Jaun Manuel Fangio piloted #658 in the 1955 running of the Mille Miglia: driving solo for a thousand miles (hence the fared-in passenger seat), he finished second to the Stirling Moss/Denis Jenkinson sister car, just 30 minutes in arrears.
Jaguars, Aston Martins and Maseratis then led on to a 1968 Ford GT40 in the epic powder blue and orange livery of Gulf Oil.
Gulf sponsorship transferred with the JWA team to Porsche, creating the definitive pin-up look for the 1970 917.
The Ferrari 512 is often overlooked when looking back at that era, but I think it’s easily the equal of the 917 in aesthetic terms – even more so as the S rather than in the straighter lines of the later 512M. Making it even more special, this is an ex-Mario Andretti car.
These three cars pretty much sum up the perfection of a decade of racing. Does it get better than this? (Well, there are the Group Cs to come…)
Short-wheelbase roadsters ruled in the mid-70s: screaming pocket-rockets like the three-litre V8 Alfa Romeo T33TT from 1975 and accompanying Matra MS670 from 1973.
For the sake of chronology, I’ll take a brief diversion to Porsche’s 50th Anniversary stand in Hall 1, where Kremer Racing had brought along this K3 – we
featured this awesome car back in September, plus a
tour of Kremer’s workshop.
Porsche’s dominant 956/962 series of the early to mid-’80s was represented by this Primagaz 962C from 1987.
Jaguar’s XJR-9LM was the winning car in the 1988 edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours…
…but then we had two more heart-stopping examples of German racing technology (or Swiss-German, to be more accurate): firstly 1989′s Sauber-Mercedes C9, with its C11 sister next up.
Both cars have been run in the Historic Group C challenge over the last couple of years: I’ve been lucky enough to see them racing twice in 2012, at Le Mans and also at the
Donington Historic Festival back in the Spring. They are phenomenal to watch on track – and even more so to hear.
They’re such raw cars: the plain, functional liveries makes them look even more brutally efficient. It’s the kind of extreme racing machine that anyone can appreciate.
The Mercedes-Benz C11 came on stream the following year. It’s an even more shark-like car, and the performance was similarly predatory: the C11 swept the 1990 WSC, winning all but one race.
Book-ending the WSC, 40 years on from the 1953 Ferrari, was the Peugeot 905B from 1992 – the final year of the original glorious run of the WSC. This was the ultimate evolution of a prototype sportscar: Formula 1 levels of performance and even more technology. The huge rear wing is so far off the back that it’s virtually in a different country, and they produced epic levels of downforce. More spaceship than sportscar.
Although the World Championship was temporarily incapacitated, the following years were hardly lean for sportscars: how can anyone pass over the mighty McLaren F1 GTR, Mercedes CLR and Porsche GT1 from FIA GT of the late ’90s?
But in 2012, 20 years after it last ran, there was once again a World Championship for sportscars. Audi might have run away with the overall title, but with the speed of their TS030 Hybrid newcomers Toyota have shown that 2013 will be no walk in the park for the Four Rings. Expect a serious arms race over the winter.
Rallying is as popular as ever, particularly at a national level. Alongside Kremer’s 935s and the GT1 on Porsche’s anniversary stand was this 953 from the 1984 Paris-Dakar rally, driven to victory by René Metge and Dominique Lemoyne.
Legendary all-rounder and multiple Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx drove a second 911SC that year…
…and another, rather less familiar Mercedes rally-raid off-roader also driven by Ickx was over at the Mercedes FanWorld display. His name was also on several of the sportscars in the WSC display – he really was an incredibly adaptable driver.
Upstairs in the auto-jumble area, more car clubs were crammed in – I have a soft spot for Stig Blomqvist’s Saab 96 from the ’60s…
…and back downstairs in the ADAC hall (Germany’s automobile club, and organiser of most major racing series in the country) the new Polo R rally-car that will compete in next year’s World Rally Championship was on display.
So, old to new and back again: Essen’s racing heart was clear to see. Next up we’ll focus on the tuned cars and the awesome selection of hot rods.