Mathieu Heurtault, courtesy of Gooding & Company
The Porsche 917 K was the direct result of years of intense research. Although it employed the most modern concepts in automotive design, the new car was absolutely in keeping with Porsche tradition. The foundation of the new model was an incredibly lightweight aluminum space-frame chassis. Similarly, the suspension systems made extensive use of lightweight materials such as titanium and magnesium. Glued to this frame was a striking, streamlined body made from thin fiberglass. Covered in NACA ducts and suspension-controlled aerodynamic flaps, the shape of the new Porsche was honed in the wind tunnels at the Stuttgart Technical Institute. This magnificent car’s air-cooled flat 12-cylinder engine is an undisputed masterpiece of automotive engineering designed by the legendary Hans Mezger. With dual overhead camshafts, twin-plug ignition, Bosch mechanical fuel injection, dry-sump lubrication and the distinctive, mechanically driven six-blade fan, it delivered 580 bhp at 8,400 rpm in original 4.5-liter form.

SCM Analysis

Detailing

Vehicle:1970 Porsche 917 K
Years Produced:1969–71
Number Produced:32 FIA coupes
Original List Price:DM 160,000 (about $40,000)
SCM Valuation:$2,810,000
Chassis Number Location:Tag on frame on right side of engine compartment
Engine Number Location:On block near rear distributor
Club Info:917 Chassis Registry
Website:http://962.com/registry/917
Alternatives:1970–71 Ferrari 512S, 512M, 1969 Porsche 908, 1966 Ford GT40
Investment Grade:A

This car, Lot 44, sold for $14,080,000 at Gooding & Company’s auction in Pebble Beach, CA, on August 18, 2017.

I’m going to open with a few thoughts that we can approach as we consider our subject Porsche:

  • As originally introduced, the Porsche 917 K was a truly awful, almost undrivable racing car.
  • With a few almost embarrassingly simple fixes, it became one of the world’s greatest and most dominant racers.
  • There is no more collectible, desirable or valuable German racing automobile that can be owned than the Porsche 917 K.
  • Of the roughly 20 “real” 917 K Porsches in private hands, our subject car is arguably the least collectible and thus the least valuable. It was still worth a ton of money.

The basic story of the 917 K is so well known that there is no purpose in going into great detail. The overview is that the FIA was trying to slow things down, so for 1969 and through 1971 they set a 3-liter limit on the prototype cars that were considered the marquee cars in international racing.

To fill out the grids — and keep the private teams with older cars happy — they included a “Competition Sports Car” class in the Championship, with 50-car minimum production. As the realities of a new season approached, the FIA got scared that they were ruling out important newer cars such as the Porsche 910 and Alfa T33-3 that could be very important to filling grids and delivering a show, so they dropped the minimum production limit for the category to 25 cars.

Seizing the opportunity

Porsche seems to have been alone in recognizing the opportunity that this presented. This was probably because they had always been in the business of selling their racing cars to outside customers, which meant that there was really no way that they were going to build fewer than 25 of anything they were going to race.

If that were the case, then why not utilize the loophole and build a big-engined racer to the Sports Car rules? They had been developing the Porsche 908 for the new series, a 3-liter 8-cylinder racer that was working very well, so it seemed the logical place to start. The engine for the 917 K is effectively a 4.5-liter, 12-cylinder expansion of the 908.

Light weight and low drag

Working against a very tight schedule and in absolute secrecy, Porsche set to building the required 25 identical racers. By this time the monocoque “tub” chassis structure was more or less standard in English racers, but Porsche stayed with what it knew and built an aluminum tube space frame for the 917, a scaled-up evolution of the design they had been using since the 906. To approach the strength of monocoque without adding much weight, they bonded the fiberglass body directly onto the frame, creating what was effectively a hybrid chassis/body combination.

