ISSUE #06 - English Edition

COVER STORY

PORSCHE 550 SPYDER

LEGENDARY TYPE 550 SPYDER 
1956 LE MANS COUPÉS 
WILD TIMES – THREE PORSCHE LEGENDS AND THE 550 SPYDER? 
THE “MICKEY MOUSE” SPYDER – PORSCHE TYPE 645 
THE SOUL OF SUCCESS – HERBERT LINGE AND THE 550 SPYDER IN THE STATES 
“LITTLE BASTARD” – JAMES DEAN AND HIS 550 SPYDER

PORSCHE’S LEGENDARY TYPE 550 SPYDER

Porsche’s Type 550 Spyder achieved so much success in so many parts of the world for so many years that it must be the greatest sports-racing car in history. Dominating its 1½-liter class, in race after race the Spyders punched well above their weight to rival vastly bigger cars. It all began with the production Spyders of 1955.

Porsche was still in its swaddling clothes as a car maker when its 550 series was born. It produced its first handfuls of cars in Austria in 1948 and ‘49. The first German-built Porsche sports car was made in the spring of 1950. It took the road in good time to be blessed by founder Ferdinand Porsche, who died at the age of 75 in January of 1951. Thereafter his son Ferry, 42 years old in 1951, took charge of the family-owned company. Ferry inherited the outstanding team of engineers that his father assembled when he set up his engineering consulting office in Stuttgart at the end of 1930.

For Ferry and his team, motor sports were high in both interest and priority. They had designed and helped develop the great Auto Union racing cars of 1934 through 1937. A racing-car project—for Italy’s Cisitalia—put them back on their feet after the war. They weren’t slow to return to the tracks. For racing Porsche used its Austrian-built Type 356 coupes, which were lighter with aluminum bodies and stiffer frames than the production cars. 

A solo entry in the 24-hour Le Mans race in 1951 came home with the 1,100 cc class victory. This was followed up with another class win in the world-famous French race in 1952. Porsche was in fact a pioneer in returning a chastened Germany to European road racing, from which it was excluded immediately after the years of war.

With competition heating up, Ferry and his team realized that they would need to build special cars for racing as early as 1953. They had a convenient example to follow, that of Frankfurt’s Walter Glöckler. A year older than Ferry, Glöckler was a great racing enthusiast who, as a VW dealer, could afford to indulge his passions. Starting in 1949 he did so with the help of his brilliant workshop chief, Hermann Ramelow, who had worked on the pre-war racing Adlers. 

Although using VW suspension, Ramelow replaced the platform with a ladder-type steel tubular frame that was underslung at the rear. Power came from one of the new 1.1-liter Porsche engines, mounted amidships. The driver’s seat was nearly in the center of the stubby yet handsome aluminum body built by C. H. Weidenhausen of Frankfurt, a three-man outfit that Jerry Sloniger said was “virtually across the street” from the Glöckler dealership. In the 1930s Weidenhausen had built sporting aluminum bodies for V-8 Fords. The finished car bore a deceptively modest name: VW Eigenbauor VW Homebuilt.

Walter Glöckler drove his 980-pound special to the 1,100 cc sports-car class championship in Germany in 1950. During that season Glöckler improved his relations with the Porsche company, which by then had returned to its Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen home from exile at Gmünd in Austria. Porsche had come to respect this determined businessman who obviously had a knack for building and racing highly professional cars.

The result was two-fold. On March 17, 1950 Otto and Walter Glöckler became Germany’s first Porsche dealer in the vital market of Frankfurt. This was just in time for the start of production at Zuffenhausen. As well, from 1951 all the Glöckler-built cars—of which there were several more for the 1.5-liter class—bore a simple “Porsche” nameplate and were known as Porsches in the press, giving the still-young marque valuable publicity.

In 1952 Porsche decided to design and build new competition cars to replace its faithful but aging Gmünd-built coupes. This was a new venture for Ferry Porsche and his business manager Albert Prinzing. Extending the company’s activities into a new arena brought both added cost and risk. Ferry surely rationalized that if one of his dealers could afford to build and enter racing cars, doing so should not be beyond his company’s capabilities. As was his style, however, Ferry explored this new enterprise prudently.

