The Complete Book of Porsche 911
Page 5
1965-1969 912
Porsche discontinued the 912 at the end of model year 1969. The 914, introduced in September 1969, was the new entry-level Porsche, the task previously assigned to the 912. Zuffenhausen assembly needed the space it had dedicated to 912 production to manufacture the much more potent 914-6. Its older engine, too, confronted new emission standards.
About this time, the company hired Anatole “Tony” Lapine to “understudy” F. A. Porsche as design chief. Lapine was styling boss at Opel and before that had worked on Corvette design at GM in Detroit. In a recent interview, Lapine recalled that Ferry told him F. A. would take over as Porsche managing director upon Ferry’s retirement and that Lapine was to assume the top design job. When he arrived in Zuffenhausen, he found the company working on the Typ 914 mid-engine prototypes for a project developed with, but orphaned from, VW. VW chairman Heinz Nordhoff had approved the project in 1967 as a potential sports car for the VW line. But Nordhoff, who was scheduled to retire in December 1970, died in April 1968, and the board’s choice as successor, Kurt Lotz, was not a sports car enthusiast, so work reverted to Porsche ownership.
In the meantime, Ferdinand Piëch had started engineers working on the “next” VW Beetle, project EA266, and the next 911, Porsche’s Typ 1966. Both companies worried about the longevity of the air-cooled engine concept. F. A. Porsche’s first prototype for the 356 successor, the Typ 695, used a flat four-cylinder engine mounted under the rear seat between the rear wheels. Piëch resurrected the concept but took it much further for EA 266 and Typ 1966. His engineers had created the flat 12-cylinder 917 race car engine by fitting together two flat sixes. He challenged them to create a flat eight by doing the same thing, mounting two inline water-cooled flat fours in opposition to each other. He asked Lapine’s designers to come up with a body for a mid-engine coupe.
“It was beautiful,” Lapine explained decades later. “Like nothing you’ve ever seen. Mr. Piëch wanted three lines, just like the T, E, and S, but as a four-cylinder, an eight-cylinder, and for special customers and racing, a twelve. He even built a prototype flat eight-cylinder engine. Three seats, driver in the middle ahead of the engine. Large trunk up front, big storage over the engine. This was to be the next 911.” Porsche planned to replace the first generation of cars in 1972 or 1973, and Typ 1966 was to appear then.
The 912 offered buyers the same elegant body and interior with slightly less weight at the rear. The 912 coupes weighed 950 kilograms (2,090 pounds) compared with the 911T at 1,020 kilograms (2,244 pounds).
The 912 coupes sold for 17,538DM ($4,474) at the factory. American buyers paid $5,235. Houndstooth upholstery was optional on 912s in 1969. The owner did the door panels and the dashboard.
YEAR
1965-1969
DESIGNATION
912
SPECIFICATIONS
MODEL AVAILABILITY
Coupe, Targa introduced in 1967
WHEELBASE
2211mm/87.0 inches – 2268mm/89.3 inches in 1969
LENGTH
4163mm/163.9 inches
WIDTH
1610mm/63.4 inches
HEIGHT
1320mm/52.0 inches
WEIGHT
950kg/2090 pounds
BASE PRICE
$4,395 (1969 coupe)
TRACK FRONT
1337mm/52.6 inches – 1362mm/53.6 inches in 1969
TRACK REAR
1317mm/51.9 inches – 1343mm/52.9 inches in 1969
WHEELS FRONT
5.5Jx15 (in 1969)
WHEELS REAR
5.5Jx15 (in 1969)
TIRES FRONT
165HR-15 radial (optional)
TIRES REAR
165HR-15 radial (optional)
CONSTRUCTION
Unitized welded steel
SUSPENSION FRONT
Independent, wishbones, MacPherson struts, longitudinal torsion bars, hydraulic double-action shock absorbers
SUSPENSION REAR
Independent, semi-trailing arms, transverse torsion bars, hydraulic double-action shock absorbers
BRAKES
Discs, 2-piston cast iron fixed calipers
ENGINE TYPE
Horizontally opposed OHV four-cylinder Typ 616/36
ENGINE DISPLACEMENT
1582cc/96.5CID
BORE AND STROKE
82.5x74mm/3.25x2.92 inches
HORSEPOWER
90@5800rpm
TORQUE
90lb-ft@3500rpm
COMPRESSION
9.3:1
FUEL DELIVERY
2 Solex 40 PII-4 carburetors
FINAL DRIVE AXLE RATIO
4.428:1
TOP SPEED
115mph depending on final drive
PRODUCTION
28,333 coupes, 2,562 Targas (total all years)
Records suggest 35 or fewer of these T/R composites were created. This car finished 5th in Group 3, 12th overall, in the 1968 Monte Carlo Rally.
