The most original Porsche 935 

The GoPro booth at the 2019 SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) show featured Bruce Canepa’s spectacular Porsche 935, the last Porsche factory-built 935, and the most original 935 in existence.

Bruce’s father, Angelo, owned Palomar Lincoln Mercury in Santa Cruz California, and Bruce worked in the shop of his father’s Lincoln Mercury dealership every day after school beginning at 12 years old. 

A multi-sport athlete in high school, after college, Bruce worked full-time at the family dealership as the used car manager.   Bruce’s passion for Porsches was ignited after a customer traded in his Porsche for a new Lincoln.

In 1966, Bruce competed in his first race, a sportsman stock car race at nearby Watsonville Speedway. Bruce moved up the racing ladder to supermodifieds and later sprint cars that raced on both pavement and dirt tracks with the Northern Auto Racing Club (NARC) against such drivers as Brent Kaeding, Johnny Anderson and Jan Opperman, and was named the 1973 NARC Rookie of the Year. 

Bruce at speed in his 1976 Maxwell sprint car

courtesy Bruce Canepa  

In 1978 Bruce took part in his first sports car race at Sears Point Raceway as he drove his own Porsche 934, sponsored by the family car dealership, and he finished seventh. The following year, Canepa, along with co-drivers Rick Mears and Monte Shelton finished third overall at the 24 Hours of Daytona in the 934.

Based on that result, the Porsche factory offered Canepa a new Porsche 935 with full works support. At that time the 935, powered by a 3-liter twin turbocharged flat six engine that developed over 700 horsepower, was the world’s dominant sports racing car. 

Bruce’s car, chassis number was the 13^th and last factory-built customer 935 as after 1979, Porsche ceased 935 development and production to concentrate on prototype racing and left the continued development of the 935 to private teams.

Chassis number 009 00029 was delivered to California just prior to the eleventh round of the 1979 IMSA (International Motor Sport Association) championship “Sprite Grand Prix Winston GT at Sears Point.”  Driving a 935 for the first time on July 29^th  Canepa qualified the car tenth and finished fifth one lap behind Peter Gregg’s similar machine in the premier class known as GTX (Grand Touring Experimental).

A week later, Bruce visited the Portland International Raceway for the first time to race in the “G.I. Joe's Grand Prix Portland” and qualified fourth. With less than two laps to go, and a one-lap lead, Canepa’s 935 began to run out of fuel, and Canepa crossed the finish line on fumes in third place. 

In October at Laguna Seca Raceway for the SCCA Trans-Am “Sprite Bottlers Monterey Grand Prix at Laguna Seca” Canepa qualified tenth and  finished fifth, one lap behind Peter Gregg in the Group 5 equivalent T-A II class.

For the 1980 season chassis number 009 00029 sat idle as Canepa drove for Gianpiero Moretti’s MOMO racing team.   The car returned to action for the 1981 IMSA season, fitted with special aerodynamic “M16” bodywork. The car suffered mechanical problems early in the “Datsun Monterey Triple Crown Laguna Seca”, but Canepa qualified sixth for the “Datsun Camel GT Sears Point.” In its final race appearance, the 935 broke down four laps from the finish and was classified ninth overall.  

In 1983, Canepa began selling Lamborghinis, Maseratis, Porsches, Audis and BMW cars in his hometown as Bruce Canepa Motorcars. Bruce later started Canepa Design, which built custom SUVs, race trailers, and custom semis which has evolved into Canepa as it exists today.

Located in Scotts Valley California the 70,000-square-foot facility, Canepa is an auto dealership, restoration facility and spectacular free to visit museum. Canepa does everything in-house - fabricating, repairs, bodywork, painting and interiors – only plating is sent out.  Check out their website at https://canepa.com

Since its last appearance in 1981. the Porsche 935 remains Bruce Canepa’s personal collection and is driven in selected historic events around the United States. Raced just five times in the 1979 and 1981 season, this is the most original 935 in existence.

