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There were plenty of 917's in the garage. Short tails, long tails, Mark Donohue's monstrous 917-30 Can-Am machine and even the Pink Pig was shipped over from the Porsche museum in Stuttgart. The Pink Pig was a stubby 917 that was painted in an unusual pink hue and then marked up as if a butcher was getting ready to cut it up.

I learned over the weekend from former Porsche factory driver Vic Elford that the Pink Pig was actually designed to be a test bed for what would later become the 917-10 and 917-30 Can-Am cars. Hence the reason for it's stubby shape compared to other 917 coupes. Elford also told me that at the time the drivers were not told by Porsche what the manufacturer's intentions were for the Pink Pig. He said it was much later that he learned of the companies plans.

Needless to say those two Can-Am machines turned out to be two of the most dominant cars in the history of racing. The 917-30 especially was an incredible piece pumping out somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 horsepower depending on who you talk to. Donohue used it to win the 1973 Can-Am Championship and even set a closed course speed record with it at Talladega at over 221 mph.

A beautifully maintained 917-10 that was campaigned by Brumos Porsche and driven by Hurley Haywood was also there. So were Hurley and George Follmer, who won the Can-Am Championship for Roger Penske in a 917-10 in 1972.

The 956 was a radical design when it debuted in the early 1980's. It quickly put Porsche in the winners circle and did so quite regularly, especially at Le Mans. Chassis 956-001 was there, painted in it's Rothman's livery. Hard to find a better example then the original. Just another example of the incredible quality of the cars that were on display at Porsche Rennsport 3.

The 962 followed the 956 onto the race track. The 956 was campaigned mainly in Group C competition. The 962 was designed for battle here in the U.S. in the very popular and highly competitive IMSA CAMEL GT Series. Both designs were incredibly fast and remarkably reliable. That combination allowed Porsche to rack up quite a collection of winners trophies from the most famous road courses in the world.
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The garage area at Daytona was full of some of the finest 956 and 962's to ever carry the Porsche badge. For sports car racing fans who witnessed this era of competition, most of the cars were more easily recognizable by their paint schemes then which was a 956 or a 962. There were a handful of Rothmans cars, a couple of Jagermeister entries, Miller machines that had been raced by the Andretti's and the late Bob Wollek. A.J. Foyt's Copenhagen backed entry was there as well as the NEW MAN and REPSOL sponsored cars from Europe. American racing fans were very familiar with Bob Akin's COKE entry and Rob Dyson's Blaupunkt racer which were both in attendance along with a host of others. Al Holbert's famed LOWENBRAU backed #14 completed the gathering of spectacular machinery. It made for a dazzling display of color and history as they were all parked on the pit lane for Saturday's Concours.

There was plenty to do off of the track as well, including a model car contest. The highlight of this competition for me was a very creative NHRA spec Funny Car made out of a Porsche 928 body painted up in the BRUMOS Racing colors.

If you were thinking of buying a new Porsche there was a mobile dealership in the FAN ZONE area where you could check out the new GT- 2. Of course there was quite a bit of memorabilia to check out both old and new. Needless to say, there was more smoke pouring off of my credit card then there was off of some of the racing tires.

SEE THE RENNSPORT REUNION PHOTO ALBUM