It is said of Swabians, whose ancestral territory includes the area around the Porsche plant, that they only become clever at 40. In this respect, the Porsche Carrera, of which only 500 were built from 1972 onwards for the purpose of sports homologation, has reached Swabian age with dignity. A meeting of the owners of genuine Carrera RSs scattered around the world pays tribute to this fact.
The last of its kind with an unladen weight of less than 1,000 kg
What nobody outside of Swabia knows: the quote on the subject of cleverness continues. It reads in full format "One Swabian becomes clever at 40, another does not forever". People like to hide the usual postscript from non-Swabians. Perhaps also to avoid offending them unnecessarily. They are disadvantaged enough as it is.
When it comes to sports cars, for example, what the Porsche family has achieved in the Swabian region is considered exemplary. Porsche is the sports car manufacturer par excellence and has little competition worldwide, no matter how hard the experts from Aston Martin to Lamborghini try. Porsche is unreservedly regarded as the small but mighty manufacturer of exclusive automotive goods, a kind of Rolex on wheels.
Consequently, on the birthday of the smallest, because it is the lightest Porsche of modern times, a sporty 40th anniversary celebration was just about right.
The original talent from the sports car forge, the Carrera RS, which was introduced in 1972 to spur on the homologation of the Porsche 911 for further racing applications, was to be celebrated. Since then, the Carrera RS has been known as the well-trained sports car with the great talent for profound history-making: the sports car, which was considered wiry, was the last of its kind to reliably come in under 1000 kilograms unladen weight.
40 years of the RS - it's time to celebrate
The celebration was organized by the Carrera RS Club and took place - where else - in Swabia. Club manager Gabriele Mahler-Kurzenberger took as much time to prepare as it took to build the first RS: two years. To start with, the work for the event, which was advertised as early as March 2011 with flyers as far away as the USA, was really worth it.
Naturally, the four-day event started against the backdrop of the Porsche Museum in Zuffenhausen. 48 participants from all over the world were eager to take part in the obligatory paperwork check and then enjoy the food and drink in the museum. The tour through the museum's gallery of ancestors was particularly popular with visitors from abroad. The most photographed object: the green and white RS with the registration number LEO-ZA 63, which was one of the documented prototypes of the Weissach think tank.
Walter Röhrl and his bedtime stories
Afterwards, the journey continued to the night quarters at the Hotel Sinsheim, where Walter Röhrl welcomed the participants to the evening "get together" with his high level of expertise. When asked about his participation in the 40th AvD Oldtimer Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, where he had confidently taken second place in a 1965 Porsche 911 in a fair-weather competition against much more powerful vehicles, he said in his inimitable Röhrl-like understatement: "Well, the weather was okay, but there should have been a bit more fog and rain...".
For the next day's program, the guests set off from the heavily guarded parking lot of the Sinsheim Automobile Museum, equipped with a technology quiz sheet that had to be filled out by the evening with all kinds of results from competitions - and insights into the anniversary celebration.
A beautiful, winding route via Möckmühl took the participants to Langenburg Castle, where they were welcomed by Prince Philipp zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg in front of the German Automobile Museum. Walter Röhrl also hosted a chat in the museum in front of the exhibited vehicles - with hearty anecdotes from the sewing box.
The gearbox of the Fiat Mirafiori on display, in which he had won the world championship in 1980, must have been so stiff that even a professional like him had a hard time with it. Shortly afterwards in 1982, the Opel Ascona 400 was not necessarily counted among the favorites for the World Rally Championship either, and yet it was enough for another title.
Engrossed in conversation, we touched on the less than stoic driving characteristics of the first Audi Quattro with the short wheelbase, which displayed such extensive cornering stability that, according to the world champion, it was "better to let out a prayer before every bend in the hope of mastering the bend." In high gear, the road book of life directed the conversations back to the Porsche house, where Röhrl seems to have felt visibly at home ever since.
Anniversary oil filter for all participants
Back at the museum restaurant in Sinsheim, a memorable sponsor cocktail awaited the participants. Companies such as Bosch, Mann Filter, Pirelli and Bilstein had lavishly supported the event, which was very well received by the participants. In addition, Mann Filter donated a signed anniversary oil filter for each participant, providing a goodie that could almost be too good to be used in the engine compartment. In any case, one of the participants commented: "...you can hardly see the pretty inscription unless you install some clever filter lighting...".
It is said that it only took a few minutes for the lighting experts from the Bosch Group to pull out their notebooks to properly expand the chapter on "Innovations of the near future".
Retired Porsche engineers talk from the sewing box
The evening buffet in the restaurant within view of the classic car exhibition, which was dedicated to former Porsche racing manager Huscke von Hanstein, put the guests in the mood for the subsequent discussions with Porsche veterans such as Günther Steckkönig and Hans Clausecker.
For the Porsche freaks, it was a delight to listen to the retired Porsche engineer Günter Steckkönig talk about his lively days. As a young engineer, he competed in almost every classic race from 1963 to 1988, including Le Mans, Sebring and the Targa Florio, to name but a few.
The anecdotes of former Porsche chassis technician Hans Clausecker also kept the guests entertained. Even though, according to his own reports, he was unable to afford a sports car at the start of his career, he was pretty much exactly where he wanted to be in the sports car prototype test program.