With close to 600 horsepower available from the new engine, Porsche stepped into all-new territory, but they remained fanatical about weight and low drag, both of which were seen as essential for success at Le Mans. One of the fascinating aspects of truly original 917 K Porsches is the cost-is-no-object obsession with minimizing weight that is evident everywhere. Virtually all the fasteners, even relatively minor ones, are titanium, gun-drilled for lightness. The ballast resistors for the ignition are balsa planks wrapped with resistance wire instead of heavy ceramic units. Filter housings, brackets — anything normally made from steel — are titanium. Anything normally aluminum is magnesium. These cars are truly amazing to study in detail.

Top speed was going to be essential for the Mulsanne Straight — 3.7 miles of flat-out driving every lap of Le Mans — so the 917 was carefully designed to have as little drag as possible. When the 25 cars were presented to a dumbfounded world in March of 1969, they all carried identical bodywork, an organic, rounded, wind-cheating shape that looked sort of like a muscular 910.

A bust in the beginning

Unfortunately it turned out that Porsche’s vaunted engineering abilities had done something wrong, and the cars were all but uncontrollable at high speeds. The factory drivers refused to race them and insisted on the 908. Porsche had to find and hire outside drivers to race the 917 in 1969, with one driver losing his life in the process.

This was new territory for Porsche. They had never built a car even remotely this fast, so the search for solutions was broad.

Was it the aluminum tube frame? How about the suspension? Was 600 horsepower in a 1,700-pound car simply too much to be safe? The 1969 season was miserable for the 917 and anyone who had to drive one.

A simple fix — and domination

However, in the fall of 1969, the Gulf-Wyer team discovered that the problem was aerodynamic. While optimizing a super low-drag shape, Porsche created an unstable one. The fix was embarrassingly simple — a high, flat rear tail section that sacrificed some drag to generate downforce — and with that change the 917 became stable and easy to drive, even at 200-plus mph.

For 1970 and 1971, the Porsche 917 K was almost unbeatable. The 908 had given Porsche its first world championship in 1969, but the 917 K in 1970 and 71 made it three years in a row. Porsche had arrived.

From burning to collecting

For 1972 the FIA closed the loophole, and the 917 K coupes became another useless old racer, although the turbocharged spyder versions dominated Can-Am until that series ended. Notoriously unsentimental, Porsche scrapped many of the old 917 Ks, even burning some for fire-rescue training, so there are very few left outside of Porsche’s museum collections.

With roughly 20 cars in private hands and most in very long-term ownership, the 917 K is one of the world’s most difficult cars to acquire.

There is a wide range of desirability factors in the various cars, based on racing history and originality.

Racing history is obvious, with the best ones having long and illustrious competition résumés, ideally with the Gulf Wyer team, so that they can legitimately wear the iconic blue-and-orange paint jobs. The Porsche Salzburg and Martini teams both fielded factory-backed cars with success, but they don’t have the Steve McQueen connection and are seen as less desirable.

A great car — but not the best example

Although nobody disputes that our subject car is real — the assembly build sheet from Porsche to Jo Siffert when he bought it is readily available — it falls short on many of the desirability factors that influence value.

First, it has no real history; it was used as a practice and training car and never saw a start, much less a checkered flag. Its only right to the Gulf blue-and-orange paint was from the “Le Mans” movie filming.

Second, it was wrecked and scrapped by the factory in February 1970 — and then somehow reconstituted with a different frame a few months later. Remember that the 917 K body is structurally bonded to the frame, so it is difficult to think of them as separate.

What got changed? At least that was the factory; more vexing is the fact that it got a replacement frame in recent years. That change was then apparently undone in favor of the original frame very recently. What? How much of the body survived? How many of the wonderful, weird original bits are still there?

Maybe it doesn’t really matter. If someone really wants a 917 K, there aren’t many options. I’m not aware of any other 917 K coupes available anywhere at any price.

Although it is not the greatest example, this car was real and was available for purchase. The market then set the value. Nobody knows what a really great 917 K might be worth, but we now know the floor of current values. I would say fairly bought and sold. ♦

(Introductory description courtesy of Gooding & Company.)

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