GoPro manufactures action cameras and mobile phone apps and video-editing software, such as the GoPro Max displayed on top of the Porsche 935. Check them out at https://gopro.com/en/us/

All photos by the author 

"The lightweight" 1967 Penske Camaro  

 

 

This 1967 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) Trans-American Sedan Championship[p (Trans-Am) series race car displayed at the Sunoco Race Fuels booth at the 2016 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) show is another example of the famous Penske “Unfair Advantage” as well as a demonstration of how legends grow as facts get twisted over time.

The 1967 Trans-Am season saw the debut of the Chevrolet Camaro and the Mercury Cougar. After the Penske Racing team built the first Sunoco Blue car, according to Mark Donohue in his book The Unfair Advantage “someone” arranged for Fisher Body to stamp special bodywork out of lighter gauge steel. Unfortunately Donohue crashed the first lightened car twice in its first outing at Bryar Motorsports Park in New Hampshire.

Rather than repair the lightweight sheet metal, Penske contacted Canadian heavy equipment dealer Terry Godsall who purchased the first Penske Camaro which had subsequently been wrecked in a towing accident. The original Penske Camaro under the new partnership of Penske-Godsall Racing was re-bodied with panels dipped in an acid bath “at some aerospace company in Los Angeles” according to Donohue.

The acid-dipped body panels and associated bracketry reduced the weight of the Camaro even with a full roll cage to 2,550 pounds which led the team to nickname it “the lightweight.”  An urban legend has grown up that the Camaro was raced underweight, but Donohue in his book was clear that the “dipping” merely allowed the team to redistribute 250 pounds of weight required to meet the series minimum weight to improve handling.

 

 

 

Donohue and the “lightweight” Camaro debuted at the September ‘Gallo Trophy’ race held on the Crows Landing Naval Auxiliary Air Station near Modesto California which replaced the previously announced Vaca Valley Raceway venue.  The flat 3-mile temporary course set up on the concrete runways was very abrasive and all the competitors suffered tire problems during the 250-mile race.

 

Due to the wrong rear axle gearing Donohue struggled and placed third behind Jerry Titus’ Shelby Mustang and Peter Revson in Bud Moore’s Cougar. The Modesto track was not used again for professional racing, but even today the facility now owned by NASA still hosts annual amateur autocross events.

 

 

Donohue related in his book that SCCA officials were very unhappy with the acid-dipped body, and for the rest of the season Roger Penske and the SCCA battled over the car’s legitimacy, although the Ford teams were also acid-dipping their Mustang bodies according to Donohue.   Meanwhile Donohue and “the lightweight” Camaro won the final two rounds of the 1967 Trans-Am series at Stardust International Raceway in Las Vegas and at Pacific Raceway at Kent Washington.

Despite those wins, Chevrolet finished third in the 1967 SCCA Trans-Am championship, with three wins behind Ford which just edged out Mercury each with four wins.  After the season finale at Kent, the SCCA officials declared the Penske “lightweight” car banned forever.

The Camaro is powered by a 302-cubic inch Chevrolet cast-iron engine with cast iron cylinder heads fed through a four-barrel Holley 800 CFM (cubic feet per minute)  carburetor built by Traco Engines of Culver City California run by Frank Travers and Jim Coon the winning chief mechanics on Bill Vukovich’s 1953 and 1954 Indianapolis ‘500’ winning Kurtis roadster.

The engine produced “410 to 420 horsepower” per Donohue and fed through a four-speed transmission the “lightweight” Camaro accelerated from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.2 seconds. Post-season testing at Chevrolet engineering revealed that use of a “seasoned” engine block fitted with new cylinder heads could yield up to 460 horsepower but Donohue stated that those engines were not reliable when used early in the 1968 season.     

At the 12 Hours of Endurance For The Alitalia Airlines Trophy race at Sebring Florida in March 1968, “the Lightweight” Camaro reappeared and through some “tricky stuff” described by Donohue that involved switching of numbers between the team’s 1968 Camaro and this car both cars passed technical inspection. The SCCA officials were apparently unaware that they inspected the legal 1968 Camaro twice despite the fact that the 1967 Camaro featured vent windows unlike the 1968 Camaro and the 1967 version lacked the 1968 Camaro’s side marker lights.   

