Ferdinand ‘Ferry’ Porsche’s prototype 3.0 Carrera comes up for sale

Unlike the ‘spurious’ origins of the 3.0 RSR for sale of James Hunt provenance, which made headlines here and elsewhere, an opportunity to acquire a Porsche with unquestionable intrigue and history in concourse condition, is a rare thing indeed – even for the seasoned ‘car stalker’ at Jelenek.

Available at Jan Luehn, this 3.0 Carrera in dark metallic green may look like a standard, albeit impeccable, 1976 production 911, but it is something of an anomaly – an insider’s glimpse at what became the 3.0 Carrera and the 911 SC.

Ferdinand ‘Ferry’ Porsche, son of Porsche’s founder and father of Ferdinand ‘Butzi’ Porsche (who penned the now legendary curves of the first 911) was given this car as a taster of a new generation of normally-aspirated 911s that would exceed the 3 litre barrier by the Weissach factory on his 65^th birthday in 1974. Having recently stepped-down from the board to take an Honorary Chairmanship of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche KG, Stuttgart, Ferry used this prototype which took its engine, not from the production 911 ‘G Series’ 2.7 litre engine of the day, but from the race-ready Carrera 3.0 RSR, some two years before the general launch of a production 3.0 Carrera – a model which shared its boxer block with the 930 turbo, launched in 1975.

This unique car is said to have many other ‘pre-production and race parts’ but is hardy enough to have been used by Ferry as his daily driver for nearly two years. As a ‘one-off’ and one of only a handful of cars available as being owned by the Porsche family, its successor Ferry’s proto’ 911 (930) Turbo (in the same colour combination) resides on display at the new Porsche Museum at Stuttgart. A talking-point 911 available at €175,000 (around the same price as a 997 ‘Sport Classic’) – this is air-cooled heritage without the cod-retro.

993 RS

The lightweight variant of jelenek favorite the 993, and distinguishable by the non retractable rear wing, this stripped out version never made it across to the US.

A total of only 1150 RS models were built, most of them were raced and have been subject to accident damage making it incredibly hard to find a straight example. Due to the high demand for all light weight Porsche and the low supply, prices for 993 RS are constantly increasing.

Porsche also offered a more radical version, the Carrera RS Club Sport, which featured a welded-in roll cage and further deletion of unnecessary items like carpets, power windows, AC radio and sound proofing.

Dove house motor company currently have a fine example on at just shy of £115,00.00

James Hunt’s 911 Carrera – will the real RS please stand up?

Although there can be no question of the pedigree of the Carrera RSRs featured in our recent post, it seems like there may have been about the 911 we linked-to for sale at Nick Whale Sport Cars, a car which was said to have been driven by James Hunt.

Since posting the link, there have been several stories in the media questioning the history of the green £365,000 1974 RSR. It seems the car may have not been the daily road car used by James Hunt, as per the dealer’s sales notes, the misinformation having passed down the line in good faith to the garage via its previous owner (an easy mistake considering the vehicle was owned by Hunt’s team boss Lord Hesketh).

According to the Sunday Times Newspaper and others, James Hunt’s daily-drive in the mid Seventies was, in fact, a white Carrera 2.7 RS – a vehicle that was often photographed cruising the streets of Marbella (where Hunt lived in tax-exile), before it worked its way back to England in 1980. The 1973 911 was later bought by the father of Gary Taylor (pictured) for £7,000  from a north London garage.

In his interview with the Times, Taylor explained: “Back then, it was viewed as just another Porsche 911 and a seven-year-old one at that. Dad paid £7,000 and just as he was about to drive off the forecourt, the dealer casually mentioned that it had been owned by Hesketh and James Hunt.”

Taylor, having never questioned the provenance of NSD 298L, had its heritage later marked on the car itself  – getting James Hunt’s signature on the glove box door, penned less than a decade before his untimely demise in 1993.

Daytona Darling – the 1975 911 Carrera RSR

To mark Porsche’s recent 22^nd victory at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, Jelenek thought it might be a nice excuse to indulge in some classic Porsche racing history, and this poster of the Brumos Porsche (they always raced Number 59) taking a podium in 1975, is the sort of image that sends air-cooled Porsche people into a nostalgic daydream about the pedigree of the 911 Carrera.

In 1975 Porsche cleaned-up at the Daytona 24 hour race – a race that saw the legendary Porsche wheelman Hurley Haywood (the man who also boosted Porsche’s US commercial sales in the mid ‘90s, even appearing in 993-era promotional owners’ video), take his second-ever Daytona win. The photograph clearly depicts one-after-another Porsche Carrera RSR passing the chequered flag, the marque, in fact, taking first through to sixth place that year, leading their German promotional poster declaring: A triumph of zuverlassingkeit (reliability). About as near to the standard production car as it ever got, the tough, reliable wide-bodied 911 Carrera RSR was succeeded in this endurance race by the 935, and then the more Le Mans-looking 962. Porsche dominated the Daytona 24 until 1988, when Toyota, Nissan and the Corvettes starting getting in on the podium action. Hurley Haywood is now Brumos team manager, having driven his last Daytona race as No 59 this year, attaining only 26th position.

To acquire a 1975 3.2 RSR with race provenance, well who knows what you’d pay? However, a road-going 1974 3.0 UK right-hand-drive example, recently posted on Jelenek as having belonged to James Hunt (one of only six 3.0 RSRS made) at Nick Whale Sport Cars, is for sale at a mere £365,000. All bit rich for your taste? Well, we’d recommend buying this full-size classic poster on eBay, valued at circa $200, and simply fantasising!