Porsche 956 and 962
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The Porsche 956 was a race car built by Porsche which designed it in 1982 for FIA Group C racing. It was later evolved into the 962C. The design was remarkably long-lived, with some examples still proving competitive right up to the turn of the millennium.
[edit] 956
The 956 made its debut at the Silverstone 6 Hour race, the second round of the World Championship for Makes with Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell driving for the factory. After missing the following round at the Nürburgring 1000km for developmental reasons, the Ickx/Bell unit reappeared at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. They led the race for the entire 24 hours, eventually taking the overall win - their third win together. As they had already won in 1981 with a Porsche 936 that had used an early version of the 956 engine, their car had start number 1. The two other factory 956 followed them, so the three factory Porsches finished 1-2-3 in the order of their starting numbers.
Boosted by this success, Porsche sold customer versions of the 956 to privateer teams such as Joest Racing, Obermaier Racing, John Fitzpatrick Racing, Richard Lloyd Racing, Kremer Racing and Brun Motorsport who raced them independently of the factory.
[edit] 962
After considerable success with the 956, Porsche decided they wanted to use the platform for an IMSA GTP class car, but IMSA regulations changed in 1984, now dictating that every vehicle entered into the series had to have its pedal box mounted behind the front axle line, which the 956 did not.
To make it eligible under the new rules, and following crash tests on 956 chassis #004 (the third-placed 1982 Le Mans finisher), the 956's wheelbase was increased to make room for the pedal box. A steel roll cage was also integrated into the new car. Work was underway on a larger engine, but in the meantime a modified version of the 934-derived 2.8 L engine was used, featuring a single Kühnle, Kopp und Kausch AG K36 turbocharger instead of the twin K27 turbochargers of the 956, as twin-turbo systems were not allowed in GTP class racing at the time.
Porsche dubbed the revised vehicle the 962 and debuted a total of five units at the 24 Hours of Daytona with Mario and Michael Andretti driving the factory car and the other four being driven by members of the privateer teams which had purchased them. The factory car led the race until it retired during lap 127 with engine and gearbox problems.
Porsche went back to a twin-turbocharged 3.2 L engine for 1985, re-naming the car 962C and entering it in the World Endurance Championship, but ironically the car lost to an older 956, which had already taken WEC top-honors four times.
Under pressure from fast new cars from Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz, in 1987 Porsche again brought in a new engine, a more durable and powerful 3.0 L unit which powered the car to an overall win at the 1987 24 Hours of Le Mans, Porsche's record seventh consecutive victory at the race.
After a post-'87 "dry spell", Porsche customer Jochen Dauer got the 962 re-classified as a road legal GT1 car under a loophole in the new ACO regulations for the 1994 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Dauer-Porsche 962 took its final overall victory there, surprising the world and proving the viability of the 10 year old design.
962s were also heavily modified by various international teams over its life, with some of these modified specials even being sold to customer teams. Some of the more popular modified 962s were by Konrad Motorsport (962CK6), Richard Lloyd Racing (962C GTi), Joest Racing, Dyson Racing (962DR2), and Team Schuppan. The Dauer 962LM, although turned into a road car originally, was also another modified version of the racing car. These cars all contained varying degrees of modification, mostly concentrating on the bodywork.
[edit] 962 Road Car
Towards the end of the car's competition life, a number of privateer teams and tuners began converting 962s for road use, including:
The Schuppan 962LM was perhaps the purest road conversion, retaining the race car's bodywork unchanged, with only a rear exit exhaust replacing the original side exit, and a small camera installed in the tail to give rearward visibility. Painted red and given the UK registration plate H726 LDP the first car was reported (UK's Fast Lane magazine and Australia's Wheels magazine, both 1991) to be easy to drive on British roads. Almost all of the other road conversions involved greater degrees of modification, from raising the headlight height and lowering rear spoiler height to comply with German TUV rules (DP962), to complete changes to the bodywork (Koenig C62, Dauer 962 and Schuppan 962CR). Some sources claimed the Dauer 962 as the world's fastest road-legal production car at 405 km/h (252 mph), Dauer's own sales brochures claiming 404 km/h and 0-100 km/h in 2.6 seconds.
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