Mecum brings Le Mans class-winning Porsche 934 to auction

This Kremer Porsche 934 came seventh overall and won the GT class in the 1977 Le Mans 24 Hours. It’s one of the jewels at Mecum’s Kissimmee auction, this January 18^th.

The 934 – based on the 911’s 930 Turbo road car – was Porsche’s most popular customer race car in the late seventies. Especially in the US, it laid down the law in its classes in Trans Am and IMSA. Developed as a Group 4 car, it had to remain much closer to the production car than the more liberal 935 Group 5 Porsches. Yet, when Porsche unveiled the 934 in 1986, the factory offered a kit allowing privateers to upgrade a 934 to a 935. Hence, many 934s led complicated lives.

Remove weight, add ballast

Due to a change in regulations, the 934 had to be raced in Europe with a 1120-kilo weight, barely 20 kilos under the weight of the road car. Porsche did put it on diet, removing 40 kilos altogether, only to add ballast in more convenient places to help improve road-holding. But the 934 kept, for instance, the electrically operated windows of the road car. Porsche would sell a 934 to clients for 97,000 Deutsche Mark. For that money, you got a four-speed manual, turbocharged 3-litre flat-six, pushing out 485 hp at around 7000 rpm.

Kremer Porsche

1976 brought no luck for the 934s entered at Le Mans, and their class was one by one of the older, naturally-aspirated Carrera RSRs. For 1977, Cologne-based Kremer Porsche built up a new 934 on a bare shell they got from Porsche. This car, chassis #006 00022, took a win in its debut race at Hockenheim, in famous green Vaillant livery in the hands of the no-less famous Bob Wollek.

Class win

Wollek would also lead the team at Le Mans in 1977, with the car now redecorated in ‘Burton of London’ white and blue, racing as Burton Kremer. Frenchman Philippe Gurdijan – later the boss of the Le Castellet track – and ‘Steve’, a nom de plume that either refers to French driver Didier Jaumont or Belgian Jean-Pierre Wielemans. They drove an excellent race, finishing seventh overall in a race that was famously won by Hurley Haywood, Jacky Ickx and Jürgen Barth in a Porsche 936 that limped home, one cylinder down. The 934 won the GT class, an impressive feat, and only bested by the overall win of the 935 K3 at Le Mans in 1979, another Kremer feat.

Wagenpass

For the rest of 1977, and up to 1980, the 934 raced in different series, including the world endurance championship and the German DRM series. In one of these events, it suffered damage in a crash. After moving to Japan, and later back to Europe, Kremer restored #006 00022 back to how it was at Le Mans in 1977. In 2007, a period of US ownership started.

Incredibly, the original ‘Wagenpass’, the German racing passport, is still with the car, as are plenty of historical pictures.

Rare

Often, 934s were upgraded to 935 in-period. Which makes an authentic, unaltered Porsche 934 all the rarer these days. And with a class win at Le Mans to boast on top of it all, Mecum’s estimate of $ 1.5 to $ 1.85 million seems like a very correct interpretation of its historic significance.

More on the car here.