Porcine payback

Sir,

The Porsche 917 ‘Pink Pig’ story was fun, but there’s a bit more to it…

As your story states, there was a third totally different body design being worked on in the Porsche Design Studio which was run by Anton ‘Tony’ Lapine. The car was looking good and was performing well in the wind tunnel, but Dr Piech decided that another variation was too much, and since he was very taken with Choulet’s work, he stopped the Studio car.

Tony Lapine and his number two, Australian designer Dick Soderberg, got Piech to agree that since the Studio had lost its project it would have responsibility for the graphic schemes on all the Le Mans cars, with no interference from anyone else in the company! The process, with Piech’s signed approval, allowed the Studio to get its own back – hence the ‘Pink Pig’ scheme which was worked on by Dick and Dawson Sellar. Apparently the hilarity within the Studio went on for months.

Interestingly Dawson was also responsible for the ‘Playing Card’ 908s that he and I drove down to Sicily to watch in the Targa Florio.

Peter Stevens, Wetheringsett, Suffolk