The real 73 RSR TF Winner - Porsche Factory Scam??

[HughH]

Raj

You are correct - a lot of HP from a small engine.
However i was looking it up in the Frere book as there are 2 2.5 engines that give a claimed 275 HP; a 911/70 in 1970 - 71 and a 911/73 which was in 1972

HOWEVER

while your document shows the engine type as 911/73 engine, all the specs according to Frere, are for a 911/70 engine

specs are as follows
911/70
86.7 x 70.4 equals 2494cc
10.5 comp
275 hp at 8000rpm
valves dia 46 / 40
valve lift 12.1 / 10.5
used in "911 RSR" (as opposed to Carrera RSR for the 911/72; 911/74 and 911/75 engines)

the 911/73 engines (referred to in your doc) have these specs

911/73
89 x 66 equals 2466cc
10.5 comp
275 hp at 8000rpm
valves dia 46 / 40
valve lift 12.1 / 10.5


so i GUESS even the bible on engines (frere) does not agree with the docs from the factory on these cars

from memory the long stoke engines had a reputation for tearing themselves apart - someone else more qualified on this may be able to add to my comments / correct them

[HughH]

I think the whole history leading up to M491 RSR cars in 1973 is fascinating and is a little difficult to put together. I suspect there are still elements that are not understood or have not been properly put in context.

You are correct that each year the FIA rules are known well in advance so rules for 1972 would have been known much earlier than the development phase that seemed to exist in your post. Also a team like Porsche had the ability to comply with say Group 3 or 4 or run in prototype where in effect no rules were constraints.

One of the keys I think is when in 1971 or early 1972 Fuhrmann decided that Porsche could no longer afford the expensive racing programme. The rallye programme was curtailed (only a limited number of factory entries post 1971) and the group 5 programme (917's etc) was abandoned. It is telling that at Le Mans in 1972 there was no official or semi official werks team - unlike 1971 with both the Martini International team and the John Wyer team and 1973 with the Martini International team.

The general story of the development of the Strahle #5 car for the July 1972 Osterreichring 1000Kms race is well known, although I am certain there are still a lot of elements yet to come out on that car that will provide a richer history of the background to the 1973 RSR's.

According to various sources Fuhrmann was at a touring car race early in 1972 and saw both the Capri and the BMW walk all over the 911's. He then encouraged the development of a car to be competitive in that series, via the clever use of the homologation process as Ford had done with the Capri.

This ended up with a prototype car run under the Strahle name to avoid too much scrutiny but with both Waldegaard and Steckkonig as drivers and in effect a full race department car, albeit a programme based only on that car. It had a 2.8 engine that seems to be a forerunner of the M491 RSR engines and certainly looked more like "an RSR" than the TdC RS's later that year.

Another thing to put in context here is that until 1971 (and probably late that year) the whole Race Dept effort and resources had been focused on the 917 and similar projects, with 911 based projects probably receiving no resources. It takes time to turn such a situation around in any business - in effect a radical change in strategy associated with a significant downsizing programme.

Therefore it is conceivable that apart from (almost covert) work on what turned out to be the Strahle #5 car, and perhaps support for Kremer and a few other teams running race based ST's , there would have been virtually no race dept development of the 911 as either a rallye or track car for most of 1972 and almost none in the couple of years leading up to 1972.

The work on R2 and the other TdC car (be it R1 or an ST) would have been rallye based even though the TdC is mostly a tarmac event. That requires a different engine tune and characteristics, different suspension etc to a track car. So it is not surprising that those cars in October 1972, based on MY 1973 RS's looks less like a 1973 RSR track car than the track developed Strahle car from earlier in the year. It would be very unlikely, in my view, that the same team of engineers would work on a track programme and a rallye programme. It is more likely that there were two teams.

Singer and others have said that their work on a track version of the RS did not begin until after the 1972 TdC, ie for the 1973 season, with the trip to Paul Ricard with R2. That then led to the prototype entries of R3 and R4 at Daytona in early 1973, the competition debut (still in prototype form) of the track RSR, and further development work / testing with R2 as car #60 (now with the 2.993cc engine) (and I think R7 as car #62 but that is not what the records say) at the Le Mans tests and 4 hour race in April 1973.

I agree that to understand all of this you need to dig into the background of the cars the factory did run officially and unofficially in 1972, ie the 2 Monte ST's that seemed to morph into M491(group 4) cars, at least in looks, by the end of 1973 and the Strahle car.

However i wonder if there is another series of cars that also played a part - the track oriented ST's run by Kremer and others. Kremer was always close to the factory and it is a moot point whether he developed cars and the factory adopted the changes or the factory developed the cars and he adopted the changes. I think in regard to 1972, and track cars, that he was way out in front of the factory and they would have drawn on his experience. However I have never seen anything suggesting that in regard to the development of the track based RSR's.

