The beast from the east: Nissan R89C

Taken from Motor Sport, January 2022

At the end of a year in which Honda of Japan had shone so brightly in Formula 1, let’s spool back some 30 years to the Group C World Sportscar Championship contender fielded then by rival major Japanese manufacturer, Nissan.

The name Nissan is derived from Nihon Sangyo, meaning somewhat disappointingly just ‘Japan industry’. Before World War 2 the Nissan Group absorbed DAT, making motor cars under the Datsun brand.

The wider Group’s wartime activities in support of the Japanese military left it with a tainted image, and so its cars were marketed under the Datsun brand name until a rather more forward-thinking management decreed resurrection of the Nissan title across global export markets from 1981. That growth in Japanese industrial confidence and ambition into the 1980s helped the nation’s three major motor manufacturers, Mazda, Toyota and Nissan, follow Honda’s lead in recognising the promotional possibilities attached to top-level racing. The industry had become world leaders in producing reliable, dependable passenger cars – but most were, in essence, pretty grey porridge.

Around the same time that competitive stirrings were afflicting the loins of high-ranking Japanese motor industry executives, the FIA had introduced its fuel consumption-conscious Group C endurance racing category, contesting the revived World Sportscar Championship (widely known as the WSC).

Nissan supplied engines to private teams contesting Japanese national championship races in 1982-84. In 1983 Hoshino Racing bought a March 83G chassis to carry Nissan’s developing four-cylinder turbocharged engine. Meanwhile, in the USA, long-time Datsun SCCA racing exponent Don Devendorf’s Electramotive had in-house engineer John Knepp develop a 3-litre Nissan V6 ZX production engine for both IMSA and Group C racing. The IMSA unit retained an iron stock block while for Group C a 60-degree V6 aluminium block was created. With twin turbochargers it was capable of producing around 1000bhp.

in the pits at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1989 — In the pits at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1989

Nissan in Japan had founded Nismo (Nissan Motorsports) directed by Yasuharu Namba to race works cars between 1984 and a maiden entry in the WSC at Fuji in 1985. Three new March 85G chassis were acquired, two carrying the new alloy engine, and it was this pair of 3-litre March-Nissans which appeared in that race. Drivers Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Masahiro Hasemi set the fastest two times in first practice before the two works Rothmans Porsches took a grip. Apparently divine intervention then caused the Fuji circuit to be rocked by earthquakes and a monsoon rainstorm. The European teams deemed conditions too unsafe on their Goodyear and Dunlop tyres and withdrew pre-race, leaving the Bridgestone-shod March-Nissans to win for Nismo, Hoshino lapping the entire field.

Four new March 86Gs were bought for 1986, Nismo running three of them with the V6 turbo engine. One works car and an older 85G were entered for Le Mans that year and experienced British team manager Keith Greene was hired to direct operations. Sadly this pilot Nissan Le Mans operation proved farcical, with a cultural clash between the Japanese driver/management faction and its British counterparts. The 86G broke its crankshaft after six hours, and the 85G limped home only 16th.

Nissan then built a new 3-litre 90-degree V8 engine for 1987, tailored to Group C in new March 87G chassis. Other than an entertaining proclivity towards igniting their cars during refuelling – a Jaguar mechanic remarking “Aah, they must be full now” as a Nissan mechanic flailed past with his overalls alight – the Japanese marque flopped again at Le Mans.

For 1988 the VEJ30 engine was abandoned, and specialist Yoshimasa Hayashi designed a fresh 3-litre, using the same 90-degree V8 layout and 66mm stroke to retain the same crankshaft. At Le Mans both cars’ engines failed almost simultaneously.

