Powered by Porsche - The Alternative Race Cars

Powered by Porsche - The Alternative Race Cars by Book

Powered by Porsche, Alternative Race Cars
Weight 2.8kg by Roy Smith
With over eight hundred images, many of them never previously published, this is a comprehensive study of Porsche engines fitted in chassis which did not originate from the Weissach factory. There is a little back-story to start with, featuring the Lohner Mixte, Auto Union and Cisitalia projects with which the young engineer was involved before founding his eponymous company. Things really take off in the early 1950s, when complete Porsche cars were in short supply so enterprising engineers took Porsche engines and built their own specials, often looking like the factory racers but also put the power units in Cooper, Lotus and other chassis. Moving through the 60s, things quieten down a little but then from the 70s to the present day we see a huge variety of machines. Again, there are cars closely related to the works machines, with the likes of Kremer and Joest giving their own take on the 935 and numerous firms later building variants of the 962. We see silhouette IMSA cars, and the more recent Daytona prototypes too. Most of the subject matter is sports cars, but there is a section on single seaters in various formulae, there are drag racers, rally cars, rally-raid machines, aircraft and even power boats. Expensive, but very, very interesting. We’ve learned of many machines we never knew existed just flicking through for a few minutes.