50 YEARS OF RENNSPORT
The ducktail or bürzel spoiler might look like a finishing touch on the back of a 911 Carrera RS 2.7, which launched 50 years ago this year at the Paris Motor Show, but it was the first step in creating one of the most iconic sports cars of all time.
Today, we’re in Stuttgart to meet Tilman Brodbeck, the man who developed the ducktail, and drive examples not only of the original RS in both Touring and Sport trim from Porsche’s own collection, but enjoy back-to-back comparisons with their air-cooled successors from the 964 and 993 generations. Later, we’ll also chat with August Achleitner, the former head of 911 development, to get some context on those later models.
Tilman’s waiting to meet us at Porsche’s incredible storage facility in Kallenberg, just outside Stuttgart. It’s a Noah’s ark of Porsche’s heritage where every car cover hides a surprise: a rear-engined 924 here, a diesel-engined Beetle there, a Le Mans-winning 962 in a corner like it’s in for an interim service.
Tilman explains how he got the Porsche gig in October 1970 after studying aeroplane technology and aerodynamics at Darmstadt University, located in south-west Germany. Toying with a 2.7 RS model car for reference, he tells Total 911 how one of his first jobs was creating a gumshield-like front airdam for the regular 911, with the aim of reducing its front-end lift (“Maybe you know in the beginning we used to add lead to the front bumper to make it a little bit heavier,” reveals Tilman).
A steel part would have taken two years to manufacture due to tooling, but it reduced lift, improved the drag coefficient and Ferdinand Piëch wanted to get it into production sharpish, so fibreglass was used