Ferry Porsche knew that racing, both by the factory and by private owners, had enhanced the reputation and sales of his cars. Racing had also gained a powerful new advocate within the Porsche organization from mid-1951: Fritz Huschke Sittig Enno Werner von Hanstein, usually known simply as Huschke. Mad keen on motoring of all kinds, von Hanstein had raced both motorcycles and cars before the war. He was German hill-climb champion in a BMW 328 and co-drove the winning BMW coupe in the 1940 Mille Miglia.

Huschke raced after the war as well. He was only ousted from the cockpit of one of the 550s at Le Mans in 1953 because Ferry Porsche thought he was better employed in the pits, managing the team. Heading both press relations and racing for Porsche, von Hanstein became to Porsche what Alfred Neubauer was to Daimler-Benz: the resident representative of the spirit of motor racing. He was the bright spark behind the successful commercialization of the company’s on-track activities.

By mid-1952 von Hanstein and others at Porsche could see the handwriting on the wall for their budding reputation in the racing world. In the 1,100 cc class, where Porsches had been so successful at Le Mans, Italy’s OSCA presented a formidable new threat with its purebred racing engines. OSCA was also beginning to invade the 1,500 cc class, won at Le Mans that year by a British Jowett Jupiter.

In Germany, meanwhile, Borgward and the East Zone’s EMW were presenting strong opposition in the 1.5-liter class. Against this improving competition, Porsche could no longer rely on modified and lightened versions of its production cars. If it were to defend its laurels it needed something better suited to racing.

After Le Mans that summer of 1952 two new design projects were begun under the general supervision of chief engineer Karl Rabe. One, designated Type 547, was a new engine designed to offer vastly more development potential within the same general size and structure as the old power unit. This new engine was viewed by Ferry Porsche as a research tool with which the men of Porsche could extend their knowledge of high-performance air-cooled automobile engines. The other project, Type 550, was to have more immediate consequences. The Type 550 was a new car to be used by the factory for racing…

by Karl Ludvigsen

Photographs: Ludvigsen Library, Historic Archives Porsche AG

WILD TIMES

THREE ICONIC TEAM MEMBERS ABOUT THEIR TIME WITH THE PORSCHE SPYDER

After a very short time, the Porsche 550 Spyder proved to be a groundbreaking development for the then fledgling sportscar company from Stuttgart. Back in the day, Herbert Linge was a real multitasker, acting as a racing driver, co-driver, mechanic and maintenance man all rolled in to one. Egon Alber was a mechanic and engine specialist who played a big part in developing and then racing the car. And driver Hans Hermann used his success in the Spyder to kick-start a career that took him into the cockpit of a Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix car. The three Porsche legends caught up for a chat with AUTOMOBILSPORT:

Light, durable, and reliable; those were the main strengths of the Porsche 550 Spyder. On twisty tracks and narrow streets, the car was in its element. As important as the car's physical strengths was the team it had working on it in the background. “We were all roughly the same age,” recalls Egon Alber, now 85 years old. “We're all within two or three years of each other. And still young.”

Without too much structure, the three begin to describe the early 1950s. “It was definitely good for us,” says Alber. “A lot of it had to do with the fact that the war hadn't been over for that long. We had to grow up incredibly fast because, in a lot of cases, fathers and brothers were gone. They were wild times, but they opened up new chances and opportunities for us to make a difference. And as a team that's what we did.”

The show must go on

“Porsche was a family,” says Linge. “In the truest sense of the word. Everyone who worked there belonged there; and we could all rely on each other. After important races and events Ferry Porsche, and later Ferdinand Piëch, would often invite all of the mechanics to their house. It was always a nice to way to show thanks and recognition.”

Opportunities to sit down together and relax were a rarity back then. “We didn't often have the chance to sit around and do something relaxed together,” recalls Linge. “It just went on and on, from testing to racing, from one development to another. There was no standing still.” 

Linge would even drive to, from and in Le Mans. “The race went until Sunday afternoon. But lunchtime Monday I was back at the factory. At Le Mans, I would take off before the last cars were loaded because the next day I would have meetings. That’s simply the way it was.”

“Ferry Porsche once said 'I can come to you any time I want. It doesn't matter if it is day or night, Saturday or Sunday, there is always someone here'. It had to be that way. In that time, as Porsche was growing – maybe even celebrating the production of our 500^th car, other manufacturers like Veritas and Borgward were closing down. When Ferry Porsche told us in a critical hour that he wasn't sure if things could carry on, we just carried on. And we made it all carry on. 