Jogging in a Porsche on the test track in Boxberg
Both Porsche veterans were also available to the participants the following day as instructors at the Bosch test track in Boxberg. Driving on the handling course replaced the warm-up, and the participants mastered the dynamic surface as a jogging trot in qualifying without any problems. Things got more exciting on the slalom course and, as expected, some spectacular spins were seen during the ice braking. The purpose of the exercise is to gain experience at the vehicle's limits, and in the classic RS vintage without ABS and ESP, this can still be measured by hand, so to speak.
On the steep face
The highlight of the day was driving on the high-speed oval of the Bosch test track, as the steep wall at high speed offered a great opportunity to gain new experiences that never happen in everyday traffic. The limit of 165 km/h was quite appropriate, because on the steep wall - typical for Boxberg - which is not entirely free of lateral forces, it is easy to get the impression that the car wants to take off into the sky at higher speeds instead of obeying the driver's will and driving through the bend along the intended line.
The group shot of 40 stationary Carrera in the steep wall still required courageous commitment, because anyone who simply opened the passenger door without holding it firmly needed a great deal of confidence not to lose the door and its catch strap. Anyone standing at the top of the oval, on the other hand, had to operate the driver's door in a similar way to getting into a submarine, if possible without accidentally diving into the water.
Hans Mezger does the honors
It was another successful surprise when the head of Porsche engine development, Hans Mezger, appeared on stage for an interview as part of the evening program without prior announcement. The creator of the epoch-making six-cylinder boxer engine, which replaced the four-cylinder from the 356 in 1963 and was continually perfected until it was replaced by its water-cooled successor in 1997, enjoys the highest recognition in Porsche circles. Many extremely successful projects can also be traced back to him, such as the racing engine of the 917 model, the Porsche 956 / 962 and the Formula 1 TAG engine from the "Powered by Porsche" world champion years of 1984 to 1986.
An RS in fish silver
In Sinsheim, Hans Mezger presented the rump of his Carrera RS, which has since been sold and was painted in fish silver white metallic on a trial basis. As ground fish scales were actually added to the paint at the time to achieve a special glitter effect, the color of the organic substances changed over time under the influence of daylight.
In the meantime, the color tone is more of a kind of scaly old beige. Since the buyer of the Mezger-Carrera could do without the fishiest rear spoiler in the company's history, a normal engine cover was fitted at the time.
The ex-Mezger Bürzelspoiler will be donated to charity in the coming years and gave rise to two thoughts that evening: firstly, the incredible variety of ideas that have been seriously and practically tested at Porsche over the years. And secondly, the enormous care that has to be taken internally to save even the most ludicrous, yet somehow serious development project from the dustbin.
Peter Falk and the story of the duck's rump
Things continued to get interesting when former vehicle developer and racing manager Peter Falk took to the stage. He told the curious story of the Bürzel's development: after he and Günter Steckkönig increased the spoiler contour millimetre by millimetre on the Hockenheimring and then achieved better and better results in driving tests until the optimum design was found, the spoiler was approved for production with the highest blessing of the test department.
However, a different spoiler version, which was 15 millimetres lower, was used for series production, shortened by the design department's angry protest. When asked about this by Peter Falk, the head of design at the time, Anatole Lapine, is said to have responded with the words: "You're right that a little downforce is lost in the current shape. But the way it's going into series production, it just looks nicer ..." - form follows function - as the saying goes. But even very functional laws obviously have their exceptions.
The Safari story from the mouth of Manfred Jantke
Former Porsche press spokesman Manfred Jantke, another walking archivist of Porsche, took to the stage and managed to keep the evening exciting. Untouched by the shackles of modern corporate identity and exalted industry etiquette, Jantke readily quoted from his wealth of experience, even if the reputation of the business plan of yesteryear sometimes faltered a little.
In 1974, for example, Porsche's tight budget had forced the team to contest its involvement in the East African Safari in an unusual format. Both racing cars flew to Nairobi in an inexpensive cargo plane well before the start of the event. There, the service fleet was purchased on the highly adventurous Kenyan used car market in the form of used VW Beetles and buses and sparsely decorated for the upcoming event.
Successfully completing the safari rally, including servicing, with a worthy second place - the victory that was thought to be certain was prevented by axle shaft damage - was one exercise that almost became an easy one thanks to the talented young Swede Björn Waldegaard. Of course, handling the aftermath of the factory assignment completely smoothly in terms of the further budget freeze meant getting the service fleet, including the emergency vehicle, back on the road.
Anyone who was familiar with the Kenyan used car market in the 1970s, which included the habit of some bodyguards of wielding a machete a little thoughtfully during price negotiations, will gain a real respect for the performances of the racing and press department at the time. Their areas of responsibility may not always have been completely separate, but they were always exciting. Attribute "hand-made by experienced professionals", just like driver testing and tuning of the entire vehicle fleet. Typical Porsche, you could say.
But the circle of vehicle history really came full circle that evening in Sinsheim: Both vehicles from the Kenya anecdote about the East African Safari are now in the possession of the RS Club's board of directors, so there's no better way for a story like this to end. The anecdotes about the repurchase of the two Carrera RSs from the Kenyan market will still be heard around the campfires of the Carrera grandchildren.
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