THE HIDDEN LE MANS HERO
1970’s amazing Sonauto 914/6 GT.
For most Porsche fans, when asked to bring to mind the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, two distinct visions present themselves: the red-and-white Salzburg 917 K driven to the win by Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood, achieving Porsche’s first overall victory at Circuit de la Sarthe, and, as we’ve highlighted elsewhere in this issue of Classic Porsche, light blue Porsches battling with fiery red Ferraris in Steve Mcqueen’s motorsport movie marathon, Le Mans, filmed during the race itself. What many fail to recall (or worse, didn’t know about in the first place) is the no.40 914/6 GT, entered into the same race by the motorsport arm of French sports car dealer, Établissements Sonauto. Finishing an astonishing sixth overall, it was preceded only by a pair of five-litre V12powered Prancing Horses, a duo of flat-twelve-propelled 917s (including Attwood and Herrmann’s car), a sevenlitre V8-driven Chevrolet Corvette C3 and a 908/02 entered by the Martini Racing team and loaded with a three-litre flat-eight. And yet, with its punchy 911-derived 1,991cc flat-six, the boxy, Targa-topped, bright white
914 managed to finish ahead of every 911 in the field, and even placed ahead of the Solar Productions 908/02 you’ve just finished reading about.
Sonauto’s entry is significant for more than simply affording the 914 a place in the starting line-up at Le Mans. As you will discover on page 78, the company was founded by none other than Auguste ‘Toto’ Veuille, the very driver who raced the no.46 356 SL Coupe to a class win at Porsche’s first 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1951. Nineteen years later, Sonauto’s 914, configured with the factory GT package of wide, square wheel arches, a potent flat-six and chassis upgrades, was being driven by Guy Chasseuil and Claude Ballot-léna in all manner of challenging weather, from heavy rain to a full-on storm, which saw half the entry list retire by morning.
The plucky 914, however, kept going, battling the Corvette (a privateer entry from its owner, Henri
Greder) and the no.47 Écurie Luxembourg 911 S for race position. It’s worth noting one of the 911’s drivers was none other than the late Erwin Kremer (yes, that Erwin Kremer), but Chasseuil and Ballot-léna kept their cool to the very end of the race, an effort made even more amazing by the fact they didn’t stop for a change of tyres or brakes. We should point out, though, the Corvette finished ahead of Sonauto’s entry, but due to the American muscle machine not completing its required number of laps, sixth place was handed to the 914, which racked up 285 laps of Sarthe, three more than the 2.5-litre Écurie Luxembourg 911 could complete in the same timeframe.
In part, the 914’s lightweight construction (estimated to be some forty-plus kilos lighter than the competing 911s) helped it fly through the race without beating its chassis components to a pulp and without the level of tyre degradation suffered by other competing cars. There was an obvious benefit regarding fuel efficiency, too. The car even finished second in the race’s Index of Thermal Efficiency standings (pipped to the post by the Martini Racing 917 long-tail driven to second-place overall by Gérard Larrousse and Willi Kauhsen) and fourth in the accompanying Index of Performance chart (again, only beaten by Stuttgart’s sports prototypes).
While it’s understandable the Salzburg 917 is the star of the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, let’s not forget the no.40 914/6 GT’S extraordinary performance in the same race.
THE BOXY, TARGA-TOPPED, BRIGHT WHITE 914 MANAGED TO FINISH AHEAD OF EVERY 911 IN THE FIELD