And suddenly it was light...

In a similar vein, Alber has his own particular memories of the Porsche 550 Spyder: “We once had a Spyder engine on the dyno, one with a loud exhaust. And the dyno didn't have a cabin. It was one of those periods where we had heaps and heaps to do and not that many people. I sat down on my wooden chair right near the engine, with the control panel – and then I fell asleep, right next to the thundering engine. At 4am it was suddenly light; my colleague Eberhard Storz had arrived and shined a torch right into my eyes.” …

by Robert Weber

Photographs: Rémi Dargegen, Historic Archives Porsche AG

THE SPIRIT OF SUCCESS

HERBERT LINGE AND THE PORSCHE 550 SPYDER IN THE STATES

60 years ago, Herbert Linge and Huschke von Hanstein came in eighth overall at the 12 Hours of Sebring and took second place in the 1500 ccm class with a Porsche 550 Spyder. Back then, the race poster celebrating the triple class victory (1100, 1300 and 1600 ccm) and the winning of the team trophy declared “8 Porsches start – 7 finish”. AUTOMOBILSPORT brought Herbert Linge’s Sebring car back to Stuttgart, to the Solitude Ring, and sat the former driver of the legendary 550 Spyder behind the wheel one more time. 

15 year-old Herbert Linge began working at Porsche in Stuttgart as one of its first apprentices. In the space of just a few years, he developed to become something of an all-rounder, undertaking tasks for the young sports car manufacturer all over the world. “I began at Porsche in 1943,” smiles Herbert Linge, looking back at these beginnings. “There was no such thing as a Porsche car back then.” 

Born in Weissach, not far from Stuttgart, he later made a major contribution to motorsport as the initiator of the ONS-Sicherheitsstaffel (ONS Safety Squad) and was a co-founder of the Porsche Development Centre in his hometown. His tireless commitment during his working life made him a major factor in Porsche’s meteoric rise to global leadership. As a mechanic, race driver and customer service representative, he accompanied the development and racing life of the 550 Spyder like no other Porsche employee, and also celebrated substantial success as a driver and co-driver of the now legendary Type 550.  

“Mr Porsche was always of the opinion there would be no advertising, neither in magazines nor anywhere else,” recalls Herbert Linge. “He was always at pains to point out that the advertising is in the sport.” With the 550 Spyder, the race entries also became increasingly international, “In 1954, there were the Mille Miglia and Carrera Panamericana, Monza, Nürburgring – those were the first big international races with the new four-camshaft engine in the Spyder,” says Herbert Linge with visible pleasure.  “I took second place that same year with Claude Storez in the Tour de France Automobile behind a three-litre Gordini. We were able to fight the classic rallies and races with the 550 Spyder, especially for overall classification. The car was extremely well suited to narrow roads, tight circuits – to events that demanded reliability.” 

The test and development work was also very different back then – all dependent on the options available. Linge paints the scenario: “There was a tunnel outside Leonberg where Heinkel built aircraft parts during the war. This tunnel was still to be cleared out, which is why only one of the tunnel tubes was passable. We were allowed to drive our cars up and down the other side, which was still closed, to test them and run them in. This closed-off section of autobahn was our test track. We didn’t have anything else.”  

Saw the world – and changed it

The list of Spyder successes grew noticeably, with reliability being Porsche’s big strength. This called for thorough preparation, meticulous and clean work – evenly paired with a phenomenal workload for what was a very small team. “Despite the circumstances, it was absolutely fantastic for a young guy,” enthuses Linge. “For me, having just completed my apprenticeship, it was a huge honour even to be there. Plus, I would never have been able to afford all that travel – and then later the racing – myself. I would never have been able to buy the cars that I looked after and drove. I was in Mexico and America in 1952 and, before that, in Switzerland. I visited EVERY single customer in Switzerland, shook their hand – for customer service, for inspection, to hear that everything was okay – to show customers they were in good hands.” …

by Robert Weber

Photographs: Rémi Dargegen, Historic Archives Porsche AG

THE LAST ONE TO LIFT

REMEMBERING STEFAN BELLOF

Thirty years ago, on 01 September 1985, motor racing was robbed on one of its most exciting young drivers, when 27 year old German Stefan Bellof crashed his Porsche 956 at Spa. The accident occurred as he was attempting a typically audacious overtaking move at the infamous Eau Rouge corner. In only his fifth season of racing, Bellof had already established himself as a man with a rare talent. The real tragedy of his death was that he had not had the opportunity to express himself in Grand Prix terms, having made just 20 starts for the fading Tyrrell team. Stefan was a raw talent, a little in-disciplined maybe, but an instinctive racer, and naturally very, very fast. 