Cabin-liveried R89C in the 1990 Suzuka WSC round

Nissan’s management still coveted Le Mans success. Group C regulations for 1989-90 initially decreed that any manufacturer wishing to compete at Le Mans also had to contest the WSC. Nissan approached Lola for all-new composite-chassised cars, the first becoming the Nissan R89C. Two completely separate racing operations were launched – both to use a new 3.5-litre VHR35 V8 engine with 77mm stroke crank. Nissan Motorsports Europe (NME) was based in Milton Keynes, run by Howard Marsden and Keith Greene, to concentrate upon the European FIA events. Nismo Japan contested the Japanese Championship and ran alongside NME in the Japanese WSC round re-homed at Suzuka.

At last Nissan had a sensible race programme, well engineered and well run, and although the R89/90Cs struggled with reliability through their first season, in 1990 Nissan would finish third in the FIA Teams’ Championship – but without a race win.

French team Courage ran an R89C at Le Mans 1990 with Hervé Regout, Costas Los and Alain Cudini driving, finishing down the field in 22nd

For 1991 Nissan closed the NME arm and concentrated its support on Devendorf’s Nissan Performance Technology Inc (NPTI) team in America – running both in-house-built NPT90/91 chassis and the R90C composite cars in the US IMSA Championship series. Nissan sorely wanted to return to Le Mans, but in response to rival-team protests against it doing so on a one-off guest-entry basis – ignoring other WSC rounds – the FIA refused.

So the 1991 Le Mans 24 Hours was run without Nissan entries – and Mazdaspeed scored the Japanese industry’s first win there. The fact that the ear-splitting little Wankel-engined Mazda pulled off that coup on a budget of barely £400,000 against the millions invested by Nissan simply added to the humiliation.

“The turbo kicked in and I nearly wiped out a bystander – the Lola boss”

Julian Bailey was one of Nissan’s 1989-90 team drivers, but recalls how “It could have begun really badly, because the first time I drove it in bare unbodied form in the car park at Lola’s, the turbo kicked in, took me by surprise, and I nearly wiped out a bystander – Eric Broadley, the Lola boss.

“They were a nice team to drive for, a great atmosphere, though we had a few issues with the car – especially that first year, ’89. The engine was fantastic, vast power, too much in fact for our cross-ply Dunlop tyres. One big change was to fit radials at the rear, cross-plies on the front, and that at last allowed us to cut wheelspin and put the power down. Compared to those Group C cars, F1 was easy.”

Nissan team manager Keith Greene – who passed away in 2022 – in conversation with Julian Bailey at Dijon-Prenois in 1989

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Through 1989 the new Lola-chassised R89Cs – four of which were built – proved very fast in a straight line but difficult to set up, and dogged by initially poor brakes until a change was made to carbon discs. The cars also had a habit of popping out their windscreen panels.

“I was the only one to take the Mulsanne kink absolutely flat, at 248mph”

The 1989 opening championship round at Suzuka featured Toshio Suzuki/Kazuyoshi Hoshino finishing fourth in Nismo’s March-Nissan R88C. Round 2 at Dijon-Prenois then had Julian Bailey/Mark Blundell finding their feet in endurance racing with their R89C, qualifying sixth – and at Le Mans, as Julian Bailey recalls: “The car’s aero worked really well; we had telemetry and I was the only one to take the Mulsanne kink absolutely flat, at 248mph… Scary! But the car gave some confidence apart from the brakes, a soft pedal at the end of the straight, and I punted Nielsen’s Jaguar up the back when the pedal just hit the stops, and then I locked up the rears. We had to pump the brakes with the left foot, and on that lap I just hadn’t. The team weren’t very happy.”

A first finish came at Jarama, Spain, Bailey/Blundell eighth, and at the Nürburgring team-mate Andrew Gilbert-Scott wrested the race lead from the normally dominant Saubers and ended his stint 30 seconds in the lead. Unfortunately the Nissan was running well over its fuel allowance and was forced to slow and fall back, finally running dry with three laps remaining. Then came the Donington Park round. Julian Bailey: “The Saubers had a bigger low-revving engine, more torque, and they just pulled away – but Mark Blundell and I led for a while before a tyre problem and we finished third there and I set fastest lap.”

