The very special Porsche 914/6 with the Ford Transit wideners
07/16/2016
We recently published an article about the Porsche 914/6 , to which a reader wrote to us whose father used a similar car in circuit and hill climb races. But what a car!
Reader Michael Karthäuser told us:
"The car came from Porsche Kremer itself. My grandfather had bought it there in 1970 as a repaired civilian accident car without an engine and converted it into a racing car together with my father. My father got the engine, a 2.0 liter Carrera 6 with dual ignition, from Tebernum, who in turn had bought it from Gijs van Lennep. The mudguard extensions were those from the Ford Transit.
Incidentally, when the car was owned by my father, Reinhold Karthäuser, it was also driven a few times by Luxembourg racing legend Nikolas Koob.
In 1977, my father sold the car to Manfred Hebben, who had an accident but had the car repaired by Kremer.
In 1978, my father bought the car back, painted it in the distinctive green-orange scheme (my mother's idea) and sold it again at the end of the season.
Somehow the car ended up in the USA. A German-American dealer specializing in racing cars named Claus Müller (Miami) sold it in parts to John Forbes (Black Forest Racing).
He and his son Cody raced the 914 very successfully in historic races until John let a friend take the wheel in 2005, who almost completely destroyed the car in a race.
It wasn't until 2014 that Cody managed to convince his father to rebuild the car with a new body shell. As many original parts as possible were reused.
Cody, who visited me a month ago, has firm plans to rebuild the original body. I have attached photos of the rebuild and the original parts I kept. Cody even had the stickers reproduced that my father used on the race cars we looked after in the 1980s.
On the side of the new body you can see: Built and raced by Reinhold Karthäuser, Belgium, 1970-1978."
What a story!