I was an unashamed, tunnel-visioned fan of Stefan, both as a man and a racing driver. For me, he had the sort of charisma behind the wheel of a car that made Jochen Rindt, Ronnie Peterson and Gilles Villeneuve so outstandingly popular. Had he lived to fulfil his potential, I am sure he would have ranked among the sport's great heroes. 

Sadly, the statistics will only record that he was 1984 World Endurance Champion and the only man to have won his first two Formula 2 races. That, to an admittedly biased eye, will never do him justice.

Bellof burst onto the international motor racing scene at Silverstone in 1982, dramatically winning his first Formula 2 race. It was at the same venue just 15 months later when he made his World Championship mark, claiming pole position in his debut Endurance round by no less than 2.2secs. Like those who saw that lap, Stefan savored it as one of the highlights of his career and was particularly hurt by any suggestions that he had the benefit of additional engine power or fresh tyres to do it. Similarly, any implication that his F2 Maurer was not entirely legal upset this uncomplicated man, who had a tremendous, naive enthusiasm for driving racing cars as they should be driven — flat out all the way. 

Born in Giessen, near Frankfurt, on November 20, 1957, Stefan's interest in motorsport was sparked by his father's rallying exploits in a BMW. His own competition career began in karting at the age of 16. The switch to racing cars began in 1980, when he dovetailed his programme to claim both the national Formula Ford and Kart titles.

In 1981, he was a full-time racer and quickly moved himself into the reckoning as a potential star with wins in Formula Ford, Formula 3 and SuperVee. Germany's search for a single-seater driver to promote to the highest level was at last encouraged, for here was a man who had not spent his formative years in saloon cars, like so many of his predecessors. He was a thoroughbred single-seater driver, even if he did drive them all as if they were karts.

Bellofs results impressed the right people and, with slightly unofficial support from BMW, the German Maurer team picked him up and thrust him into Formula 2. After he had won at Silverstone and Hockenheim, Willy Maurer, with typical Germanic pride, resolved to see his man right through to the very top. The entire Maurer operation became dedicated to the Bellof cause, but somehow it never quite gelled in terms of race success, and there were no more wins after those first two. Bellof was always fast and spectacular, but in 1983 the story was the same, and he rarely finished a race. Through it all, Bellof never lost his schoolboyish sense of humour: he knew he was doing his bit and, as long as was still driving racing cars, nothing else seemed to matter very much.

There were two F2 races that year which I will always remember for Stefan Bellof. The first was at the Nürburgring. Stefan had a poor practice but made up for a lot of disappointment with probably one of the fastest standing-start laps ever on the old circuit. The TV replay of his opening lap later that night showed him overtaking at seemingly impossible places and, at the end of the first lap, he had an incredible lead at the end of the long, long straight. At the bottom of the hill leading to the final corner, his throttle cable broke. He coasted the final 500 yds to the pits (uphill), and set the 12th fastest lap of the race! …

by Ian Phillip

Photographs: Ferdi Kräling, LAT, Erich Müllender, Historic Archives Porsche AG

STREET FIGHTERS

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: 1990 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX

The first Grand Prix of the 1990’s was held in the city of Phoenix, at a street circuit that could hardly be considered a classic race track. Nonetheless, 25 years ago the Arizona State Capital gave us one of the most exiting F1 season openers of all time. McLaren and Ferrari were expected to dominate, but in Phoenix several underdogs shook the establishment: A Minardi would start from the front row, with a Dallara and a Tyrrell right behind! In the race, the nimble Tyrrell with an ambitious young Frenchman at the wheel was the one to watch. Let’s look back at the 1990 US Grand Prix and find out about a great race at an unlikely place.