At fast and fuel-thirsty Spa, NME opted for an economy chip in the R89C’s engine but Bailey/Blundell again placed third while they finished 12th in the final round in Mexico City.

Mark Blundell and Julian Bailey (in the car) were co-drivers in five of eight rounds in 1989’s WSC, with two podium finishes

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Into 1990, Keith Greene was ousted from NME, being replaced by Dave Price and Bob Bell from Sauber. The team ran two cars with much the same V8 engine in an updated R90C version of the Lola chassis. Kenny Acheson and Gianfranco Brancatelli took the second car with Martin Donnelly and Raul Boesel as occasional team-mates, while Bailey/Blundell retained the lead car.

Nismo Japan entered an R89C in the year’s opening round at Suzuka, Anders Olofsson/Masahiro Hasemi finishing third while thereafter NME flew Nissan’s banner. Fortunes had improved but like Jaguar they could only pick up crumbs from the Mercedes-Benz banquet. Wheel nuts fell off at Monza and Silverstone, but the now reliable V8 engine retained its fuel-thirstiness – having to finish most races with the boost wound right back.

For Le Mans 1990, Nissan’s effort was huge – running five cars, two R90Cs from NME, two prepared by US-based NPTI and one from Japan. Two semi-works R89Cs also appeared, one from Team Le Mans, the other from Yves Courage. Nissan logos appeared everywhere at La Sarthe, 21 drivers employed. Blundell qualified on pole using a ‘super-bomb’ engine which he thought “had its turbo waste-gate jam open”. Bailey/Blundell/Brancatelli led on Saturday evening until the latter smashed into Suzuki’s Toyota entering the Dunlop Curve. Brabham/Robinson/Daly in the NPTI car challenged for the lead before a fuel leak ruined them.

In other championship rounds, Bailey/Acheson finished seventh at Monza, third at Spa; Bailey/Blundell third at Dijon. At the Nürburgring Blundell drove solo to finish fifth, Brancatelli/Acheson ninth. Brancatelli/Acheson and Bailey/Blundell finished 4-6 at Donington, but at Montreal, Bailey led while Acheson hit a manhole cover which had became airborne, three following cars hitting it and leading to the race being red flagged. The Bailey/Blundell Nissan was second.

Mexico City brought the end of fuel-regulating Group C competition, and ironically Nissan Motorsport Europe’s most successful, and last, WSC race. When Schlesser/Baldi’s Mercedes was disqualified for having taken on 0.1 litres too much fuel, the sister car of Jochen Mass/Michael Schumacher was declared winner. The Germans had caught the Bailey/Blundell Nissan when it had been leading, before in the words of one report it “had proved absolutely lethal on its Dunlop wets” once the heavens opened in the last 15 laps, losing up to 15 seconds per lap. The sister R90C of Acheson/Brancatelli finished fourth.

Nissan’s board had decided to abandon European and WSC aspirations and concentrate upon Devendorf’s successful NPTI operation in IMSA. With Geoff Brabham, NPTI would win four consecutive IMSA GTP titles for the Japanese marque, 1988-91. Geoff recalls: “In 1989 our Nissan IMSA team went to Le Mans basically as a reconnaissance mission to learn. I drove for the European Nissan Team with my US team-mates. We were not their number one priority, but we did OK until the engine failed. The main thing in my mind was the brakes being terrible. At the end of the straight I was hard on them hoping to stop and the Mercedes, which won, came straight past on full noise before braking. I was not happy!

“In 1990 the US team prepared and ran the car. Nissan had three teams, European, Japanese and US, all run separately. We were unlucky as halfway through the race we were swapping the lead back and forth with the Jaguar – the US-run Jag funnily. It was like an IMSA race. Anyway, at that point we were OK on fuel and the Jag wasn’t, so we knew they had to slow down. But the fuel-tank bladder split and put us out. It was really disappointing as we could have been the first Japanese car to win, which would have been really big.

