Porsche and Their 917 Star Wars Race Car

By Louis Galanos

On February 4th of this year I had to go to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Gainesville, Florida for my annual physical. While there I happened to run into an old Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) friend and we sat in the hospital waiting room swapping stories from the “good old days.”
I told my friend that since I retired I had been doing a bit of writing about the Daytona and Sebring races we both worked during the late ’60s and early ’70s. I mentioned that I had several stories published in Sports Car Digest and my story about the 1970 Daytona 24-Hour race was recently published in Panorama which is the in-house membership magazine for Porsche Club of America.
He asked, “Did I ever tell you about the futuristic race car that Porsche tested at Daytona in late
1969?” I told him I was aware that John Wyer tested some new Gulf Porsche 917s at Daytona about that time but I had heard of nothing futuristic.
He said; “Come to my place in Ocala next weekend and I will tell you my story and give you a photo of the car.” I did, and this is his story in his own words:
Sometime in early November of 1969 I got a call from “Penny” Pennington Chief of Flags for Central Florida Region/SCCA. He said that the Daytona track had been rented by Porsche for some testing prior to the Daytona 24 in late January and needed a handful of corner workers for the infield course. They were going to pay workers $50 a day, which was $50 more than we ever got working SCCA sanctioned events.
I jumped at the chance to do this mainly because I loved Porsche race cars. I didn’t tell Penny that I would have worked for free, I just wanted to be there. I arrived early on the scheduled first day of testing and went immediately to the garage area where I came across the John Wyer Gulf team of Porsche 917s all decked out in orange and blue Gulf Oil livery.
To my surprise there was another Porsche team there that I had not heard of before and they also were testing a Porsche 917. The car was painted red and white and had the word “Austria” painted in big letters on the front of the car.
During the first couple of days of testing things went well for all the cars with the new Kurzheck (short tail) bodies providing plenty of down force on the 31 degree NASCAR high banks and lap time records were being broken almost every day. I heard from some of the Porsche mechanics that speeds on the high banks were over 353 kilometers per hour. Remembering my old Army conversion tables I quickly estimated that meant over 220 mph.
When I was in the Army and stationed in Germany in the ’60s I picked up enough German to converse with the Porsche mechanics at Daytona and made friends with a fellow I call Fritz. He was one of the mechanics for the Porsche Austria team.
After practice one day I took Fritz and showed him around Daytona, the beach scene and other attractions. He was amazed that we could actually drive on the beach and after the 50-cent tour of Daytona we went for dinner at the San Remo Restaurant in South Daytona. The place was run by the Levetto family and they were well known in the racing community and the sons, Mario and Guido, had raced in the Daytona 24-Hour several times.
On the next to the last day of testing we again had dinner at the San Remo when Fritz told me to make sure to arrive early tomorrow at the track and go directly to the Porsche Austria garages. When I asked why, he said; “Sie werden sehen, sie werden sehen,” which meant, “You will see, you will see.”
I did as directed and early the next morning parked myself near the Porsche garages. The garage doors were down but you could hear people inside all the garages getting cars ready for the last day of testing.
As if on cue at exactly 9 a.m. one of the garage doors came up and a red and white Porsche Austria 917 began to come through the door. However it was not the car we had seen in testing but a duplicate 917 with a large letter “T” painted on the side and “XP” in smaller letters painted next to the “T”.
As more of the car came through the garage door we noticed it was being rolled out on a low wooden dolly and the car had no wheels or tires or an opening for them. Mechanics were pushing the car toward their place on pit road and when my friend Fritz saw me he waved, nodded toward the car he was pushing and winked.
We followed the car and the mechanics toward pit road and only then did I notice that there were several men in white lab coats following this entourage and wheeling along several pieces of electronic-looking machinery.
Once on pit road and in front of their pit box the mechanics stopped pushing and locked the dolly wheels in place and stepped back from the car. Almost immediately the men in white lab coats stepped in and opened up the back cover of the car to expose the engine bay.
When the cover went up you could almost hear an audible gasp from the small assembly of Speedway officials and onlookers who were there that chilly November morning. There was no engine in the engine bay. All that we could see was what looked like an irregular black box about half the size of a normal Porsche engine. Protruding from it were several wiring harnesses that went to the tubular frame at the rear of the car and into smaller black boxes. The larger black box had a fair-sized Porsche logo on top of it.
For some reason it got deathly quiet as we watched the men in the white lab coats plug in their machines to a place on the right side of the larger black box sitting where an internal combustion engine would normally reside. If it wasn’t so quiet we would have certainly missed the humming sound that started up from the engine bay and increased in pitch.
Then, like something out of a science fiction movie, the race car began to lift off of the dolly by no more than a couple of inches. The mechanics then stepped in, unlocked the dolly wheels and pulled the dolly from underneath the car leaving it hovering above the oil-stained concrete with nothing supporting it. Years later when I saw the movie Star Wars the scene with the landspeeder reminded me of what I had witnessed at Daytona in November of 1969. I think George Lucas must have known about this Porsche and that gave him his inspiration for the landspeeder.
As we stood there gawking in amazement into this scene stepped British driver, Vic Elford, with driving suit on and helmet in hand. The lab coated fellows lowered the engine bay hood and someone shouted that all corner workers must get to their posts for testing was about to commence.