To get the correct picture for what happened at Phoenix, we begin with a flashback to the Grand Prix era of the late eighties: Back then F1 was all about two giants. Two men, that were head and shoulders above the rest. To this day, the memories of their fascinating duels separate race fans into two camps, hard and fast: Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. For 1988 the two superstars became team mates at McLaren. With superior Honda engines and a brilliant chassis, they totally dominated the final year of the 1.5-litre turbo era. The McLaren-Honda combination continued to be the one to beat when the new 3.5-litre naturally aspirated motors became mandatory in 1989. But all was not well within Ron Dennis’ empire. The always tense relationship between the two McLaren drivers turned into a psychological war after the events at Estoril in 1988. There, Senna pushed Prost violently towards the pit wall at 180 mph. From then on the rift within McLaren became irreversibly deep. It all peaked at the ’89 Suzuka final with the infamous collision that in the end gave the title to Prost. Already in summer that year, the Frenchman had announced that he would leave to drive for Ferrari in 1990. Prost was directly swapping seats with Gerhard Berger, who, after three strong years at Maranello, thought himself well prepared for the biggest challenge of all: partnering Ayrton Senna at McLaren. 

F1 had shuffled its cards well for the new season. Everyone was curious about how the reigning champion Alain Prost would settle in at Ferrari, where he’d team up with the hard charging Nigel Mansell. During pre-season testing the new Ferrari 641 looked strong and much closer to McLaren than before. There, newcomer Gerhard Berger did most of the test mileage. Ayrton Senna stayed in Brazil for the winter months and only turned up for the final pre-season runs. Berger established himself well within his new team and was soon setting competitive lap times. If Gerhard’s one-lap pace was never in doubt, a question mark still remained over his consistency and weather he would be able to deliver on Senna’s level for the duration of a full season. The tall Austrian also had trouble fitting in the tight McLaren chassis. Problems with a poor seating position would accompany Berger all year, unfortunately not without affecting his performance.

The class of 1990

If anyone would be able to compete with McLaren and Ferrari, it was thought to be Williams. The team from Grove was now in the second year with Renault V10 engines and the Williams FW13B showed promising speed in the hands of Riccardo Patrese and Thierry Boutsen. Benetton, exclusively using the narrow-angle works Ford HB V8 and having freshly recruited Nelson Piquet and designer John Barnard, was considered an outside bet. 

Ranking behind the big four teams, pre-season testing predicted a very substantial and competitive midfield. The Lamborghini V12-powerd Lotus and Larrousse-Lola were mixing it with the Judd-engined Leyton House and Brabham as well as the customer Ford DFR teams of Tyrrell, Ligier, Arrows, Minardi, Dallara, Osella, and Onyx. At the tail end of the field we had the French AGS squad, Walter Brun’s EuroBrun and two very exotic designs, both from Italy, and both powered by unconventional 12-cylinder engines: The Coloni-Subaru and Ernesto Vita’s bizarre Life. 

And so in early March 1990 the Grand Prix circus arrived at Phoenix to start the new season. In an attempt to avoid the summer heat of the scorching Arizona dessert, which affected the inaugural Phoenix race in the previous July, the event was now moved to the beginning of the F1 calendar. On a cool and overcast Friday morning 9 out of the 33 strong entries had the track from 8:00 to 9:00 to themselves to pre-qualify, with only the quickest four allowed to continue. 

Pre-qualifying: Roberto Moreno stars

Of the early risers, Roberto Moreno surprised by setting the fastest time. The Brazilian impressively threw around the inferior EuroBrun half a second quicker than Eric Bernard in his considerably superior Larrousse. The other two that made it through pre-qualifying were Olivier Grouillard in the Osella and Bernard’s team mate Aguri Suzuki. Out and missing the cut by 2sec were both AGS’s of Tarquini and Dalmas, Claudio Langes in the second EuroBrun as well as the hopelessly off-the-pace Life with a frustrated Gary Brabham at the wheel. At least the Australian managed four slow laps before his W12 engine stopped with ECU failure. Meanwhile poor Bertrand Gachot’s weekend was already over minutes after the session had started. The Belgian had the gear linkage of his Coloni-Subaru breaking when he accelerated the beautifully sounding but vastly overweight flat-12 out of the pits. 

Later in the morning, free practice was on and the four survivors of pre-qualifying joined the rest of the field. The session had several accidents, with the concrete barriers next to the track not leaving room for any mistakes. There were no less than four red flags due to a blocked track, a total delay of 54 minutes and many damaged cars. Of the ones that did not end up in the wall, the session held a major surprise on top of the time sheets: Jean Alesi in the Tyrrell set the quickest time! Until then, no one had Ken Tyrrell’s team on the list of potential front runners. To make the Tyrrell performance even more spectacular, his team mate Saturo Nakajima finished the session in fifth.