Donohue qualified the lightweight #15 Camaro for the pole position in Class 12 (Trans-Am) class at a lap time of 3 minutes and 1.2 seconds around the 5.2 mile road course which  tied with the equally suspicious black and gold Camaro built by the infamous Smokey Yunick shared by Lloyd Ruby and Al Unser. At the conclusion of  the 12 hour race, Donohue and his co-driver Craig Fisher finished third overall and first in the Trans-Am class four laps ahead of the their teammates Joe Welch and Bob Johnson in the #16 Suncoco1968 Camaro.   

Godsall sold the “lightweight” Camaro which was re-bodied as a Firebird after the 1968 SCCA Trans-Am season in order to develop and build a series of Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am cars. The lightweight Camaro was raced for many years by a variety of owners in Canada until vintage racer Paul Ryan recognized its significance, purchased it and had it professionally restored in 1987.

This 1967 Camaro was not Penske Pacing’s last experience of pushing the “Unfair Advantge” envelope with acid-dipping of the Camaro body. During the 1969 season the team used a body with sheet metal so thin that the roof panel wrinkled. To disguise this problem, the Sunoco Camaro raced with a black vinyl roof which Donohue explained to SCCA was because the team “liked the look.”

The 1969 Camaro’s vinyl roof drove the SCCA officials crazy, and sent the racing press into an long series of suppositions with articles that included suggestions of hidden fiberglass panels and hidden air holes in the roof to reduce lift.  Near the end of the 1969 season Penske removed the vinyl top and Chevrolet Camaro claimed its second straight Trans-Am Touring Sedan championship.

Check out an interesting interactive history of Sunoco Race Fuels at  http://www.sunocoracefuels.com/about-us/history#Intro

 

photos by the author

George Follmer at the Indy 500

 

 1968 portrait of George Follmer in his Bell helmet  

from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection

in the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies

 

This is an edited version of the presentation given September 17 2016 at Bart Stevens’ Racers Reunion banquet which was followed by a lively audience question-and-answer session with George Follmer.

The author expresses his sincere appreciation to Bart Stevens for inviting the author to make the presentation and to Mr. Follmer for his unflagging patience in answering the author’s many inquires while he prepared for the appearance.

The author on the right with George Follmer at the 2016 Racers Reunion

Boyd Adams photo

 

During his fabulous career, George Follmer raced in the crown jewels of automobile racing -  Sebring, LeMans, the Daytona 500, and the Indianapolis 500. Although George did not experience the same success at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as he did elsewhere for reasons that will become evident, it is interesting from a historian’s perspective to review Follmer’s experiences as road racer in one of the most exciting eras at the world’s most famous oval-shaped race track.  

With a goal of racing at Indianapolis for one of the automobile racing world’s largest purse, during the 1967 season George satisfied the United States Auto Club’s (USAC) requirement for “experience” by driving in three USAC events for car owner Rolla Vollstedt. Two races were on road courses and another on the tricky one-mile Trenton New Jersey oval track, where Follmer crashed in turn two and suffered what he now terms “the loss of my eyebrows and a good instant suntan.”

Follmer he started the 1968 USAC season on two short ovals at Hanford California and Phoenix, and the Las Vegas “Stardust” road course, before he headed to Indianapolis where was the teammate to Masten Gregory.

The two road racers were assigned to the new Cheetah chassis built by Howard Gilbert which were improved copies of the Brabham BT11 space frame chassis. The Cheetahs powered by four-cam 255 cubic inch Ford engines were owned by George R Bryant president of his own mailing list brokerage firm was Masten Gregory’s stepfather.

