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!