As many as seven rare and important racing Porsches from the company’s museum in Stuttgart, Germany, are expected to be seen and heard at the Shannons 2007 Phillip Island Classic historic race meeting in Australia.
Appropriately, the Victorian Historic Racing Register’s Phillip Island Classic from March 9–11, 2007, will be celebrated as a “Tribute to Porsche,” with up to 100 special Porsche road and racing cars spanning more than 50 years either on track or on display.
Some of the factory cars heading to the meeting will include Porsche’s first and only wholly-produced F1 car, the Type 804 which raced only in 1962.
American racer Dan Gurney gave Porsche its first F1 Grand Prix win in the French Grand Prix at Rouen and a week later beat Jim Clark’s Lotus to win again in front of 300,000 spectators at the Solitude circuit near Stuttgart.
After its brief F1 foray, Porsche concentrated its energies on sports car racing, developing a series of legendary 908 eight-cylinder sports cars in the late 1960s.
Two of the most famous of these racing 908s are also heading to the Shannons Phillip Island Classic—the 1969 Targa Florio-winning 908/02 Spyder that contributed to Porsche winning its first World Championship for Makes that year and the famous 903/03 Spyder that won the Nürburgring 1000 km and Targa Florio in 1970, delivering Porsche its second successive sports car title.
Other historic Porsche museum cars will include the 1977 Le Mans-winning 936/77 Spyder, the 1998 Le Mans-winning GT1, an ex-Carrera Panamericana 550 Spyder and a 356B Carrera GT.