Although an accomplished road racer with seven years of experience and the 1965 United States Road Racing Champion, Follmer was considered a “rookie” at Indianapolis in 1968. After he passed the required “rookie test” and drove in practice with the first closed face Bell helmet at the Speedway. After the last scheduled day of time trials was rained out, George qualified on Monday May 27 with a four-lap average of 158.877 MPH but was later bumped out of the starting field by Bruce Walkup.  

Masten Gregory whom George Follmer described as apparently not particularly focused during the month of May also failed to make the 33-car starting field. On June 13 1968, car owner Bryant passed away at Community Hospital. Two days later, Follmer made his final race appearance in the George R Bryant Cheetah at Mosport road course in Canada.

Follmer stayed busy racing through the summer of 1968, in an American Motors Javelin for Ronnie Kaplan in the SCCA Trans-Am series and a big block Ford powered Lola T70 in the SCCA Can-Am series, as behind the scenes he negotiated to buy all the Bryant racing team assets from Bryant’s widow.  

With the purchase completed, George sold one of the Cheetahs to safety equipment manufacturer Bill Simpson who raced his Cheetah with middling success over the next few seasons.  George’s first USAC appearance as both the car owner and driver came in the 1968 USAC season finale, the Rex Mays 300 held on Follmer’s favorite track, the Riverside International Raceway, and he finished in the eighth position. 

Over the winter the team’s three four-cam Ford engines were sold off.  For the 1969 season, USAC had increased the allowable displacement for stock block pushrod engines while at the same time reduced the displacement of turbocharged or supercharged engines.

Follmer’s Cheetah traveled to Phoenix International Raceway for the Jimmy Bryan 150 the 1969 USAC season-opening race powered by a cast-iron 320-cubic Chevrolet stock-block engine fed methanol through a Lucas fuel-injection system. The engine was built by Follmer’s long-time engine builder, fellow Southern Californian Al Bartz and adapted to the Cheetah Follmer and his friend and USRRC crew chief Bruce Burness.

George spent time over the winter testing at Phoenix, perfecting the Cheetah’s set-up and it paid off, as he qualified second to Al Unser. On a brutally hot day George consistently used a high outside line to pass cars and he bided his time as he watched the turbocharged cars of leaders Al and Bobby Unser and Mario Andretti drop by the wayside with mechanical problems.

George led the final 29 laps and won the race by a margin of three laps over second place Wally Dallenbach to place his name in the record books as both the owner and driver of the first Chevrolet stock-block engine to win in USAC racing.

As successful as he had been at Phoenix George knew he needed more horsepower to be competitive the following month at Indianapolis.  George was a teammate with Parnelli Jones on the Ford factory supporter Mustang Trans-Am team and he used his connections to extract a promise of one of 159 cubic inch turbocharged Ford engines. After the Cheetah arrived in Gasoline Alley with sponsorship from the Houston based Reztloff Chemical Company, days and days passed as Follmer awaited his engine.

The promised engine, albeit not new, finally arrived after many of the front-line Ford factory teams had qualified, and the crew led by Howard Gilbert, installed the power plant and the complex maze of plumbing, radiators and oil coolers required by the turbocharged Ford engine.

 

This photo from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection

in the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies

shows the crew working on the turbocharged Ford engine

 

While he had waited for delivery of his engine, after he read the USAC rulebook Follmer built an unpainted aluminum engine cover with an integral wing which USAC approved that provided much needed need downforce to help plant the Ford’s estimated 875 horsepower to the track surface. 

 

George Follmer in 1969 courtesy of INDYCAR

Note the engine cover/wing

 

With minimal practice time, George qualified 27th to start his first Indianapolis 500 from the outside of the ninth row with a four-lap qualifying average of 164 MPH. Unfortunately, on Memorial Day, Follmer only got to run 27 laps in his bright yellow #63 Cheetah before the wastegate on the Ford engine’s turbocharging system failed and the system lost all boost.   

After he drove the final two races of the 1969 USAC season for STP Racing team owner Andy Granatelli, at Indianapolis in 1970 George was a teammate to defending race winner Mario Andretti.