The year-old Courage R89C shipped 59 laps to the winning Jaguar at Le Mans in 1990

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“The Lola was not a good car. It did OK in the long-distance races but when I first started driving for Nissan it was a struggle as the chassis and aero were not good in the higher-downforce shorter races. It wasn’t until Nissan USA built its own chassis and aerodynamics that we started to win. Kas Kastner was the general manager and the link between the team and Nissan USA. Trevor Harris designed the chassis and was my race engineer, and John Caldwell built the engines. The US team operated on its own funded by Nissan USA.

“Actually the US GTP car had way more downforce than the Lola, but nowhere near the downforce of the Dan Gurney Toyotas in 1992/93 or the Peugeot I won Le Mans with in ’93. The dominant Nissan IMSA cars had great engines, good chassis and an awesome team. But aero-wise they were not as good as the designers tried to make out. The Toyota seriously kicked our butt in the end.”

A huge company with big racing ambitions, Nissan failed where Ford once succeeded, but in period its 1989 Nissan R89C was a spectacular new Group C challenger to Sauber-Mercedes, Jaguar and Porsche…

WINDSCREEN
One of the longest lead-time items on Group C closed-coupé cars – as on such classics as the Porsche 917 and Ferrari 512 of the 1970s – was always the windscreen moulding. Those used on the Nissan R89C reportedly proved problematic as body movement popped them from their seals

BODYWORK
Vacuum and heat-formed carbon/kevlar composite body designed by Lola/Nissan and developed in Cranfield Institute 1:3- scale wind tunnel testing

REAR WING
Centre-strut supported full-width rear wing overhung from rear of transmission casing – overall length of car 4800mm

TRANSMISSION
Hewland VGC five-speed and reverse transaxle gearbox beneath anchorage abutments above for inboard-mounted rear coil-spring/Koni low-pressure adjustable damper suspension units, pushrod operated from independent wishbone and link suspension below

ENGINE
Nissan VHR35 90-degree V8 32-valve 4-cam water-cooled engine with aluminium block and heads, Nikasil wet aluminium liners, steel crankshaft, titanium con-rods, Atsugi alloy pistons. Bore and stroke 85x77mm, displacing 3496cc. Semi-stressed as chassis member. 800bhp at 7600rpm and 2.2 bar turbo boost – max revs 9000

TURBOCHARGER
Engine induction via twin exhaust-driven IHI turbochargers, one slung outboard on each cylinder bank’s exhaust array

CHASSIS
Moulded kevlar and carbon composite monocoque with full underfloor ground-effect tunnels, designed by Paul Bailey, Lola Cars Ltd, Huntingdon, England

WHEELS & TYRES
Speedline 13.5x18in front wheels with Dunlop 18/320/6.50 tyres (front), 15x19in rear wheels with Dunlop 19/350/750 tyres. Initially cross-ply tyres all round, later cross-ply fronts/radial rears – then radials all round. Precise details varied from venue to venue

BRAKES
Original ventilated steel disc brakes proved inadequate at Le Mans particularly – replaced by Carbone Industrie 14.6in carbon discs with AP six-pot F1 calipers as used in 1990 Nissan R90C car variant

Porsche 956 & 962 face-off

Photography Marc Riccioni / Taken from Motor Sport, June 2022

These are none other than the first and last Porsches to win the Le Mans 24 Hours during the legendary Group C era. Not examples of those cars, but the actual cars. And this is the first time that Porsche has allowed them to be brought together and tested by a motor journalist. This, then, is quite an occasion. But there’s more here, even than that. You might expect two such famous racing cars to be grizzled warriors, veterans of dozens of fights that took place all over the world during the superb first six years of the Group C era. But they are not. In fact their race records are staggeringly short: for Porsche 956-002 did Le Mans in 1982 and, apart from one demonstration run by Derek Bell the following year, was then frozen in aspic for the next four decades. By comparison Porsche 962-006 was only a little busier: It did the Spa 1000Kms in 1986, where Bob Wollek and Jochen Mass were delayed by a puncture. It did the Fuji 1000Kms later that year where it retired with a transmission fault, then it did Le Mans in 1987 which it won. And that was that. Two cars with a grand total of four races and zero accidents between them.

