Herbert Linge
Porsche’s first employee, Linge engineered some of the marque’s greatest ever race cars – and became a racing driver that Steve McQueen couldn’t beat…
The Monaco pits are awash with star drivers and supermodels, walnut-faced security staff and (of course) the super-rich. In one display area sits the Porsche 804 aboard which Dan Gurney won the 1962 French Grand Prix. It remains the sole Formula 1 victory for the marque. Nearby, and ignored by the media, stands the man who developed not only that car but just about every legendary road and race Porsche for almost half a century. He was the firm’s first-ever employee.
Herbert Linge is seemingly invisible. At least, he is until Jacky Ickx makes a beeline for him. So does Derek Bell, along with countless other legendary wheelmen. Then the world seems to take notice, and the softly spoken nonagenarian is surrounded by photographers and film crews. He is clearly someone special, but who? Linge poses as best he can, but clearly finds the attention unsettling. Then it’s back to the comfort of anonymity.
Scroll forward an hour, and we’re sitting in the relative quiet of a hotel bar. Linge sips his mineral water while batting away the suggestion that he was sufficiently talented to have raced the car. ‘No, I never had the desire to do that,’ he says, clearly perishing the thought. ‘I never liked single-seaters. I think much of that was because I rarely felt comfortable driving them. I could see the front wheels moving up and down, which I always found unnerving. You didn’t get that in a sports car.’
What Linge neglects to mention is how blisteringly quick he was aboard the eight-cylinder 804: he lapped the Nürburgring faster than works man Jo Bonnier. Only Dan Gurney bettered his times. Eventually. ‘Ah, but I was the test driver. Racing was something I loved, but it wasn’t my job. I didn’t want to look as though I was more interested in competing; having fun when I should be working. I had to strike the right balance.’
Clockwise, from above
Linge testing at the Nürburgring in 1959, in the open-wheeled Porsche 718/2; with Ferdinand Porsche in 1949, when the company left Gmünd for Stuttgart; Linge and co-driver, Porsche competitions manager Peter Falk, finished fifth on 1965 Monte.
The prospect of racing was a world away when he joined the fledgling Porsche AG concern in April 1943. He was just 14 years old, his father having escorted him to the factory gates in Stuttgart. ‘There were eight apprenticeships and 100 applications, so I was fortunate to be one of the eight.’ However, with the Allies targeting German industry, his schooling was soon interrupted. Linge found himself in Baden Baden repairing vehicles for the French Army. When Porsche moved back to Stuttgart from Gmünd, Austria, in 1949, Linge returned to the fold and became its first member of staff. Among other duties, he helped fashion the initial batch of 356s alongside body-shapers at Stuttgarter Karosseriewerk Reutter.
‘I worked in a corner of the Reutter factory. It was tough in those days because there were shortages of materials,’ he muses. ‘Porsche didn’t even have any tools so I had to use my own. Either that, or I borrowed them. I was happy, though, and greatly enjoyed working for Professor Ferdinand Porsche, who would visit every day. He was, of course, a god to me, but he was also nice and gentlemanly.’
Our hero was then given the task of fixing cars sold in the USA by Austrian émigré Max Hoffman. ‘He had begun importing Porsches, and North America soon became a very important market for us. It helped Porsche grow as a company. There were many problems, though. The fuel in Europe at that time was of very poor quality. It was much better in the USA, and we had to make a lot of adjustments to get the cars to run as they should. Also, customers would burn out clutches. There were no such things as traffic jams in Europe at that time, but in New
York where Hoffman was based… well, it was a different story. We soon got on top of things, though.’
Linge’s introduction to motor sport began on two wheels before he headed to Mexico for the November 1952 Carrera Panamericana. Even so, he was on hand to look after a brace of 356 Supers. ‘I arrived with a small toolbox, whereas Mercedes-Benz had an army of mechanics and several trucks.’ Two years later, he rode shotgun with Hans Herrmann on the Mille Miglia, finishing a brilliant sixth overall and first in class aboard a 550 Spyder. The move to becoming a driver rather than a spanner-wielding navigator was gradual. Later that year, he shared driving duties on the 3100-mile Liège-RomeLiège Rally with the reigning European Rally Champion, Helmut Polensky. They won outright in a quad-camengined 356. ‘It was more of a race than a rally, with stage time targets that were impossible to meet. It was incredibly tough. In order to give the main driver a break, the codriver was expected to take over whenever necessary.’ Not only that, he and Frenchman Claude Storez placed second overall and first in class on the week-long Tour de France Automobile towards the end of that same season.
Linge’s talents as a driver became evident to Porsche’s higher-ups during the 1955 Sebring 12 Hours when he shared a 550 Spyder with the firm’s competition manager and PR chief, Huschke von Hanstein. ‘Actually, it wasn’t a works car. It belonged to Briggs Cunningham. He hadn’t even seen the car before it arrived in Florida. It was a bumpy airfield circuit, too. We finished eighth overall. I took on more responsibility on the racing side from
then on, and also drove and tested all the competition cars in addition to the production models.’
