Thank Frankel it's Friday: racing a Porsche 904 at Le Mans was one of my greatest experiences
One of the my more poignant moments at last year’s Revival was wandering through the paddock and seeing a little red Porsche 904 with the rest of the TT competitors. Most of me was glad that mid-engined cars had been re-admitted to the TT but there remained a small, unworthy part of my brain that was, frankly, jealous. For a few years back, this very car was one I used to race quite a lot.
And as anyone who’s driven one will tell you, a 904 is just about the sweetest thing on wheels. It’s gorgeous of course, perhaps the cleanest and purest of all Porsche shapes, but believe me, its beauty lies more than skin-deep. The first time I ever drove it was at a drenched Spa and despite its 2-litre engine producing no more than 200bhp, it made a mockery of Cobras, E-types, at least one Bizzarrini and not a few GT40s.
The chief reason it looks so incredible is that it was done in a rush. Porsche’s foray into Formula 1 in the early 1960s had not yielded the expected results so now it would return to what it knew best: sports car racing. The only problem being that Porsche already had its hands quite full designing a handy device that would become known as the 911. And whatever it built, it would need to create 100 examples for homologation purposes, so while it was a racing car pure and simple, it would have to make it at least technically road legal. The design job went to Ferdinand Alexander ‘Butzi’ Porsche and there simply wasn’t time for it to be pushed and pulled about thereafter in committees. What he designed was what got built, which is why it was his favourite car.
In engineering terms it was a revolution for Porsche. The structure was not the complex latticework of tubes upon which Porsche had been basing its race cars since the 1956 550A and would continue to do so into the 1980s, but something closer to a baking tray. Porsche designed two steel box sections to run longitudinally under the car, joined by cross members to form a basic structure that weighed just 54kg, yet was stiffer even than the 1962 F1 car. But the clever bit was to bond that glass fibre body to the chassis, increasing its rigidity still further. The result was sufficiently stiff and quite exceptionally light: in full 24 hour trim this very car weighed in at Le Mans in 1964 at 722kg. Driven by double Targa Florio winner Herbie Muller, it came 11th, one of five production 904s to take the start, every one of which saw the finish.
The 904s would probably have done better still if they’d had the engine for which they were designed. The plan was always that they’d carry the new flat-six under their elegant rear cowls, but its slow development for the 911 meant Porsche’s old, fiendishly complex four cam flat-four would be used instead. The six would finally arrive – and the factory even raced the 904 with an F1-derived flat-eight – but only for the end of production. Finally, at each corner sat not the struts, semi-trailing arms nor even swing axles of more traditional Porsches, but double wishbones in purest racing fashion.
In the sub 2-litre category of the GT championship, the Simca-Abarths and Alfa TZ1s were reduced to walk on parts. A 904 won the 1964 Targa Florio outright, humbling the Cobras and Ferrari GTOs, and while the following year it had to give best to a 3-litre factory Ferrari prototype driven by local legend Nino Vaccarella, 904s filled every other place down to fifth.
When I used to drive it, it still had its flat-four motor, but neatly tucked up in bed on a palette under plastic sheeting. In the car was a full race flat-six, because it was more powerful (you’d struggle to get much more than 180bhp from the four), far cheaper and massively easier to maintain.
And all I can tell you about driving it was that it made you feel invincible. It was actually never that quick in a straight line, but its apex speed even on old Dunlop Crossplies was simply astounding and its brakes little less than ridiculous. If you could keep the car in front anywhere near down the straight, you’d just wait until you saw its brake lights and you’d be past before even thinking about slowing down yourself. And for an early mid-engined car, it was entirely viceless. In the dry it always wanted to yaw gently around its axis, in the wet occasions where the steering wheel was actually pointing in the same direction as the car seemed quite rare. Yet it was so tolerant not even I could persuade it to bite back. The only thing wrong with it was its 901 dogleg five-speed gearbox which was both slow in action and horrid in engagement.
My greatest moment in the little red beauty came at the 2012 Le Mans Classic. Lining up opposite the 904 on the grid, doing the famed ‘Le Mans start’ and then racing it on and off for the weekend remains up there among my greatest motoring experiences. Most vividly I recall howling down the track and over the blind brows between Mulsanne and Indianapolis at something over 150mph in the middle of the night, thinking that, a few years earlier, Herbie Muller would have done exactly this in exactly this car in the race for real. Where I come from, experiences don’t get much more special than that.