One Winless Wonder
The Porsche 917 is arguably the most famous race car ever. One of the most renowned 917s never started a race, let alone visited victory lane.
The Porsche 917 inscribed as chassis no. 024 never won a race. It never even turned a lap in a money-paying event. Records show it ran competitively at only three tracks--all test sessions.
Despite a wafer-thin competition resume, 917-024 has a unique history that qualifies it as, in the words of the auction house that sold it in 2017 for a record-setting sum, "one of the world’s great racing cars."
917-024 was born during Porsche's unrelenting push to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The 917 was introduced in March 1969 and soon homologated for Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) events, including Le Mans. After failing to win it that year--none of the three 917s entered made it to the checkered flag--Porsche set its sights on the 1970 running.
Fortified by a partnership with JW Automotive Engineering (JWAE), which won Le Mans in 1968 and 1969 with Ford GT40s before switching allegiances to the German carmaker, Porsche had high expectations for 1970.
But first, Porsche had to fix the 917's primary weakness--instability at high speed.
JWAE, led by team principal John Wyer and engineer John Horsman, played with different configurations. During a series of seminal tests in October 1969, Horsman had an idea: Shorten the car's rear end and raise the rear deck to increase downforce.
Horsman rounded up some spare sheet metal, pop rivets, duct tape and a pair of tin snips and, with the help of two team engineers, fabricated a new rear end on one of the 917s. Driver Brian Redman took the modified short-tail out the next day. His conclusion: "That's it! Now it's a race car!"
(See a picture of Horsman's work here.)
Porsche took the "Horsman tail" concept and created a modification to convert most of the original long-tail 917s and got to work on making new, short-tail versions. The result? The 917K, or Kurzheck--German for "short tail." Chassis 917-024 was completed soon after.*
The shrunken 917 wasted little time proving itself. Gulf-sponsored JWAE 917Ks took first and second at the 1970 season-opening Daytona 24 Hours. A Porsche 917K would go on to win Le Mans that year, but it wasn't from the JWAE stable. Rather, a factory entry driven by Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann earned the company's historic first overall Le Mans win.
By then, chassis 917-024's path was leading it further from competition. It tested at Le Mans in April 1970, where Redman turned the weekend's fastest lap, foreshadowing the 917K's capabilities.
After two more test dates later that spring, 917-024 was sold to Jo Siffert in June. A Porsche factory driver who helped the German company win world sportscar championships in 1969, 1970, and 1971, Siffert soon struck a deal to lease the car to Hollywood icon Steve McQueen's Solar Productions.
McQueen needed a few 917s for his in-production movie, Le Mans. The film used footage from the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans race, but McQueen rounded up three 917s to shoot specific scenes. 917-024 played two key roles. It served as a camera car and starred as the 1971 film's "winner," sporting a Gulf livery and No. 22.
When filming finished in late 1970, 917-024 went back to Siffert, who used it primarily as a show piece at his Porsche and Alfa Romeo dealership in his hometown of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Less than a year later, 917-024 played a leading role in a much more somber event.
On October 24, 1971, Siffert was killed in a crash during a Formula One exhibition race at Brands Hatch. Five days later, his funeral procession drew a reported 50,000 and wound through Fribourg’s streets. Leading the way, at the request of Siffert’s widow, was 917-024.
The car's historic journey didn't end there.
In 1978, a French collector acquired it and put it into storage. Upon the collector's death in 2001, noted restoration specialist and Modena Motorsport founder Uwe Meissner found 917-024 and guided it through two more sales and restorations, including one at Graber Sportgarage.
It then was sold in a 2017 Gooding & Co. auction, fetching a shade over $14 million--a record price for any Porsche.
These days, the now-famous car is on public display as part of the Brumos Collection, a must-see museum of cars and motorsport memorabilia in Jacksonville, Florida. It sports the No. 59 made famous by Jacksonville’s own Brumos Racing.
Even among a gathering of legendary racing cars, 917-024 still stands out--and occasionally gets out.
In January 2023, Porsche staged a photo shoot at Daytona International Speedway to promote its return to top-level prototype racing. A state-of-the art Porsche 963 shared the track with 917-024, giving the legendary Porsche car one more track on its one-of-a-kind resume.
*Editor's note: As if 917-024's story isn't unique enough, history shows it has a few more notable wrinkles. Porsche used the chassis number twice. The original 917-024 ran one race in 1969 but was scrapped in early 1970 after a test session crash. Porsche then labeled a new chassis--the one now in the Brumos Collection--before April 1970's Le Mans testing.
References
Development of the Horsman tail--Racing In The Rain: My Years with Brilliant Drivers, Legendary Sports Cars, and a Dedicated Team by John Horsman, pp. 195-200.
Solar Productions—https://www.24h-lemans.com/en/news/a-porsche-917k-involved-in-the-filming-of-steve-mcqueens-movie-le-mans-is-for-sale-47237
Brands Hatch—https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/december-1971/40/rothmans-world-championships-victory-race/
Role in funeral procession--Brumos Collection display.
Gooding & Co. auction—https://www.goodingco.com/lot/1970-porsche-917k/
Record price for Porsche—https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2017/08/24/porsche-917k-used-in-filming-of-le-mans-sets-marque-record-at-pebble-beach
Chassis number and sales history—https://porsche917.motorsport-info.de/index.php/cr/porsche-917/917-024
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