endurance racing?

[Mike Usiskin]

Hi fabulous folk

I found this quote by Carroll Shelby:

“Thank god there’s no 48-hour race anywhere in the world, because chances are nobody could beat Porsche in a 48 hour race. They’re probably the only cars in the world that would stand up for something like that.”
– Carroll Shelby, 1972.

And it got me thinking, it is true? is the Porsche reliability 'ting borne out. How knackered were the 917's etc after winning Le Mans etc.

Opinions

mike

[Mick Cliff]

To finish first...... first you've got to finish

I think I've read somewhere that reliability was always Porsche's mantra.

Mind you - a fair bit of 'poke' helps too

[Mike Usiskin]

[pmjt]

The reason they won the Carrera Panamericana, Targa Florio and Marathon de la Route - was reliability - the cars just kept on going.

Like the Fuhreman 547/1 engined cars - 100bhp from 1500cc - but they just kept on going, unlike the 'exotica'

Philip

[Schläfer]

I remember hearing the Story about the works 356 Carrera's being ran in on the way to the Targa Florio, running the entire race without incident and then being driven back to the factory by the mechanics. Now if that's not a testiment to a Porsche's strength, what is?

[higs356]

In fairness some of the factory racers while reliable were built to be rebuilt after each race and the 917 was a bit of a hand grenade .Aparently it was easy to blow the engine if the driver didnt like the car dynamics and more than one famous name has admitted to doing just that.

Interestingly the 911R which broke the world records was a last minute substitute . If I remember correctly after the Monza track had literally shaken the 906 into pieces, Porsche had 72 hours left to complete the world record attempt so they drove 2 cars overnight from Stuttgart to Monza, raced them around Monza and broke some records.
Just goes to show the prod cars we drive have a lot more reliability and performance than some of their more exotic siblings .