The Porsche icon that forged sportscar racing's greatest era

No car won the Le Mans 24 Hours more times than Porsche's 956 and its long-wheelbase sister, the 962. And no car won more world championship sportscar races, or championships for that matter. The career statistics of the Group C and IMSA GTP coupe give the machine a pretty much irrefutable claim to the title of greatest sportscar of the past 70 years. But the 956/962 deserves this unofficial crown for many more reasons.

Longevity is one of them. Porsche's prototype won on its debut at Le Mans in 1982 in 956 guise, and claimed a sixth in a row in 1987 as the 962C. Its days were far from over in the Group C arena, however. It would almost certainly have won the 24 Hours in 1988 but for either one of two separate and distinct fuel issues, but it still had another victory at the French enduro in the tank as a GT car: the Dauer 962 Le Mans Porsche to give it its full name, in 1994.

The Porsche's last victory in the cauldron of the world championship came at Dijon in 1989. Quite literally. It was a steaming hot day and the Goodyear tyres on the best of the Joest 962Cs outlasted the Michelins on the Mercedes-powered Saubers that won every other race that year. And still it went on. The last of the 962's five victories in the Daytona 24 Hours IMSA GT Championship opener came as late as 1991; its final win in the series at Road America in 1993 with Joest's twin-wing special, arguably the ultimate version of the design.

Yet the 956/962 didn't disappear from the scene when the Dauer Porsche wasn't invited back to Le Mans for 1995. The German Kremer team's open-top versions continued to grace the grid of the big race right up until 1998, giving the design an unbroken 17-year run at the world's most important sportscar event. There was even a Dauer copy of sorts that won a round of the Belcar GT series in 1999.

Ubiquity is another reason for the Porsche's claim to greatness. Look down the grid of any world series event or IMSA race in the middle and late years of the 1980s and it will be packed with Porsches. The car was the foundation stone of the success of top-
level sportscar racing in Europe and North America in that period. The 962 was still helping to prop up both series into the 1990s.

Porsche didn't just build cars to race itself, it built them to sell. A privateer could buy a 956 or a 962 off the peg and take on the factory cars. With a following wind, it could even beat them. That goes a long way to explaining the huge numbers in which the car was produced. No fewer than 120 956 or 962 chassis rolled out of Porsche's Weissach motorsport headquarters.

That's not to count another 80 or so monocoques built or commissioned by the privateers. Not only did the 956/962 sustain an industry, it spawned one of its own. A cottage industry grew up around the car. Teams all over the world decided that they could improve upon the design with their own chassis, bodywork or whatever.

"I could not start until August because that was when Porsche's financial year began. Time was short, but there was never the question we couldn't do it" Norbert Singer

A car that had such a long-lasting career was designed and built inside eight months. What's more, the Group C rulebook wasn't finalised until well into the 956's development in October 1981. Of course, Porsche had ideas about what it wanted to do before pencil was put to paper: it had been a major player in the rulemaking process that led to the creation of the Group C fuel formula for 1982. Its customer racing boss, Jurgen Barth, famously went down to the marque's museum and measured up the cockpit of a 917 coupe to help define the windscreen dimensions for the new cars.

The 2.65-litre twin-turbo flat-six that powered the 956 had already raced. An engine conceived for what turned out to be an abortive entry into the USAC Indycar ranks had been hastily converted to run on petrol rather than methanol. The born-again powerplant was plonked in the back of a pair of 936 Group 6 roadsters hauled out of the same museum for Le Mans 1981. The result was a third victory in the French classic for the ageing design.

Proper work on the 956, and certainly not anything that involved spending money, didn't start until the summer of 1981 after the Porsche board signed off the programme at the end of June.

"Of course, we looked to see if it was interesting for us and what budget we would need," says longtime Porsche engineer Norbert Singer (below, left), who headed up the 956 project. "We had started doing some sketches after Le Mans, but I could not start until August because that was when Porsche's financial year began. Time was short, but there was never the question we couldn't do it."

Singer and his team didn't just have to design a car, they had to learn about monocoque chassis and ground-effect aerodynamics for Porsche's first new prototype since the 936 came on stream in 1976. The two went hand in hand. The greater loadings that came with ground-effects, long since de rigueur in Formula 1, required a chassis substantially stiffer than anything the marque had produced before.

"We knew we had to harness the airflow underneath the car, but all we had were pictures of F1 cars," recalls Singer. "That's how we started in the windtunnel, with a model based on things we'd copied from F1. We began with a car with a high nose and kind of sidepods.

"This didn't work because we had a two-seater monocoque: the area of the sidepods was not sufficient. We weren't allowed to run skirts, but we tried them to see what would happen. We expected to get more downforce, but instead we got less. We realised that we needed to take air under the car from the sides.

"It was also clear from the beginning that we had to build a monocoque. There were certain safety requirements and a level of stiffness we needed to achieve that would not have been possible with a spaceframe. The problem was that we didn't know how to do it and we had to develop our own techniques."