Earlier in the week Ken Tyrrell had announced a sudden switch to Pirelli tyres for his team. Typically not up to the performance of the superior Goodyear rubber, Pirelli had made huge steps in the second half of 1989. Especially when it came to tracks that favoured softer compounds, Pierluigi Martini in the Minardi impressively ran at the front on several occasions, clearly benefitting from the Pirelli’s efficiency. Still, Tyrrell’s late switch of tyre supplier for the new season came unexpectedly, as the team did all its winter testing with Goodyear. Despite its unfamiliarity with the Pirellis, Ken Tyrrell’s outfit got it right and immediately produced a set-up that made the tyres work perfectly at the Phoenix track. On Friday morning Alesi and Nakajima were only split by the McLaren duo and Alain Prost’s Ferrari. The Top 10 in free practice were completed by Piquet’s Benetton, both Williams, Pierluigi Martini in the Minardi (also on Pirellis), and Phillip Alliot’s Ligier. 

Advantage Pirelli 

Once the afternoon qualifying session started, it quickly became clear that Tyrrell’s and even more so Pirelli’s performance in the morning was no fluke. Instead of the expected fight between McLaren and Ferrari, the initial battle for pole was contested by the dark-horse candidates, all of them on Italian rubber. Pierluigi Martini set the early pace and throughout most of the session, the only ones that were able to challenge the Minardi were fellow Pirelli-runners Jean Alesi and Andrea de Cesaris in the BMS Dallara. Only in the final minutes did Gerhard Berger produce what he described as the “perfect lap” to beat Martini, save Goodyear, and take provisional pole with a laptime of 1min 28.6sec. Would Berger really manage to join McLaren and to challenge Ayrton Senna from the very beginning? …

by Andreas Riehl

Photographs: Sutton Images, LAT

INTO THE WILD

REMEMBERING MANFRED WINKELHOCK

He loved everything that moved fast, particularly if he felt it could give him a sense of freedom. Touring cars, Formula 2, Formula 1, surf boards, catamarans, bikes, big and powerful sportscars. 30 years ago, Manfred Winkelhock paid the ultimate price for his passion.  

“THIS is real life. Not in a hotel in Vegas, not in that absurd circus,” Manfred Winkelhock shouted out loud and jubilantly into the Valley of Fire, at Lake Mead near Las Vegas. It was September 1982, a few days before practice for the final race of his first full season in Formula 1. It would also be his most successful year in F1, when he scored the only two World Championship points of his 47-race long Grand Prix career thanks to a fifth place at Rio early in the year. 

We wanted to go swimming and leave the Ceasar's Palace at Vegas– and the circuit that was built on its parking lot – behind us. Manfred never sat properly on his big, heavy Honda. Instead he rode it like a pommel horse; standing on the saddle, taking photos as he drove, riding with his back facing the wind. Nothing could stop Manni once he got a small taste of that freedom. It was one of his great strengths, but also at times a weakness as well. In Formula 1, was already crucial 30 years ago to conform a bit, much more so than being bold and outspoken. Winkelhock's honesty wasn't always helpful for his career.

Back in the autumn of 1976, few would have thought that this driver from Swabia in the south of Germany would go on all the way to Grand Prix racing. It was only at that point that his spectacular efforts in the German Volkswagen Scirocco Cup started to be noticed. By somehow turning understeer into oversteer, he became a star of the one-make Championship. 

That success earned Manfred a drive with BMW in the DRM, the popular German championship for spectacular Sports- and GT cars. He was now a member of the BMW Junior Team, which quickly became known as the ‘cheeky three’. The juniors were Swiss Marc Surer, who had sponsorship, and American Eddie Cheever, who had money. And there was Manni, 25 years old, without a cent in his pocket. That's why, over the winter he had to go to Munich and build his Group 5 BMW 320 himself at the BMW Motorsport premises. He was a proper car mechanic, after all. Whenever I asked him what he did with the 'Miracle from Würth', a sponsor's cheque worth more than 150,000 German Marks, he would offer a sly little grin – and then crawl back under the rollcage, wearing shorts and a grey overcoat, to continuing building his race car…

by Yörn Pugmeister

Photographs: Sutton Images, LAT, BMW AG