Porsche and Their 917 Star Wars Race Car Page Two

I took off running for turn three also known as the International Horseshoe. Half way there it dawned on me that I was so amazed at what I witnessed that I failed to take any photos of the car. In retrospect I don’t think anyone else there that morning did either.
Testing started about 15 minutes later and both teams were present with as many as four cars at a time on the track. The new “Star Wars” Porsche would come out, run a few laps then pit, run a few laps then pit.
All of us on the corner that day went back and forth on what kind of car was this new Porsche Austria racer. Was it a hover car, electric car or an atomic-powered car? Regardless of what it was it really had us worried because every time it passed our position it didn’t emit a sound. It was totally silent. All of us began having nightmares of a Daytona 24 or Sebring 12 without the sounds of Ferrari, Matra or Porsche engines. Were we witnessing the end of auto racing? Who would want to go to a car race if all the cars were silent?
Testing continued throughout the day and because we were short staffed on the turn I didn’t get a chance to go back to the pits to see what was happening. As the day progressed and the time for testing wound down the new “Star Wars” Porsche began to stay out longer and go faster. At one point it even passed one of the Gulf Porsches on the high banks. When we saw this several of us pulled out our stop watches and began to time the cars.

It was obvious things were getting a little competitive between the two teams and speeds increased as lap times diminished. On one lap the new Porsche Austria “T” car stayed glued to the bumper of Pedro Rodriguez’s Gulf 917 through the entire infield and once through turn six and onto the high banks the “T” car didn’t just walk away from the Gulf 917 but rocketed away with an amazing burst of speed.
We all figured that Vic “Quick Vic” Elford was tired of playing with the Gulf cars and decided to show them what this new car could do. Our stop watches showed incredible lap times for the car and we all figured the car had to be doing at least 300 mph on the high banks to get such short lap times on the 3.81 mile course.
After the testing session ended I got volunteered to pick up all the safety equipment and never made it back to the garages or had a chance to talk to Fritz about what we had all witnessed.
Two months later all the usual suspects were back for the running of the 1970 24-Hours of Daytona and I was back as a corner worker. On one of my tours of the garage area during the first day of practice I came across Fritz and we greeted each other warmly.
When I brought up the subject of the amazing Porsche we had seen just weeks earlier he turned so pale I thought he was going to faint. Reverting to his native German he said; “Ich kann nicht mit dir reden darüber!” or “I can’t talk to you about that!”
“Why not?” I exclaimed. I reached into my pocket to show him a 5×7 photo I took of the car at turn three and told him I wanted to get Vic Elford to autograph the photo for me.
He grabbed me by the elbow and directed me to one of the empty garages nearby. Speaking in a hushed voice he said; “That picture will get you in a lot of trouble. Important people from the oil industry, car industry and several governments pressured and then paid off Porsche to cancel the project and then destroy the prototype racer. All the Porsche mechanics and engineers were given huge bonuses and threatened with dismissal or worse if they ever spoke about this to anyone.
Like a light bulb going off in my head I realized what he was referring to. A car that didn’t need gas, oil, brakes or tires was a direct threat to all the industries that made them and the millions who worked in them. Plus the loss of gasoline tax revenues could result in a recession or a depression in those countries that depended heavily on them. Economic collapse and political turmoil would ensue and could bring down governments.
I stood there for what seemed like a long time staring into his eyes then just nodded in understanding. I think Fritz realized a sigh of relief at that moment.
Finally I asked; “Can you at least tell me what made that car go?” He stared at me for a long minute then looked to his left, then right. He then leaned in close to my ear and said, “Anti-gravity.”
He straightened and took from my hand the 5×7 photo I had of the car and tore it into many small pieces and put his finger up to his lips in a keep quiet gesture. I never spoke to him again about it and on the first of April of last year he passed away at the age of 68. I will always remember him and the secret we shared for so many years.
During the telling of my friend’s story I refrained from interrupting him with the dozens of questions that were popping up in my mind. When he finished he looked at me intently expecting some sort of response. All I did was asked if I could see the photo he promised to show me.
He got up and went into the back room of his house where he had his office. He returned with a manila envelope which contained a 8×10 color photo of the car. I examined the photo carefully and then looked at him with raised eyebrows while pointing to the photo. He said, “Not Photoshopped or altered in any way.”
I then asked if I could see the negative. He said, “Follow me” and we went into his office where he had a very large gun safe inside a closet. He entered the combination to the safe and opened the door. Inside were a number of hand guns plus an AK-47, M2 Carbine, shotguns and assorted military looking rifles.
He was looking for something on the top shelf of the safe among the boxes of ammunition and retrieved a plain white business envelope which he handed to me. He also handed me a magnifying glass from his desk. Inside the envelope was a single 35 mm Kodak color negative strip containing four negatives. I examined all of the negatives carefully and all of them showed the Porsche Austria “T” car and the best of them was the negative for the photo he gave me.
He said, “See if your editor will publish my story and try to get him to publish it on the first of April in memory of the day that Fritz died. I said, “I will give it a try.”

[Source: Louis Galanos]