APOLLO 6

As a young engineer, Ferdinand Piëch had visions unlike any of his industry peers. But he didn’t go to the doctor; instead he went to Porsche and, after only two years, became the head of the development and test department. As such he was also in charge of the racing division. In 1965, motorsport provided the best possible opportunity for a spirited, ambitious engineer to make his mark. The 906 was Ferdinand Piëch’s first independent project; you could say it was the initiation project of one of the engineers of the century.

Having visions can also be handy for fans of the brand – for example, if you wanted to own one of the scarce 906 vehicles, of which only about 65 specimens were built. Johannes Huber turned his passion for rare Porsche models into his profession. Finding a lost 906 is, just about the ‘holy grail’ for Porsche hunters. “When I heard of a mysterious specimen in Italy sitting there and waiting for decades to be restored, I felt ecstatic and immediately started my research,” he said.

Johannes Huber managed to find the owner: a man who had worked as a Fiat importer for many years in Venezuela. He had bought the fire-damaged wreck and taken it back to Italy, where it remained dormant for more than twenty years under a sturdy linen cover. Huber was lucky because the collector, by now in his late seventies, felt the strength needed for such a complicated restoration dwindling. At the end of a long, enjoyable afternoon, Huber politely enquired about the price required for the Porsche rarity to possibly change ownership. In the same sentence, he promised that the 906 would be in good hands as he would personally manage the restoration, while pointing out that it would be an emotional relief to no longer have to see the burnt-out, incomplete car every single day. When Huber heard the amount, he agreed to it immediately. “I was as if in a trance,” he revealed. On the way home, two thoughts flashed through his mind.

Firstly: “Oh my God, what did you just do?”

Secondly: “Okay, where do I get the money from?”

Milestone is a big word, especially in the history of Porsche, but it is, without a doubt, true in this case. The 906 (which had to be called Carrera 6 back in the day due to Peugeot’s trademarked use of three digits with a central zero) was not only the first construction by Piëch, but was also an important turning point in the company’s history. Prior, Porsche was a well-functioning family business that rendered remarkable performances but remained stagnant due to its roots in Beetle production. The cute sports cars dominated in the smaller classes, but generally took a whipping by the big boys. Ferry Porsche stopped the optimistic Formula-1 efforts in 1961/62, as he believed it would lead the brand too far away from the production cars. With the 906, Porsche’s motorsport dominance began, and with it the rise of the brand as a sports car world power. The models 910, 907 and 908 inherited all the genes of the 906. Subsequently, Porsche was able, for the first time, to win the sports cars world championship against Ferrari and Ford.

And yet, its construction was created from necessity. Once again, the FIA changed the regulation relating to sports cars: for the 1966 season, only 50 units of a certain type were permitted to be built, allowing for a more extreme design of the vehicle. Moreover, serious competition had arrived in the form of Ferrari’s Dino 206 SP. In the previous year, Porsche had suffered a painful defeat at the hands of Ferrari in the European Hill Climb Championship; the 904 Bergspyder model was propelled by an eight-cylinder Grand Prix engine, but it exhibited such terrifying driving behaviour that it was commonly referred to as ‘the kangaroo’. Towards the end of the season, Porsche tried to respond. The somewhat stiff but heavy steel ladder chassis was replaced by a delicate spaceframe chassis; various suspension parts and brakes were conveniently purchased at Lotus, as everything had to happen quickly. The ‘Ollon-Villars’ Spyder was only used for the eponymic hill climb race in Switzerland, and was not able to prevent a defeat in the European Hill Climb Championship. However, its spaceframe chassis would form the basis for the 906 model.

If you stand in front of a 906 today, you will immediately recognise it as the work of a radical thinker. While the Porsche 904 and Ferrari Dino are ‘bonsai’ versions of the then typical sports car design, the 906 feels like a human-machine sandwich that is covered in a delicate layer of white plastic with transparent sections. Even though it is 14 centimetres wider than its predecessor, it has reduced wind resistance. The body is less than one metre high, gull-wing doors make it easier to enter the vehicle and the low frontal section has been elongated to increase the contact pressure on the front axle. The spaceframe barely weighs 53 kilograms, and the tubes that adorn it also serve as oil lines to the radiator at the front. The suspension was taken from the 904 with hardly any changes. With a kerb mass of 575kg, the 906 was eventually more than 50kg lighter than a comparable 904.

WITH THE 906, PORSCHE’S MOTORSPORT DOMINANCE BEGAN, AND WITH IT THE RISE OF THE BRAND AS A SPORTS CAR WORLD POWER

The engine is made-by-Piëch, too: The conversion of a 2.0-litre, six-cylinder engine from the series car to a race car version had been his first task at Porsche. In order to reduce the weight, the crank case and the camshaft cover were made out of magnesium and the crankshaft out of titanium, which resulted in a weight reduction of one third. These changes, along with the adoption of dual ignition, resulted in a power increase from 96kW to 162kW.

While its predecessor, the 904, still had to be capable of everyday driving, the 906 was designed purely for racing –even though there were documented test drives with spiked tyres (a result of it being developed during the winter). At 45 0 00 D-Mark, the 906 was incredibly cheap compared to Ferrari or Abarth. The price equalled that of ten Volkswagen Beetles or two Porsches 911s, resulting in the 50-unit series selling out after only a few weeks.

