20/24 #12: Porsche 961
Chosen by: Nat Twiss
Best finish: 7th (1st in GTX) 1986
Team: Porsche AG
Driven by: Claude Ballot-Léna, René Metge

Occasionally, Porsche do something absolutely nuts, and their ‘secret’ warehouses are stuffed with unique hot rods from their decades of motor racing. The 961 is one of those hot rods. Absolutely unique, it proved that the Group B rally project, turned F40-baiting supercar, could be an endurance racer.

“What’s not to love about the 961 project?,” says Nat Twiss, editor of @type7. He knows a thing or two about weird Porsches. “The doodles that adorn the Gruppe B test mule of this car in the @porsche.museum are one of my favourite insights into the superhuman brains that worked at Weissach in the ‘80s and their mix of humour and engineering prowess. To me it encapsulates the humour inside of the drive for performance that makes racing and ultimately Le Mans so special.”

The project was incredible, and unique. Few can say the basic mechanics of their car were designed for stage rallying, won the Dakar, became the world’s greatest supercar and won at Le Mans, but the 959/961 did just that. The 961 was entered in 1986 in the IMSA GTX class – for sort of, but not quite, road-based racers – and won the class, though it was the only entry. More impressively, it was seventh overall.

“Never before, and never again, has Porsche committed so fully to a development program to create a brilliant car across road and rally,” Twiss continues. “It arrived at Le Mans in an even more ballistic, aerodynamic form. To think that this was entered in 1986 as the first four-wheel drive car, and to finish seventh in a field of prototypes is quite the statement, and birthed the first true Porsche supercar in the process; an incredible thing.”

The car returned to La Sarthe in ’87 but retired in a fire, and went back to Stuttgart. It’s been rebuilt and restored and has demoed at various events over the last few years.

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