Swedish rally driver Åke Andersson competed for the Scania Vabis rally team. The car weighed just 923 kilograms, 1,846 pounds.
When Porsche introduced the 911T for 1968, it also found a way to utilize parts remaining from the 1967 911R assembly. The T/R was not an actual model, but one racers created by ordering parts and installing them.
Two engines were available for the T/R. This was a 235-horsepower version of the 2-liter 901/22 with Weber 48IDA carburetors used in the 906 Carrera 6 race car and in the 911R. The other option was a 180-horsepower 911S engine, earning those cars the name ST.
The cockpit of the 1968 T/R featured only the bare necessities for winning races.
Herbert Linge, Dieter Glemser, and Willi Kauhsen shared driving duties for 84 hours over three and a half days. They won by completing 356 laps, for a total of 8,325.7 kilometers, 5,203.5 miles, for an average of 99.1 kilometers (61.95 miles) per hour.
For 1969, Porsche lengthened the wheelbase of the 911 by 57mm (2.24 inches) to 2,268mm (89.3 inches) without changing the car body. This improved handling and balance by shifting some weight to the front wheels.
Porsche sent three brand-new 1969-model endurance-race-prepared 911S models to the Marathon de la Route in August 1968. Run for 84 hours nonstop on Nürburgring’s Nordschleife, the north circuit, each lap was 22.81 kilometers, 14.17 miles.
Some reports and records suggest this car ran—and won—the Marathon de la Route using Porsche’s new Sportomatic transmission. But co-driver/winner Herbert Linge confirmed the car ran with a reinforced five-speed manual gearbox.
CHAPTER 2
THE FIRST GENERATION CONTINUES 1970–1977
1970-1971 911T
1970-1971 911T
1970-1971 911E
1972-1973 911S
1973 CARRERA RS
1973 CARRERA 2.8 RSR
1974 CARRERA 3.0 RSR
1974-1975 911
1975-1977 TURBO
1976 912 E
1976-1977 934 AND 935
While Porsche’s experimental staff worked on the Typ 1966 911 replacement, production engineers and designers moved forward with the C series for model year 1970. Automakers throughout the world struggled to control hydrocarbon emissions, and Paul Hensler’s staff designed a new series of 2.2-liter engines to address these needs. They enlarged bore from 80mm to 84, increasing overall displacement from 1,991cc to 2,195 (from 121.5 to 133.9 cubic inches). The black fan–shrouded T now developed 125 horsepower DIN (142 SAE); the green-shrouded E produced 155 horsepower DIN (175 SAE), and the red-shrouded S turned out 180 DIN, 200 SAE horsepower.
In Zuffenhausen, as the company began manufacturing its 1970 models, it completed construction of its new 160,000-square-foot (14,864-square-meter) assembly plant, paint shop, and interior trim facility. Porsche offered nine standard exterior colors, and the new paint shop made custom work possible. Dealers in California often ordered cars in special colors on speculation. Their gambles paid off, and these automobiles attracted high-visibility e
ntertainers and athletes. The company liked seeing these colors as they left the factory; over time, Porsche added them to options catalogs, inviting dealers to submit orders for personalized cars.
1970 911 S 2.4 Tour de France
It was the lightest 911 to that time, weighing 780 kilograms, 1,716 pounds. Porsche quoted the top speed at 243 kilometers (152 miles) per hour.