The 956 ran for the first time at Porsche's Weissach test track in late March 1982. Barth, Le Mans winner aboard a 936 in 1977, was entrusted with the shakedown. He knew immediately that the car would be a winner.

"I did two laps to make sure there were no fluids leaking and then did another 10 to 15 laps," he recalls. "You know if a car is good straight away, and I got out with a big smile on my face."

The Porsche wasn't a winner immediately, or at least not at the first time of asking. That was a result of a quirk of the rulebook. The Rothmans-sponsored factory squad fielded a solo car in round two of the World Endurance Championship at Silverstone in mid-May. Jacky Ickx put the car on pole, only to be told along with team-mate Derek Bell that their chances of victory the following day were slim.

The table of fuel allocations for the different lengths and durations of races lumped 1000km and six-hour rounds together. The problem was six hours of flat-chat racing around the old Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit would add up to a damn sight more than 1000km.

"We asked on the Friday or the Saturday, 'Is the race really six hours?,'" remembers Singer. "We were told, 'Yes, it is tradition'. We said to them that we only had enough fuel for 1000km and their reply was that it was our problem. FISA appeared to be saying the race was 1000km, the organisers [the British Racing Drivers' Club] six hours."

The 956 finished second on the 600 litres of fuel it was allowed after, remembers Bell, "droning around and hardly using any revs". To put the kind of straits in which he and Ickx found themselves into perspective, 2600 litres were allowed for 24 hours at Le Mans. Fifty or so litres shy of what they needed at Silverstone, the drivers of the solo 956 had no chance against the winning Martini Lancia LC1. The Italian machine raced without fuel limitations because it ran to the old Group 6 rules. Two-litre cars had been allowed in an attempt to bolster the grids, a move Lancia exploited by building an all-new contender.

"It wasn't like a sportscar of old: it didn't roll and the nose didn't come up when you accelerated. It was one of those cars that did everything right" Derek Bell

Porsche put the record straight five weeks later at Le Mans on the new car's second appearance. The trio of 956s entered came home 1-2-3 in what Singer ranks as the best of the car's seven victories in the French enduro. The winning car ran without delay, save for a minor issue with the fuel mixture, a puncture and a change of brakes.

"It is my favourite not only because it was the first, but also because it was a surprise," he says. "We had done just two endurance tests. To finish 1-2-3 was pretty remarkable."

As was the record of the 956/962 over the years that followed. It wouldn't be until 1987 that something other than one of the Porsches finished among the podium positions at Le Mans, and that car, a French Cougar, had a 962 engine in the back. Porsche's masterpiece was that good. Everyone who ever sat in one loved the thing.

For Bell, the romance began the moment he first drove a 956 at Paul Ricard in April 1982.

"It was remarkable how good it was straight out of the box," he recalls. "It wasn't like a sportscar of old: it didn't roll and the nose didn't come up when you accelerated. It was one of those cars that did everything right. It was a glorious car, fantastic, and I think we took it for granted, really. It was such an easy car to drive. You just jumped in it and drove - quick, quick quick."

It was reliable, reliable, reliable too. Bell reckons he only ever had an accident as the result of a mechanical failure on one occasion, and that came in the car's dotage at Spa in 1990.

Hans Stuck, who twice won Le Mans with the 962C, has similar memories: "You were never worried that something was going to break. It did what it was supposed to and let you worry about going fast."

The 956 helped change the face of endurance racing: it set it on course for the flat-out sprints of today.

"Sportscar racing changed with the 956," the late Bob Wollek said more than 20 years ago. "You didn't have to nurse the car through the race, which was a change to what had gone before."

The reliability of the Porsche coupe and the ease with which it could be driven and run made it such a potent weapon in the hands of the privateers who queued up to buy 956s and 962s. Richard Lloyd, with sponsorship from Canon in his back pocket, got his hands on one of the first batch of customer cars for the 1983 season. The British privateer described it "the epitome of the turnkey racing car" a year before he died in 2008.

PLUS: Remembering a racing pioneer and deal-maker

"I'll always remember picking up our first 956 because we were taken to the same place where that famous picture of the 25 917s lined up was taken," he recalled. "I was led down a ramp into a cellar, a light switch was flicked and there was a line of 956s, covered in dust. I was told which one was mine, handed a key and told to drive it away. It was easy to run, not least because Porsche was there at the races with a big truck full of spares."

Stuck scored victories in both factory and customer Porsche Group C cars. He reckons there was "never a such a big difference" between the two, "so long as the customer maintained the car and set it up properly". And if they did that, he adds, "they had the chance to win".

Joest Racing, Lloyd's GTI Engineering team, Brun Motorsport and the Kremer brothers all won world championship races against the factory. Over in IMSA, privately run 962s fielded by Preston Henn, Bob Akin, Jim Busby and Rob Dyson all prevailed in front of the de facto North American Porsche operation run by Al Holbert. It could be done.

