LIGHT SPEED
Stark contrast. The 911 2.7 RS talks to you with an intense voice, holding you in a tight embrace, bedazzling you with its on-track talents. It invites you to explore your limits soonest. The BMW is more mysterious. Here you sense hidden depths, waiting to be unlocked. That it will take patience and time for the relationship to develop, to become transparent. The one-night stand versus the lasting relationship?
If only things were that simple. This is the story of two 1970s icons, each built to be the best possible race car according to its manufacturer’s aims and abilities. And in the event, both became automotive legends in their own right.
Travel back in time to early 1972; location, the Hockenheim pitlane. Porsche’s freshly appointed chairman Ernst Fuhrmann is less than amused, seeing the 911 humiliated by Fords and BMWs. Even though the cars run in different classes, the image of the 911 being beaten by such lesser gods is too much for him to take. Fuhrmann demands an explanation. ‘How come these BMWs and Fords are much faster than our cars?’
The answer to that question brings us to a former Porsche factory driver: Jochen Neerpasch. It was Neerpasch who, in his next job as Ford’s competition boss, initiated the first ‘homologation special’ Capris that would steamroller the opposition – BMW in particular. BMW’s answer, upgrading
