1990 Porshce 962 For Sale: 6 time Le Mans Race Car

January 12, 2017 2271 views

1990 Porshce 962 For Sale: 6 time Le Mans Race Car

Location: Germany

Full Carbon Chassis

This Porsche 962 has an incredibly well documented history. It has its original log books as well as confirmation of authenticity by Kremer. It has undergone a complete restoration including the 3.0 liter engine rebuilt to zero hours by marquee specialist Manfred Rugen.

Specific history of this car:
This specific car was built in 1991 as one of two Kremer CK6 with a carbon fibre chassis for the Group C series. The car started its racing career in the latest 962 spec with a 3.0-litre fun water cooled engine (water/water) and the latest Bosch Moronic 1.7 system. It also featured the wider track and an independent rear wing.

• 23.6.1991 24 h Le Mans Reuter / Toivonen / Lehto 9th overall
• 18.8.1991 430 km Nürburgring Reuter / Toivonen 3rd overall / Winner in Category 1
• 15.9.1991 430 km Magny-Cours Reuter / Toivonen 6th overall / Winner in Category 1
• 6.10.1991 430 km Mexico City Lopez / Reuter DNF
• 21.6.1992 24 h Le Mans Reuter / Nielsen / Lavaggi 7th overall
• 16.5.1993 Le Mans Test Saldaña / Donovan / Lavaggi 9th
• 20.6.1993 24 h Le Mans Lässig / Lavaggi / Taylor 12th

Price €975,000 or $1,039,91 US Dollars

Contact: Jan Leuehn

Model history:
Established in the early 1960s by the brothers Manfred and Erwin, Kremer Racing quickly emerged as one of the leading Porsche privateers. The team not only successfully raced Porsche products but also became famous for improving the existing designs, often with backdoor support. What started with fitting more aggressive camshafts on the 911 Carrera RSR, quickly evolved in building complete cars around bare shells supplied by Porsche. Among these was the Porsche 935 K3, which dominated GT racing in the late 1970s and even scored an outright victory at Le Mans in 1979.

By the early 1980s, sports car racing regulations were reshuffled and from 1982, the World Championship would be run for all-new Group C prototypes. With no customer version of the Porsche 956 Group C racer available yet at the start of the 1982 season, Kremer Racing went about building their own based on the earlier 936 design. Dubbed the CK5, the latest Kremer was, for a change, no match for Porsche’s own car and as soon as the all-conquering 956 became available, Kremer Racing bought the first example. In 1985, the German team were also among the first to acquire the brand new 962C.

A subtle evolution of the 956, the 962C was a relatively straightforward machine. It used Porsche’s very first monocoque chassis, which was constructed from a single layer of sheet aluminium. When Jo Gartner and Joachim Winkelhock fatally crashed two of Kremer’s 962Cs, the team used this sad opportunity to improve on the Porsche design. To replace the destroyed chassis, they tasked John Thompson in the United Kingdom to build a new tub. As a favoured privateer team, Kremer Racing had the drawings of the 962 to outsource the work. This also relieved some pressure off Porsche, who could not keep up with the 962 demand.

The fundamental difference between the Porsche and Thompson chassis, was the use of the aluminium honeycomb sandwich used to construct the latter. This substantially increased the rigidity of the tub, making it better at coping with the high downforce loads and also a bit safer in case of an accident. The rest of the cars followed Porsche lines, including the suspension, which consisted of double wishbones at the front and lower wishbones with top rockers at the rear. The turbocharged flat-6 engine and five-speed gearbox were also carried over from the hugely reliable 962C.

Despite using a new chassis and basically building brand new cars, Kremer Racing continued to use the identities of the crashed 962Cs (110 and 118). The new chassis 118 made its debut at the Spa-Francorchamps 1000 km in September of 1986, finishing 12th. In addition to the revised chassis, it also featured a new short-tail body with a separate rear wing, which generated more downforce than the slippery factory bodywork.

By 1988, Kremer started to label their cars „CK6“ to distinguish them from ‘standard’ 962Cs. Meanwhile, the Kremer 962Cs were raced against a strong opposition from the Porsche and Jaguar works team. Liveried in striking Leyton House colours, the 962 CK6s did do very well in the All Japan Championship, winning numerous races.

Development of the CK6 continued into the early 1990s, with the final cars using an even more sophisticated carbon fibre chassis. To comply with the heavily revised regulations that came into effect in 1994, Kremer Racing developed the CK6 into the open Kremer K8, which was raced successfully until the end of the decade.

In 1994/5 the car was upgraded to Kremer K8 specification. Due to new regulations, the closed bodywork cars were banned from endurance racing and the open version, also called K8 was introduced. The K8 used the same chassis and running gear as the 962 CK6, but without a roof. The development included a new spyder bodywork, a different roll-bar behind the drivers seat and a slightly modified dashboard. In K8 specification the car was certainly not less successful.

After the 1999 season the car was retired from active racing and remained in storage with Kremer until until 2011, when it was purchased by a Belgium collector. The new owner commissioned a rebuild to 962 specification which was carried out with the help of Porsche Kremer by MecAuto in Belgium. The fully documented restoration was executed with the possibility to easily rebuild the car to K8 spec and vice versa. All the relevant K8 parts as the original body, the original K8 chassis plate, the dashboard etc do still come with the car as well as a large spares package to run the car.

As part of the extensive history file are the original log books (Wagenpass), confirmations of authenticity by Kremer and a lot of valuable, original Kremer documents related to the car.

Since its last use in Historic Group C, the car underwent a complete restoration and is presented in as-new condition. The 3.0-litre engine has now only seen dyno use and was completely rebuilt to zero hours by marquee specialist Manfred Rugen.

This is a very rare opportunity to purchase an absolutely potential front running Porsche 962 with an very advanced full carbon fibre chassis, that could run in the fast growing Historic Group C championship, but also as a K8 in various other series for younger models.