In the fast-paced racing scene, the 906 was built for only one summer, but it was extremely successful, with class victories at Daytona and Sebring, overall victory in the Targa Florio, and in Le Mans three 906 Langheck placed fourth, fifth and sixth place behind the twice-as-powerful Ford GT40s. For its ‘works’ team, Porsche used mainly eight-cylinder engines with up to 162kW; the private teams had to settle for a six-cylinder engine. In the 1967 season, Porsche was already campaigning with the 910, with the essential difference of smaller, 13-inch tyres. The 906 remained competitive in its class until the late seventies, which did not necessarily have a positive effect on the condition of the individual vehicles.

The fact is that hardly any 906s survived without a major crash; though well maintained, they were racing cars. Thanks to the 906’s design, its plastic could be cleanly separated from the metal parts after each incident, which made it easier to repair. During some racing weekends, the mechanics had to change engines, gearboxes and chassis parts more often than their underwear, and no one could have predicted that the survivors (read: the surviving parts) would be worth millions one day. For example, in the standard reference Porsche 906 by Barth/Trispel, which tries to record the story of each vehicle, a chassis number was separately documented three times, and each new chassis contained metalwork from the original construction.

Today, it’s probable that more 906s exist than ever left the factory, but not a single one would have all its original parts. Hence, the lines between original and replica are blurred, further boosting the value of an almost completely preserved original specimen. And since the story of the Porsche 906 is no isolated case, one imagines that true ambitious gentleman racing was more or a case of the original staying at home, while racing a replica as true to the original as possible.

Johannes Huber is proud that ‘his’ 906 138 (the factory cars had chassis numbers starting at zero, while the cars made for clients start at 100) fell into the hands of less ambitious private drivers at an early stage and therefore had a rather quiet existence. The Porsche 906 138 was delivered on 6 April 1966 in the USA, its last owner being the Peruvian surfing legend, Pitty Block, and the last documented race was as early as 10 December 1967 in the 6 Hours of Caracas. Thereafter, a fire in the car’s electrics completely destroyed the chassis and it seems that Pitty went back to spending time in the water. In 1990, the Porsche 906 138 was bought by the Italian collector and in 2013 by Johannes Huber, who told us: “That is what makes the car so unique, from a present-day perspective. Getting spare parts was considerably harder in South America than in Europe and in the USA, so the burnt-out wreck was simply put away. Hence, there shouldn’t be another 906 that still has so many original parts.”

Nonetheless, the restoration to a visibly better-than-new condition took two and a half years with invaluable assistance provided by Pfeifhofers Porsche museum in Gmünd; chassis expert Franz Raab; engine constructor Daniel Meixner; Dieter Esner-Eisenstein; and mechanical all-rounder Jakob Strach.

The questions on the way back home – “Who is going to pay for it; who has that much money” – were quickly answered. A Frenchman was so interested that he paid the purchase price up front and trusted Johannes Huber with the restoration.

We ask Huber if being so close to an icon and then having it slip through his fingers so quickly affected him emotionally. “Owning the car for a long time exceeds my means,” he answered, “and I have driven such a car before. The allure for me was to achieve a sensitive restoration as close to the original as possible.”

Before the car could be handed over to its new owner in France, a final test drive had to be conducted. As chance would have it, we were present to accept this critical job.

Racing drivers are and always have been small and wiry people –clearly a different bodyshape to that of the Mid-European couch potato. Fitting oneself into a car space of just 0.98 metres in height is like getting into the gap below an office desk, except everything around you is very expensive and very fragile. For example, the driver should not step between the steel pipes, because even these are considered too delicate nowadays. Sure, the gull-wing doors help, but years of yoga training would be more helpful right now. Suffice to say that getting into a Porsche 906 is an undignified process, which you should try to forget as soon as possible.

And things don’t improve much once you make it, miraculously uninjured, into the bucket seat. While the driving position is surprisingly comfortable, the surroundings are actually terrifying: The fragile chassis, the seat at the very front position and the wings on either side that rise like the mighty Alps, all contribute to a ‘claustrophobic space capsule’ feeling. The drivers of the past criticised the high tyres that made it very difficult to navigate narrow corners – something that is still true today.

And between the wings? There is simply nothing.

In Herbert Völker’s biography, snappily titled Auto.Biographie, Ferdinand Piëch commented: “When we positioned the seat in the Porsche 906 so far in the front, I thought – without any cynicism –about the advantages of this design: If the driver has his legs so far in the front, he will make every effort to avoid a crash.”

That is a statement that definitely applies for this test drive. But to be honest, all the agonies of getting in, as well as any negative thoughts and doubts, vanish when I start the engine. Instead of making lots of noise, the six-cylinder engine sounds full-bodied yet gentle under the thin cover. Apply some throttle though and the classic unfiltered chainsaw sound of the 911 emerges. Once the engine has warmed up and gets into gear, driving the car starts to be real fun. When 162kW meets only 575kg, it equals a power-to-weight ratio that is still competitive in some classes today – but all surrounded by a delicate chassis and tyres with woefully insufficient grip. The bravery of those drivers, who let those plastic-metal origamis fly at more than 200km/h across Sicilian country roads, or through forests, is hard to comprehend.

The steering follows every rut, the chassis’ reactions range from nervous to unpredictable, the engine cries beyond the pain threshold and yet I still do not want to get out of this space-time capsule. Or, perhaps it’s just that I have no idea how to get out.

Feet positioned ahead of the front axle ‘encouraged’ race drivers to avoid accidents. It’s a psychology that happily also works on journalists