Porsche heaven
This was a little like digging priceless historical artefacts out of a field. First one emerged, a dream all by itself, more than I could have hoped for, beautiful, important and captivating. But then I caught a glimpse of another, and another...
More and more until no fewer than seven masterpieces emerged, all from the same creator, all similar in size and shape, yet no two truly alike. I simply didn’t know where to look next.
My slightly embarrassing reflex reaction to seeing Henry Pearman’s Historic Porsche Group C Collection is simply to start laughing, as the brain tries to process exactly what we have here. Which is more Group C Porsches in one place than anywhere else in the world and, yes, that includes the Porsche Museum. There are actually a double-digit number of 956s and 962s here which gives us the luxury of choice, so today we’ll just be sticking to cars either raced by the works, or in just one case, by the official works-supported team.
Together they span almost the entire history of Porsche’s factory involvement in perhaps the most fabled category of sports car racing. We start with the eighth 956, built to contest Le Mans in 1983, and end with the 962 that was the last car to win a Group C world championship race for Porsche in 1989. Between these lies the history of the world’s most successful sports racing car.
MOST ENTHUSIASTS KNOW the story of the creation of the Porsche 917, how Porsche defied rules specifically drafted to ensure such a car never got built by making all 25 units
