Heritage · Porsche 917
“Finished. Thanks for staying together.”
1968 · The rule
Twenty-five cars
It began as an accounting decision by the rule-makers. In April 1968 the CSI lowered the number of cars needed to homologate a five-litre sports car from fifty to twenty-five, and Ferdinand Piëch — thirty-one years old, running development, spending money the company would only later admit to — decided Porsche would simply build them all. The decision fell in July 1968. The car was on the Geneva stand the following March, priced at DM 140’000: roughly ten 911s, and still a loss on every chassis.
The inspectors came in the spring and found three cars finished, eighteen half-built and seven in boxes. Porsche argued they would all be stripped for racing anyway; the CSI walked away. So on 20 April 1969 all twenty-five stood in line in the works courtyard, and Piëch invited the officials to drive whichever they liked. They declined, signed, and the 917 existed.
The hands
Three men, one gamble
The 917 had many fathers; three signatures matter most — the man who ordered it built, the man who drew its engine, and the man who fixed its tail with sheet aluminium and tape.
Ferdinand Piëch
Head of development · the gamble
Read the 1968 rule change as an invitation, ordered twenty-five cars built at once, and spent money the company would only later admit to. The 917 is his answer to what Porsche was willing to risk.
Hans Mezger
Konstrukteur · the Type 912 flat-12
Drew the air-cooled 180-degree twelve — 520 PS in 1969, 1’100 turbocharged — and the car around it. The engine is why the 917 could be outlawed but never beaten.
John Horsman
J.W. Automotive · the Kurzheck
Read the dead flies on the bodywork at Zeltweg — no smears on the tail meant no airflow — and improvised the short tail overnight. The 917 K that came out of it won everything.
1969 to 1971 · The fix
The taped-up tail
The first 917 was fast and nearly undriveable. The long tail generated lift; Brian Redman called it “incredibly unstable, using all the road at speed”, and works drivers quietly preferred the old 908. The answer came not from the wind tunnel but from an observation at the Österreichring: John Horsman, John Wyer’s engineer, noticed the dead flies on the bodywork stopped short of the tail. The air never got there. A shorter, upswept tail was cut from aluminium sheet, taped on overnight — and the 917 K was born.
What followed was the most complete domination sports-car racing had seen. In 1970 Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood brought the red-and-white Salzburg K home through the rain for Porsche’s first outright Le Mans win. In 1971 the white Martini K of Helmut Marko and Gijs van Lennep — its frame in magnesium — covered 5’335 kilometres at an average of 222 km/h, a distance no car would beat for thirty-nine years. Down the Mulsanne, the long-tail LH was timed at 386 km/h.
1971
13 June 1971
The distance record
Marko and van Lennep’s magnesium-framed K covers a distance no Le Mans winner will match until 2010. The car is retired on the spot.
Thirty-nine years untouched — the deepest engineering flex in the file.
The myth
Blue and orange
The factory’s racing was run through John Wyer’s Gulf-backed team, and the pale blue and orange of Gulf Oil became the colour the car is remembered in — helped by a film. Steve McQueen had wanted to race Le Mans himself in 1970; the insurers said no, so he filmed it instead. Solar Productions leased Jo Siffert’s 917-024, bought 917-022 outright, and shot “Le Mans” in and around the 1970 race. The film lost money, McQueen left the project bruised — and the car got the most valuable advertisement in motorsport history.
The market took fifty years to catch up. Brian Redman bought the hero car for 15’000 dollars in 1975. The same chassis made 1.32 million in 2000, entered the Seinfeld collection, and in January 2025 drew a bid of 25 million dollars at Kissimmee — declined, then settled privately in the same range. Its sister film car, 024, slept over two decades in a warehouse outside Paris before selling for 14.08 million in 2017: still the most valuable Porsche ever sold at auction.
On the record
Milestones, on a line
The moments that set the 917's standing. Use the arrows, and hover a point to read what happened.
March 1969
Geneva reveal
Eight months after the decision, the 917 stands at the Geneva Salon — at a price that does not begin to cover the car.
The gamble is public: a grid of prototypes built to a loophole.
14 June 1970
Le Mans, won
In pouring rain the red-and-white Salzburg 917 K takes Porsche’s first outright Le Mans victory — 343 laps, 4’607 km.
The win the whole programme was built for; the winning car never sold.
13 June 1971
The distance record
Marko and van Lennep’s magnesium-framed K covers a distance no Le Mans winner will match until 2010. The car is retired on the spot.
Thirty-nine years untouched — the deepest engineering flex in the file.
June 1971
“Le Mans” premieres
The film loses money on release — and fixes the 917 in Gulf blue and orange in the public imagination for good.
Fifty years on, film provenance is the strongest value driver money can actually buy — the winners never trade.
1973
Can-Am, crushed
Donohue wins the last six rounds; McLaren has already left. After a fuel rule ends the turbos, the series itself folds.
The only car to have killed a championship by winning it.
18 August 2017
The $14M Porsche
The ex-Siffert film car, found in a Paris warehouse after two decades, sells for $14.08M — the most ever paid for a Porsche at auction.
The record that still stands; provenance did all the lifting.
18 January 2025
$25 million, declined
Bidding on 917-022 reaches $25M; Seinfeld lets it fail, then sells privately “in the $25 million range”.
The ceiling of the Porsche market, set and not yet cleared.