The value of the deutsche mark rose during the D series 1971 model year, trading at DM 3.64 to the dollar at the beginning of the calendar year and 3.27 at year-end. This pushed up prices in the United States and slowed demand. Zuffenhausen cut production from 70 cars a day to 60. This cut dropped annual assembly figures to their lowest level in five years, 11,715 cars. As the last battalions of engineers and designers moved from Zuffenhausen into their new offices and studios at Weissach, their mood was subdued.
The Targa weighed 1,020 kilograms, 2,244 pounds. It sold for 21,911DM ($6,003) at the factory. The company manufactured 2,545 Targas and about 6,544 coupes.
For model year 1970, Porsche introduced a new 2.2-liter 2,195cc (133.9-cubic-inch) engine, the Typ 911/03. This T version developed 125 horsepower at 5,800 rpm.
Ferry Porsche was an excellent steward of his company’s finances and production. The 1970–1971 price increases American customers experienced resulted from currency exchanges, not poor management. But where Ferry had been cautious, his nephew Ferdinand Piëch had been less so, treating the Racing Department as if it had endless reserves. His 911Rs, 906s, 908s, 909s, 910s, and 917s had won countless races and successive world championships, bringing acclaim to the company.
F. A. Porsche had benefited from being Ferry’s son, a position that allowed him to deliver an idea and have it approved. Ferdinand Piëch, as nephew, had always held out for the highest quality pieces and workmanship, even when the difference between best and excellent was minimal but at a cost of five or ten times more. His Racing Department routinely built new race cars from one event to the next, while other competitors overhauled last week’s winner. He brought in engineers like Norbert Singer, Tilman Brodbeck, and many others for their expertise in aerodynamics and other specialties.
His 917s in 1969 and 1970 were born of anxiety inside Volkswagen. VW had watched sales of its air-cooled Beetle fall from previous records; it worried about the future appeal of air-cooled engine power. VW offered to underwrite any future racing program Porsche undertook, so long as it continued with air cooling, and it put no ceiling on the costs. The indomitable 917s proved for all time the power and reliability of air-cooled engines, bringing additional championships to Porsche, even as VW spent millions of deutsche marks.
Porsche provided four ventilated disc brakes on the T series. A new top on the Targa was lighter and folded more easily for storage.
These extraordinary investments, as well as regular arrivals from the Porsche and Piëch families at factory doors, looking for jobs in the family company, put Ferry Porsche and his sister Louise Piëch at increasing odds. The Supervisory Board included 60-year-old Ferry; his son F. A. Porsche, then 34; Ferdinand Piëch, 33; his younger brother Michael, 28; and Porsche’s chief financial officer, Heinz Branitzki, 41. F. A.’s younger brother Peter, then 29, had joined the company in 1963. By 1970, while not yet a board member, he was head of production.
In October 1970, Ferry called a meeting at the family compound in Zell am See, Austria. He hoped to broker a peace among the many individuals and ideas he had listened to in the previous year. It did not go well, and within days, members of both families agreed to vacate their jobs within the company and to hire qualified outside professionals to replace them. Ferry alone remained as chairman of the Supervisory Board.
The transition occurred gradually, and it benefited family members financially. However, it transformed the company, even as it buried animosities that were to surface decades later. Porsche evolved from a family-run company into a limited-liability corporation. If that decision was the first to set in place profound effects, the second came when the supervisory board rehired engineer Ernst Fuhrmann as purchasing and production chief.
Fuhrmann had been a design engineer at Porsche in the 1950s. He had created the Typ 547 Carrera four-cam engine. These power plants delivered to Porsche many of its early outright competition victories. When the board passed him over for a promotion he believed he deserved, he left in 1956 to join Goetze, a piston ring and bearing maker. But in early 1971, he quit Goetze in a dispute over management duties.
Piëch and Helmuth Bott visited Fuhrmann at his home in Teufenbach, Austria, and asked him to return to Porsche. “They showed me designs for the new cars,” Fuhrmann explained in an interview in 1991. “I had nothing else to do. I should say, the position was very simple and easy to handle.”