[911T1971]

One of the keys I think is when in 1971 or early 1972 Fuhrmann decided that Porsche could no longer afford the expensive racing programme. The rallye programme was curtailed (only a limited number of factory entries post 1971) and the group 5 programme (917's etc) was abandoned. It is telling that at Le Mans in 1972 there was no official or semi official werks team - unlike 1971 with both the Martini International team and the John Wyer team and 1973 with the Martini International team.

Hugh, your resumé is convincing and, as always in technical terms, compelling.
May I add some other historical infos.

In 1971 there was an economic recession in Germany, leading into cost-cutting measurements at Porsche (and probably also to eliminate the external 72 oil filler flap on 73 cars which was very expensive in tooling).
Also, the DM-US$ exchange ratio was much in favor of US$ therfore making german export products very expensive and lowering 72/73 profit rates for the factory.

In 1969, VW-CEO Nordhoff died therefore ending a very close relationship (his daughter Elise married the brother of F.Piech) with that company including 914 and 917 developments. Volkswagen co-founded the 917 development program "as long as they had air-cooled engines".
As a director of Porsche's race program F. Piech was very successful but in terms of financing he drained the factory budget considerably.

Named Porsche CEO in 1972, Fuhrmann probably had another vision of racing programs. Having seen the (market) success in the 1950 with close-to serie racing cars (Spider, RSK, Carrera) he opted most likely to develop the 911 into a pure-bred race car rather than continue the costly 908, 910, 917 philosophy.

By developing the 2.7 engine (initially planned as a 2.7S and then rebadged 2.7RS "Carrera") Ernst Fuhrmann not only had a perfect marketing tool for racing, the "Carrera" badge was a also reminiscent of the famous 50ies "Carrera" engine he helped to develop while working as an engineer at Porsche and since then is also known as "Fuhrmann" engine. Even the famous Carrera logo applied to the 1973RS cars was similiar to the one written on 50ies Carrera engined Porsche's.

Porsche once said the difference between Ferrari and Porsche was "that Ferrari builds serial cars just to do racing while Porsche does racing just to build serial cars".

The whole Porsche racing development after 1972 could be interpreted as going back to a philosophy which startet with the 911R and leading into a 1970-ies program we all know.

According to various sources Fuhrmann was at a touring car race early in 1972 and saw both the Capri and the BMW walk all over the 911's. He then encouraged the development of a car to be competitive in that series, via the clever use of the homologation process as Ford had done with the Capri.

Much less known is that German/Swiss engineer and racer Michael May (who 1956 famously first used a roof spoiler on his 550 RSK and subsequently got banned from Porsche factory people and Huschke von Hanstein to race at 1000km Nurburgring because his car was initially faster than factory cars) later worked briefly for Mercedes at their fuel injected engine program and about 1961, for Porsche.
May worked on Porsche's F1 program and among others build a proto 1.5l engine w fuel injection putting out 182hp instead of 158hp, more than Porsche's planned 8 cyl F1-engine. May later moved to Ferrari helping developing the V6 Dino engine and from 1965 on worked as an independant engine consultant based near Geneva, Switzerland.

It was him who helped developing the worlds/german first 1973 BMW Turbo 2002 engine as well as giving inputs about aerodynamic downforce theories on race cars he pioneered in the 50ies.
In 1969, with May's help BMW won the "European Touring Car Championship" with his 2002 therefore beating Porsche on its own home turf.
It was also May who entered in 1969, as a privateer, a prototyp Ford Capri Turbo ("Turbo May") with 320hp on a local race in Germany and setting the pace for Ford's 2600RS Capris which he initially consulted too on fuel injected system for their engines.

Porsche probably did'nt liked that nimble Bavarian cars with help from a ex-Porsche engineer well known for its superb engine knowledge outpaced the 911S on race tracks.
(Piech once said that the only other company he would worked for would be as an engineer at BMW).

Nevertheless, in developing the 917 CanAm, 1974 RSR, Turbo, 935&936 etc, Porsche did write another glorious chapter in its long racing history.
BWM moved on with its aerodynamic tuned CSL "Batmobile" and M1 program and in 1983 won Formula 1 with a world first F1-turbo engined Brabham-BMW car based on a 2002 engine block tuned by Klaus Rosche and initially developed with the help of Michael May back in the mid-sixties.


1956: adjustable wing w flabs using downforce developed by Michael May:


1973: 911 proto Turbo:

[John Starkey]

A wonderful thread! And great research, particularly from Hugh Hodges.