Mario drove the team’s disappointing new McNamara chassis while George was assigned the STP team’s third generation Brawner Hawk powered by a turbocharged Ford engine. Although he went to the Speedway knowing his role as a back-up with a very good car, Follmer describes 1970 as one of his most frustrating experiences in racing.

For the second year in the row, Mario heavily damaged his primary car in a crash prior to the first weekend of qualifying. It was only once Mario’s repaired car was safely qualified into the starting field that George was allowed to practice.  The day after Andretti qualified, George made his first practice laps of the month before Granatelli called Follmer into the pit area after just twelve laps. The crew mounted new tires, fueled the day-glo red #20 machine and pushed it into the qualifying line.

 

George Follmer in 1970 courtesy of INDYCAR

 

 

Without knowing his practice times, George made his 10-mile timed run and qualified at 166 MPH. George started 21^st on race day but he was out after just 18 laps.  The Granatelli crew failed to properly secure one of the water hoses, it rubbed against a suspension arm and the resulting hole allowed all the water to run out of the cooling system.  

George returned to Indianapolis in 1971 with car builder Grant King’s “Spirit of Indianapolis” team, and the team ran many practice laps and they struggled to find the proper handling setup. Finally, at the end of the second week of practice, King loaded up the car in Gasoline Alley and took the chassis back to his nearby shop and worked all night to add stiffness to the chassis.   

 

George Follmer in 1971 courtesy of INDYCAR

 

George practiced on Saturday morning and found the car’s handling much improved. Follmer qualified on the third day of time trials at 169 MPH, a 4-lap speed average which left him close to being bumped, but his speed held up and he started from 29^th position on Memorial Day. Unfortunately, all the practice laps had put many unexpected miles on the Offenhauser engine, and the unfunded team had no money to pay for a pre-race rebuild. George started the ‘500’ with little prospect of going the full distance, and as he ran in fourth place with 147 completed, a piston failed in the turbocharged Offenhauser engine and Follmer placed fifteenth.

George was pretty busy racing elsewhere over the next few years and did not appear at Indianapolis. 1972, he became the only man to win both Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) professional championships in the same year, as he won the SCCA Trans-Am series championship with Roy Woods’ Javelin and the Can-Am series crown behind the wheel of the mighty Penske Porsche 917-10.

The following year, 1973, Follmer made his Formula One debut as a 39-year old rookie with the Shadow team. As if that was not enough, at the same time he defended his Can-Am title in the Porsche 917-10 then owned by Atlanta businessman Bobby Rinzler. With his busy schedule during 1973, Follmer recalls that he flew either cross-country or across the ocean nearly every week during the racing season.

Later in 1973, Follmer raced in the inaugural International Race of Champions (IROC) series and he won one of the all-star races.  In 1974 George competed in thirteen National Association of Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) Winston Cup stock car races behind the wheel of Bud Moore’s Ford as well as making appearances in the Can-Am and Trans-Am series. Follmer also helped to develop the IROC Chevrolet Camaros and raced in the series’ second season.  

George returned to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1975 in the seat of the turbocharged Offenhauser powered 1972 Eagle chassis number19 with the small American Kids Racing team owned by California millionaire Richard Beith of ET Wheels fame. The Offenhauser engine blew up in practice and the #28 car was unable to make a qualifying run. With his original ride sidelined, George tried the much-traveled MVS/ Adams/Hawthorne 1972 Eagle chassis number one but didn’t make a qualifying attempt in his final Indianapolis appearance.

It is a great disservice to George Follmer to judge his racing career by his accomplishments at Indianapolis – as mentioned above, he won the 1965 United Road Racing Championship in a car he owned, he won both SCCA professional series in the same year in 1972, and repeated as the SCCA Trans-Am champion in 1976 at age 42.

In his very first Formula One race in 1973, at 39 years old Follmer scored a championship point in his first race, and stood on the podium in his second race, and he closed out his active career at age 52 in 1986 as he and teammate John Morton drove the ‘Spirit of America” Porsche 962 to a third-place finish in the grueling 24 hours of LeMans.