Lloyd's operation, which subsequently took his own name, wasn't the first to try to improve on the 956. Reinhold Joest was doing that from the get-go: he built his own engines for the 956 immediately after getting hold of his first car in 1983. But GTI was the first to make wholesale changes that everyone noticed.

It bolted a front aerofoil, a cut-and-shut affair with its origins in a Formula 3 rear wing, to the front of its car for the Brands Hatch 1000Km in 1984 and ended up winning a race from which the factory was absent. Next time out at Spa, its Porsche had been rebuilt around its own honeycomb chassis designed by Nigel Stroud to replace the sheet aluminium original.

Joest, the most famous and consistent conqueror of the factory, undoubtedly did improve the breed. It won first time out at the Monza 1000Km at the beginning of 1983 season courtesy of its own engine and scored back-to-back victories at Le Mans in 1984 and 1985

"The Porsche was a great car that had no vices - everything was so well meshed," says Stroud. "But as a designer when you go through the car, you think you could stiffen the chassis, add a bit of aero or go for bigger brakes. Richard liked to be different, but the standard car was actually better balanced. I'd like to think we improved it, but we didn't have the resources to back-to-back the two versions."

PLUS: The man behind Japan's first Le Mans winner

Singer has always maintained that the customers were being different for different's sake, that their so-called improvements were to wow the sponsors. But Joest, the most famous and consistent conqueror of the factory, undoubtedly did improve the breed. It won first time out at the Monza 1000Km at the beginning of 1983 season courtesy of its own engine and scored back-to-back victories at Le Mans in 1984 and 1985, the first in the absence of the factory, the second in opposition to it.

Like all racing cars, great or otherwise, Porsche's design evolved over time. There were tweaks at first, lighter bodywork in Kevlar composites and revised suspension geometry at the front for the 1983 works cars, and then the big change with the introduction of the 962.

Rules for the IMSA GTP class already demanded that the driver's feet were located behind the centreline of the front wheels, which precluded the 956 from participating in the Stateside series, and FISA followed suit with a staggered introduction through 1985 and 1986. The new car, introduced in North America for 1984, was effectively a long-wheelbase version of the original: the front axle was moved forward by 120mm, giving the later car a more stubby-nosed look.

The IMSA car, initially at least, was raced with a single-turbo engine courtesy of rulemakers still wary of forced-induction powerplants. The flat-six engine was progressively developed over time, incorporating improvements in the Bosch Motronic engine management system, full water cooling and increases in cubic capacity, right up to 3.2 litres for 1990. And all the while Singer's creation kept on winning major championships around the globe.

The first title was won in dramatic fashion at the end of 1982. Ickx came from behind in one of his greatest races at the two-part Brands Hatch 1000Km to seal the drivers' crown.

PLUS: Jacky Ickx's top 10 greatest races

The last of five on the trot at world championship level came in 1986. Bell took the title ahead of regular team-mate Stuck on a bizarre tiebreak, courtesy of an 11th-place finish in the one race that they didn't do together, and Brun pipped the factory to what was now a teams' title.

There was still another IMSA drivers' title, a third, to come in 1987 for Chip Robinson driving for Holbert Racing, and two more beyond that in the All-Japan Sports-Prototype Championship for the From-A and Alpha teams in 1988 and 1989 respectively. Those were Japanese crowns numbers four and five for the 956/962.

Yet no one could imagine as the ageing design increasingly became a bit player - though always an important component of the grid - in all the major sportscar arenas that there was another Le Mans win to come. Not even Porsche.

That it did was the result of duff information. Porsche believed that McLaren was coming to Le Mans in 1994 with its F1 supercar for an assault on the newly instigated GT1 division. Horst Marchart, the board member responsible for motorsport, asked Singer if he could beat the BMW-engined supercar with the development of the 1993 911 Turbo S LM he had in the pipeline. The answer was an emphatic no.

"Like members of the board do, he said, 'OK, I give you one week to come up with a new idea,'" recalls Singer, whose thoughts immediately turned to the 962-based road car that former Porsche privateer Jochen Dauer had shown at the Frankfurt motor show in September 1993. "I had the idea that if we can make a 962 for the road and homologate it, then we can work backwards and make it a race car."

Singer wasn't convinced that Marchart would go for the idea, not least because Porsche's research and development boss had already turned down Dauer's request for help homologating the car for the road.

"Mr Marchart didn't like the Dauer car and I expected him to say, 'We have thrown him out once and now he is trying to come in through the back door,'" recalls Singer. "But he just stood up and said he would have to ask his colleagues. Two days later, he rang and said, 'Do it!'"

Porsche did do it, and in double-quick time. It didn't agree a deal with Dauer until the middle of February. Yet the new car exceeded the marque's hopes. It wasn't conceived to win Le Mans outright, just the GT1 division that McLaren was still a year away from entering.

Yannick Dalmas, Mauro Baldi and Hurley Haywood took overall victory 12 years minus a day after the 956 had won on its first appearance at the Circuit de la Sarthe. It was a triumph that added further mystique to the legend of the 956/962.