A couple of recent threads have prompted my thoughts about Factory built sports purpose cars in 1969 – especially 69S ones. This seems to me to be a gap in the factory-built sports purpose cars.
A few years ago we created a very long thread on ST’s that were made between 1970 MY and 1972MY and there have been numerous posts and threads on the sports purpose cars from 1968 and earlier. Hence me titling this as an “ultimate” thread like we did with the ST thread.
However apart from some factory rally cars and the 4 1969 GTS cars that have also been the subject of various posts such as here there has been no mention (that I can remember or find) of any factory built for private use 1969S’s until @nashman started this post on the Vard 911S here and then shortly afterwards @ glaverbel911 posted that he also had a 69S that had also been modified for competition use at Werk1 when being built here
I thought that it would be worthwhile starting a separate thread to see if we can identify any more of these special cars.
In 1968 there were at least 20 TR’s, as well as a number of L Rallye cars and L Trans Am and L Circuit racers, all with sports purpose parts on them since new and many with notes on their kardexes that the engines had been modified for more power so that they did not have any warranty. In addition, many had special ratio competition gearboxes that had 928 xxxx serial numbers. They are all signs of competition cars prepared from new either for factory or customer use.
However so far as I can see there were only a handful of 1968S’s with any sort of sports purpose parts (mostly roll bar, Limited Slip diff and either Sport Kit II or Rallye kit II) on them. Perhaps that is because the TR’s in particular had the S (or sometimes 906 or R) engines and they were homologated to a lighter weight than the S. Also, it appears that the S was not eligible for Trans Am racing in the USA. (But perhaps Don Ahearn can provide more information on that). It seems that most of the L’s in 1968 were either Trans am cars or, in Europe in particular, rally cars where homologated weight was less important given all the extras that rally cars had on them. However, there were also L circuit cars run in particular by Kremer that I have no details of at this stage.
In 1970 there was a run of at about 30 (maybe more) factory built ST’s (of which 7 were used by the werks team) as well as “lightweight S’s” and stock T’s that could be built into ST’s with a factory supplied kit. the construction of factory built ST’s continued in 1971 and 1972 before the RS program provided RS based cars as the factory-built sports purpose option.
So, it seems a bit strange that there were not more factory-built sports purpose cars based on the 69S especially as the standard road car was such a potent car.
The werks cars were the 4 GTS’s, three of which ran in the 1968 Marathon de la Route and the other was used as a practice car for various events before being sold off for use as a rally car in Peru as that group of cars were not homologated or eligible for any other type of motorsport, and the other 7 were all rally cars. So the cars used in competition did not have to be built on a lightweight shell and the lightweights that were built (GTS’s) were not eligible anyway.
It is notable that the 911’s competing in the 1969 Le Mans were mostly 1968TR’s that had competed in 1968 as well (exceptions being Gaban in a “68S” shown as having the same weight as the TR’s and one other 84kg heavier 68 S for Farjon – 11800120).
So there were NO 1969S’s there despite it being almost at the end of the model year for them.
It is notable that both the @nashman and @ glaverbel911 cars started out as rally cars and therefore the only way that the special features could be discovered was from the Kardex such as shown here. it is also notable that both of these cars have extra notations on the Kardex of M-Liste “special work” being done to them a Werk1 that voided the warranty. Again, this is only found on the Kardex. So it is possible that there are others out there to be found and documented. However I suspect that there will be only a handful like there were with the “heavier” 1968S’s – but I will be happy to be proven wrong.
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