By September 1971, Fuhrmann was in charge of all things technical at Weissach. He and the board elevated Bott to head of development, design, and testing. Fuhrmann arrived with work well along on the “next” 911, the three-seat Typ 1966 mid-engine car. A month later, management changes at VW killed the project. Development funds to finish the Typ 1966, set aside out of Weissach’s profits on its work for VW, dried up.
1970 911 ST Monte Carlo Rally
Björn Waldegård and co-driver Lars Helmers drove this car to first overall in the 1970 Monte Carlo Rally. It was their second win and the third overall for Porsche’s 911.
“But that was another thing that complicated things,” Fuhrmann continued. “The successor to the nine-eleven was already along. The sales people wanted a new car.” The board had planned to end 911 production in 1973.
“Overnight everything disappeared,” Tony Lapine explained. “The next day it was as if these projects never had existed. All the drawings, the notes, the papers. Mr. Piëch’s prototype engine. I heard it was cut up.” Weissach had no work. Fuhrmann had no successor to the 911. And the last of the Porsche and Piëch family members left the company. “And then we had a hell of a job to do,” Lapine said, “to keep this place going.”
In the midst of corporate and family drama, production for 1972 model year cars continued. The 1976 Clean Air Act required automobiles sold in the United States starting in 1976 to emit 90 percent fewer hydrocarbons than 1971 levels. Manufacturers concluded that the only way to achieve these reductions was to use catalytic converters. These devices burned the already hot engine exhaust, baking the unburned emissions before they reached the atmosphere. Tetraethyl lead, the gasoline additive that increased octane ratings to provide higher performance, killed the heating elements within converters. In the early 1970s, automakers began redesigning engines to operate on lead-free fuels.
Porsche engineers recognized that their short-stroke, large-bore, high-rpm engines developed substantial horsepower but produced dirtier exhaust. Small bores coupled to longer strokes combusted fuels more fully, meeting new emission standards more easily. They also provided greater torque at lower engine speeds, a help for Porsche drivers confronting stop-and-go traffic.
Porsche kept cylinder bore at 84mm but lengthened stroke from 66mm to 70.4mm. This brought overall displacement to 2,341cc, or 142.8 cubic inches. Marketing rounded this figure up to 2.4 liters. To simplify manufacture and to reduce costs, Paul Hensler’s engineers designed a single aluminum cylinder head with one camshaft for T, E, and S engines. T models outside the United States retained their Zenith-Solex carburetors, fitted since introduction in 1968. However, engineers fuel-injected U.S.-bound T models, as well as all E and S versions. Monitoring cost effectiveness, Porsche carried over the same engines through the 1973 model year
The 911T now developed 140 horsepower DIN (157 SAE). Hensler’s engineers coaxed 165 horsepower DIN (185 SAE) from the E. The S, with 190 horsepower DIN (210 SAE), remained the racer’s favorite. On average, these figures represented a 10 percent increase over what 2.2-liter engines had produced. This was a noticeable difference for city drivers. The 2,341cc engine was one of Ferdinand Piëch’s last three production car contributions. Second was a new t
ransaxle; better acceleration had been his design, engineering, and performance target. The new gear ratios sacrificed top speed and slightly increased fuel consumption, but they made the cars more enjoyable and easier to drive for most buyers.
This sort of development was typical of Piëch’s near obsession with high standards of performance from employees and machines. Historian Karl Ludvigsen, who has thoroughly documented Porsche’s history, expressed it best: This new transaxle “reflected an almost reckless drive for perfection in Porsche cars, for only two years earlier the change had been made to a magnesium die-casting for the housing of the earlier trans-axle.” Piëch’s new transaxle added 20 pounds (9 kilograms) to the car’s weight. But he always was concerned about weight at the car’s extremes. For the 1972 model, he relocated the dry sump oil reservoir behind the passenger door, ahead of the rear wheel. Body engineers installed a filler cap and lid into the rear fender just behind the B-pillar.
1971 911E Coupe
Porsche introduced the 911 E series in the middle of the line up for model year 1969. Originally featuring a 2.0-liter injected engine, Porsche enlarged it to 2.2 liters for 1970. It developed 155 horsepower (DIN) at 6,200 rpm.