Just for the record, there were five other RS/RSRs took part in the 1973 Targa Florio. They were:

Race No: 106, Giovanni Borri/Mario Barone. They finished 7th Overall, 1st in GT +2000cc class. Chassis number 911 360 0894, (Probably). Brescia Corse entry.

Race No: 113, Peter Zbinden/Mario Ilotte. They finished 8thOA, 2nd in GT+2000 cc class. Chassis number 911 360 0960. Porsche Club Romand entry.

Race No. 109, Guido Fossato/Angelo Mola. They finished 14thOA/3rd in GT +2000 cc class. Chassis number 911 360 1134 (Probably). Fossati entered. (Guido has long had a hotel near Milan in which I used to stay, when racing at Monza. Full of race memorabilia).

Race No. 110, Andrew Hedges/Dan Margulies. They finished 18thOA/4th in GT + 2000 cc class. RS 2.7 Carrera, number unknown as of writing. Comstock entered.

Race No. 112, Gerd F. Quist/Juergen Zink. DNF, slight accident. Max Moritz entry.

And finally...My latest book on the Porsche R-GT2 is now available; For more details, go to: www.johnstarkeycars.com.

Thank you,

John Starkey

[HughH]

Hi John

here are photos of most of those other cars - not all were RSR's - from the 1973 Targa:

car 106 ( I did not have that chassis number, john I am not certain of this number as I thought 0894 was a viper green Strahle car)

car 113 ( that is the same number as I had)

car 110 chassis number 911 360 0446. Some UK members might recognize it. It sill exists with the same registration number PGF 270L and I believe it changed owners recently via Maxted in the UK. It is an M471 car.

car 112 chassis 911 360 0636. See picture of the slight accident on lap one
that car is now in South Africa

I don't have a picture of car 109 or chassis number details. Perhaps someone else on the board may have and can share it?


PS
i will have to do somehing about getting the new book

[John Starkey]

Hugh,

Thank you so much for posting those photos. Interestingly, the yellow/red RSR APPEARS to be a modified 911, perhaps not an original RSR? Those wheelarches don't look quite right, should like some more info on that car-it doesn't seem to be the Strahle car.

The RS 2.7 driven by Andrew Hedges/Dan Margulies. Their result shows just just how close a lightweight M471 RS 2.7 was to a full blooded RSR in an actual race situation. They qualified at 44 mins, 43seconds. That made them only 54th on the starting grid! (The best "Works" entered RSR, that of Muller/Van Lennep, qualified in 36 mins 52.1 and Pole position was by Jackie Ickx/Brian Redman in the Ferrari 312PB at 33:38.5!)

I wonder whether the RS was driven to and from Sicily? Must ask Dan Margulies!

Varunan, thanks for your kind comments.

[HughH]

Raj

I have been trying to figure this one out for some time.

It has the same registration plate as the 1972 Monte car.

However that car has a reasonably known history - built just before the Monte as an ST, 1972 Monte, 1972 Acropolis in May, both in the same colours and looking similar, then a gap and it did the recce for the 1972 TdC but by that time the rallye bits were off, it was still red and white but looked more like a RS with a ducktail, then it did the recce for the 1973 safari, still red and white and looking like a rallye ST again. It was wrecked on that recce.

this photo looks like the car is one colour (hard to tell) I cant see rubber hold downs on bonnet (could be replacement bonnet) the decals along the side are not on any other version of S AK 1337 but all of that is superficial although it is hard to see why they would change it and then change it back. However, tellingly, it does not seem to have flared front guards.

it is supposed to taken in 1972 (Waldegard driving hill climb in Sweden 1972.) so I am guessing it is not the same car as the 1972 Monte car 911 230 0047.

IF it was taken in 1973 instead it might be after 911 230 0047 was wrecked in Africa and the plates may have been reused on another car???

[72targa]

I'm pretty sure this has not been posted on this thread...wish it had sound...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tDhcQPdP-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VciWlJW8jvw

The primary authors need to turn this thread into a book!

Here's a French documentary on the '73 TF (5 parts - with sound!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7wcYqL8z0M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4hc_HbZAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWIBY6EDOOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAn5H9lG_34
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbXA7Qp_QA

What's the guy in Part 5 spouting off about in Italian?

[Mike_Moore]

Peter, fantastic footage from the French documentary, part 3 in particular showing the danger on the recce laps with cars and trucks coming the other way and children, horses and goats in the road! No wonder this was the last year it was run.

Shame about the quality.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dWIBY6EDOOc

[Milou]

The guy is a local politician trying to prevent the Targa race from being cancelled; he explains how essential it is for a pilot to drive at the Targa and how a win at the Targa separates the champions from the rest....

Of course, all the attemps to save the Targa failed and it essentially stopped in 1974.