jets herself in the dual Dell’ortos so the car would run properly at high altitudes. For instance, start city Tuxtla Gutiérrez is 1700ft above sea level, while Mexico City is at 8000ft, along with other elevated locations like Zacatecas. ‘After each Panam, the engine was rebuilt near where we lived in Tampa, Florida, with varying results. The first rebuild was done by a racing specialist in Virginia.’
Regularities? Not really. The transit sections are pretty much flat-out, too: refuelling and making it to the next start means flying over the topes in the villages and doing 100–110mph on the open roads, which the Mexican Police encourage, just to make the next stage. ‘Mary was fast and fearless,’ recalls her husband, ‘and in 1992, she won the Jacqueline Evans award for being the fastest woman in Mexico.’ (Mrs Evans was an English actress, married to a Mexican bullfighter, and heroine of the original Carrera Panamericana in ’53 and ’54 in her 356, emblazoned with the image of Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina.)
According to Paul Kane, in Mexico Mary was ‘sometimes referred to as the “Woman with Huevos”.’ In 1992, her navigator was Stella Hall, and in ’93 Morgan Bojorquez called the corners: ‘the best navigator in El Salvador! We became friends with him and his family when doing a rally from Mexico City to San Salvador in '92.’
Typical of La Carrera, their run ended dramatically. ‘Our last year, 1993, Mary was running 10th overall up to the end of the second-to-last velocity stage, the final day up North.’ That would be La Bufa, above
Zacatecas. ‘Big-engined cars were beginning to press, and she melted her engine at well over 140mph, seeing as it was geared for about 125-ish. The end of the stage saw oil coming out of the exhaust pipes, on fire!’
The Kanes gradually became much better prepared. ‘We moved to England in ’96, and started doing rallies in Ireland and Britain, tackling gravel stages and longer, rougher events,
“THE TRANSIT SECTIONS ARE PRETTY MUCH FLAT-OUT…”
including Killarney Historics, Rally of the Lakes, Circuit of Ireland and Bull Dog Rally. Mary always drove the 356, using local navigators, or me. We began doing many longer events, sharing the driving, and we won the Maroc Classic in 2000, and then the Holden Trophy for winning the historic section of the 2002 London-to-athens World Cup Rally. We were also using my XK120 and Mary’s ’69 911, as well as a ’66 Mustang GT350, so we kept busy!’
Then, in 2003-4, Pan-am veteran Andy Prill built an entirely new engine, starting from an unused industrial case, rebuilding the gearbox as well, as the entire car was renovated, including the roll-cage and dash. The Prill rebuild included niceties such as bigger barrels, competition flywheel, rocker gaskets and resized conrods. ‘That World Cup Rally to Athens was the last straw,’ muses Paul. ‘After that, I’m afraid it became sort of a pet and was never really put back to work. I doubt we had much more than break-in mileage and some local use out of it. We never used it for an event again after 2002. Mary thought it should be used, not sitting, so eventually we sold it to Keith.’
Which brings us to Norfolk. It’s an early start. ‘They always run better on a cool morning with a nip in the air,’ Keith remarks. ‘When it’s cold outside it drives a lot nicer.’ As we head off for our photoshoot, I realise my seat is warm: the car has also been prepped to tackle the Monte Carlo Rallye Historique, hence the heated seats. It’s also been equipped with a Webasto heater because, according to Keith, the heat exchangers have made way for elements of the roll-cage.
The 356 is running Pirelli Cinturatos, 165/HR15S, which provide ample grip on the road. There is a little bit of play in the steering, and the ratios are quite difficult to find, but actually when I discover where the notches are it slots in fine. It really does like to rev, and between 4000 and 6000rpm it’s really going. It revs easily to 6000rpm, and sounds very sweet at the higher rpm. It feels torquey, too, at quite low revs. It’s a very smart historic rally car and should go well in the events that Keith has in mind tackling.
Getting it back to Mexico for the Pan-am is the goal, where it’s sure to be welcomed with open arms. It may not be a Carrera, but it sure looks the part, and it’s an old hand, too. They do love a 356 over there, where the going’s great.