By the early 1960s, Porsche’s competition department had grown out of all proportion. So much so, more than 200 mechanics and engineers were employed in the workshops, with Linge running the show. While his driving career was flourishing, with 16 starts in 1963 alone, something had to give. Linge cut back on his track forays to the end of the decade, but there was one race he was loath to miss: the Le Mans 24 Hours.
‘I raced at Le Mans for the first time in 1958, sharing a 550 Spyder with Carel Godin de Beaufort. We came home in fifth place. My best result was fourth overall and first in class in 1965 when I shared a 904/6 with Peter Nöcker. I was fifth a year later when I drove a 906 alongside Hans [Herrmann]. Towards the end of the 1960s, however, Porsche began to target outright wins, whereas we had been happy to do well in class prior to that.’
It was the start of the Ferdinand Piëch era. A brilliant, if controversial, figure in motorsport and the automobile industry as a whole, as well as being Ferdinand Porsche’s grandson, he famously acted as midwife to the fearsome 917 sports-prototype. ‘Piëch was a hard man, and you had to earn his respect, but he was fine to work with. He expected loyalty and hard work and I never had a problem with that. He was responsible for me stopping racing completely, though. He asked me to choose whether I wanted to do my day job or be a racing driver. I was in my 40s by then so it was hardly a tough decision.’
So he quit, but not before tackling Le Mans a few more times, if more by happenstance than planning. In 1969, British privateer John Woolfe famously acquired the first customer 917. He was due to share the driving with BOAC pilot and gifted gentleman racer Digby Martland. Martland didn’t take to the 917 and decided to sit out the race, so Linge took his place. What happened next has entered into Le Mans folklore for all the wrong reasons.
‘There were problems with the car in practice,’ Linge admits. ‘A lot of time was spent getting it to work as it should. The 917 was at the start of its development cycle, and a lot of very well-known professional drivers found it a handful to drive, so we had our doubts that Woolfe was going to get on with such a fast car; one that he had barely driven. I know that Piëch tried his best to persuade him
‘PIËCH ASKED ME TO CHOOSE WHETHER I WANTED TO DO MY DAY JOB OR BE A RACING DRIVER’
not to race it. I was already on hand to replace Martland, but we all thought it would make sense for the car to be withdrawn completely, or for us to find someone with greater experience. Kurt Ahrens had qualified the car for Woolfe, after all. Piëch was concerned that he would kill himself. But Woolfe was determined to drive, and it was his car. Sadly, he crashed at Maison Blanche on the opening lap. The 917 overturned and caught fire. He was thrown from the car and died from his injuries.’
Linge’s final run in the great race was in 1970. He and underrated Brit Jonathan Williams were given the task of driving Solar Productions’ 908/02 camera car, the idea being to shoot race footage for the Steve McQueen film
‘The organisers didn’t want a camera car in the race, and were not happy about it. They were not shy about telling us, either, but Porsche was keen to be involved. It was a race in which a lot of cars retired, but we would probably have finished reasonably well had we not been disqualified. We had a camera in the front of the car, another behind the driver, another to the side, and then there were helmet cameras. It meant that we had to make at least six stops more than anyone else because we also needed to change canisters of film. There was a rule that stipulated that you couldn’t work on a car before you had completed a certain number of laps. One of the mechanics opened the cap on the oil tank just to check that everything was OK and was seen doing so. He said he hadn’t, but…
Anyway, we just droned around, and it was only after the race that we learned we had been excluded.’
Linge’s involvement didn’t end there, though. ‘I did some work on the movie after the race, too. McQueen was a bit of a strange character, but he liked being around the drivers. I remember being told to race my car down the Mulsanne Straight and to let him overtake me. McQueen told me not to lift. There would be no need for me to do so. Getting past me in his car would be no problem. I did as I was told but he never did manage to get past me, however many times he tried. In the end, the director had a quiet word. He suggested I slow down enough to let him “beat” me.’
While the racing may have stopped, Linge wasn’t lacking for distractions. In 1972, he initiated the first rapid response medical team in motor sport – ONSStaffel – which ran a fleet of Porsches equipped with medical supplies at European F1 races. In later years, he was the operations manager of the Weissach R&D facility, not to mention the man given the role of kickstarting the popular – and hugely profitable – Carrera Cup one-make championships. Now a mere stripling of 92, he still acts as a brand ambassador for Porsche at marque events, despite his palpable discomfort when placed firmly in the spotlight. His is a colourful and expansive legacy in Porsche lore and it deserves to be celebrated, even if the man himself would argue to the contrary.
‘McQUEEN WAS A STRANGE CHARACTER, BUT HE LIKED BEING AROUND DRIVERS’