George Follmer
He was an underrated racer who played a significant role in Porsche’s US successes. Total 911 charts the incredible career of George Follmer
Total 911 looks back on the incredible career of American racing great George Follmer
Follmer was born in Phoenix in 1934, though effectively he became a Californian as his family moved to Pasadena before he was two years old, and it was in this northern suburb of Los Angeles that he grew up and raised his own family. He was a reasonable high school pupil “when I concentrated,” he says. His studies were interrupted at 18 by the ‘draft,’ military service which saw him serving as an intelligence clerk for two years in Bavaria. Subsequently after three years at Pasadena college he emerged in 1957 with a business degree and at 23 he needed to start earning a living, becoming an accident and fire insurance salesman.
His appetite for motorsport had already been whetted by car park slaloms in a VW Beetle and by 1959, he had saved enough to buy a used 356 Speedster. He joined the Porsche Club and quickly made a name for himself in local club competitions at the nearby Riverside track, which had opened in 1957. Fellow Club member Tom Nuckles, proprietor of VW Porsche dealer Trans Ocean Motors, took a shine to him. Follmer recalled in later years that “Tom was my benefactor. I owe everything to him.” Nuckles’ support was clearly effective, and by 1962 Follmer was winning championships in an RS 1500. And the Sixties were busy years: marriage, a son and two daughters as well as racing at weekends.
By 1964, he had moved up a division: contemporaries such as Chuck Parsons and Bobby Unser were building their own racers using Cosworth engines to compete in the US Road Racing Championship. Follmer acquired a year-old Lotus 23B, many of which were racing in the US using the Elan’s 1,500cc twin cam engine, but George Follmer had bigger ambitions: with the help of inspired former Shelby mechanic Bruce Burness, he made adjustments to the chassis to accommodate a larger engine. They contemplated the air-cooled Corvair unit, but concluded they would never get enough power from it. Instead, they installed a Porsche flat four from a 904. Tom Nuckles used his Porsche connections to obtain a brand-new 587/3 from Zuffenhausen, costing a reported $10,000, and he did not stop there, equipping his protégé with a Chevrolet pick-up with a camper body.
Now Follmer really looked the part and he would let neither his trusty mechanic nor his willing sponsor down. The Porsche-engined 23B was both light and reliable and Follmer finished the 1965 season as American road-racing champion, ahead of Jim Hall’s V8 Chaparral. The Chaparrals were the cars to beat in the USRRC in the mid-sixties and Hall was considerably put out that a car from the 2-litre class had defeated him. Although the Chaparral won the over 2,000cc class, Follmer had scored two points more, winning the sub 2-litre class and was thus
“Follmer became the only driver to win both major US trophies in the same season”
overall champion. Unmoved by Hall’s bluster, Follmer would go on to upset the established order again in his career.
This victory, noted by Huschke von Hanstein amongst others, put Follmer on the map. The following year, he was invited to share Peter Gregg’s works-supported 904 GTS entry at Sebring and finished 7th. The North American Racing Team (Ferrari) entered him at Le Mans in a Dino 206, but the Ferrari expired after nine laps. At 33, Follmer was now an established professional racing driver. Roger Penske hired him to drive his second Lola T70 (Mark Donohue drove the other) in the 1967 Can-am. The Mclarens, the famous ‘Bruce and Denny show’, were dominating and Follmer’s 7th places in 1967 and ’68 were a measure of his consistency with the less competitive Lola. In 1969, a new entrant to the Can-am series was the Shadow team owned by Don Nichols. Follmer readily undertook testing of the Shadow, notable for its diminutive size and very small Firestone tyres prior to the 1970 season. “Firestone loved using him,” said Trevor Harris, initial designer of the Shadow. “He was such a good test driver. He could identify tyres by feel.” Later, Briton Tony Southgate, already well known for his work at Lola and BRM, joined Shadow. His assessment of Follmer was “very laid back in that American way. Not a technical driver, but certainly a very brave one.”
Follmer would pilot the Shadow in its first races in 1970, but compared to conventional sports racers the tiny Shadow proved extraordinarily difficult to drive, its extremely low sitting position and almost horizontal steering wheel requiring all sorts of contortions of its driver. The Shadow, a piece of technical wizardry in need of far more development also proved hopelessly unreliable. Follmer quit the team mid-season, though not before securing Vic Elford to replace him, not wishing to leave Nichols in the lurch. “I was concerned about what these high-profile retirements would do to my career,” he said later. With Trans-am and other commitments, Follmer would not return to the Can-am series until 1972, this time in a Porsche 917.
Although the 911 was prevalent in US club racing, by the late Sixties Porsches were notably absent, despite once being so numerous in the modified categories with RS 1500s, Elva Porsches and cars like Follmer’s Lotus-porsche. Zuffenhausen was fully preoccupied with its assault on European sports car racing, but by 1969, in the 4.5-litre 917, Porsche had a potential contender for the Can-am series. By coincidence, VW was seeking to launch Audi in the US through joint Vw-audi dealerships. At that time, the Audi brand was unknown in America (in fact it had little recognition outside Germany) but with 20 years’ experience in the US, it struck VW that the Can-am series was as good a vehicle as any to promote the Audi name. With ten rounds including a couple in Canada, the series was one of North America’s most popular events. VW US contracted Porsche to run a 917 in the 1969 series; Jo Siffert was brought in to drive it. The 917 was reworked extensively for 1970, but clearly was still not fast enough to catch the 8-litre Mclarens and by 1971 Porsche was experimenting with a 16-cylinder engine and considering forced induction. Alas in October Siffert was killed at Brands Hatch in an F1 race: for 1972 Porsche would need both a new team and a driver. They turned to Roger Penske: his perseverance in the Can-am over several seasons