Both cars are in their classic Rothmans liveries; the 956 has been untouched since its single outing at Le Mans

Marc Riccioni

Which means that what you see now, really, is what won Le Mans then. Had they done dozens of races thereafter, they’d have been pulled apart dozens of times too, gained engines, gearboxes, bits of bodywork and who knows what else that they’d never have had at their moment of greatest glory. But both cars won Le Mans and never raced again, which means they are time capsules.

How then is it that both appear perfectly preserved, with none of the physical evidence that would inevitably accrue on their surfaces after 24 hours of battle? For the 956, because it was going to the museum, it was decreed it needed to be visually perfect, so its blemishes were removed. For the 962 it was prepared for Le Mans in 1988, and therefore wore Shell Dunlop colours, but it sat out the show as the T-car before being returned to its classic Rothmans livery.

subtle differences in style yet neither share panels — Subtle differences in style yet neither share panels

Marc Riccioni

The podium at Le Mans in 1982 was an all Porsche affair, with 956-002 giving Jacky Ickx his sixth win

Marc Riccioni

We had them to ourselves for three days straight, during which I drove both on the Goodwood race track and up the Goodwood hill. We finished with me driving the 962C in a high-speed demonstration with 17 other Group C Porsches on the Saturday evening of the 79th Goodwood Members’ Meeting. I will never forget it.

But for now, we should look at these cars and how they got to be that way. And perhaps the first thing to mention is that many of us who are today old enough to remember the 1982 introduction of Group C didn’t think it a good idea at all. The slim regulation book was encouraging, but its key edict was not: no car could use more than 600 litres of fuel in a 1000km race, or 2600 litres in a 24-hour race. It was a fuel consumption formula, destined to turn the top tier of sports car racing into an economy run. Wasn’t it?

The only good thing was Porsche seemed singularly ill-suited to the new regime. Good? Because it had already won half the Le Mans 24 Hours held in the previous dozen years. It had in that time alone overtaken Bentley, Ford and Jaguar’s total scores in the race leaving just Ferrari’s total of nine to beat, and the Scuderia hadn’t won there in 17 years. Porsche had been the dominant force in sports car racing but now it would require something genuinely extraordinary for Group C not to end that era.

“For all Porsche had achieved in racing, it had never designed a monocoque car”

The problems that faced Porsche were numerous and serious. The fact it had never designed a ground-effect car was one that was common to most manufacturers looking to join the new formula. But Porsche was doubly disadvantaged by the fact it had neither the time nor the money to develop the 120-degree V6 it wanted for the new car, so would have to rely on its old flat six. But as Ferrari had found out two seasons earlier when its flat-12 312T5 plunged the team from championship winners to failing to qualify when ground effect really got going in F1, a flat formation engine is just about the last thing you want getting in the way of your underbody ground effect aerodynamics.

The 956’s 2.65-litre flat six had been used at Le Mans in the 936 of 1981 – powering Ickx and Derek Bell to victory

And that engine would have to provide big power for its size because Porsche didn’t have the luxury enjoyed by the likes of Mercedes-Benz which had a 5-litre V8 it could turbocharge and slot in the back of its contender. But perhaps the biggest and most surprising of all was that for all Porsche had achieved in racing and despite the fact that Jaguar had first done so in the 1950s and Lola in the 1960s, it had never designed a monocoque race car, a construction method the Group C regulation demanded.

With those financial constraints, the 956 came to the grid with the same 2.65-litre twin-turbo motor used to win Le Mans the previous year in the spaceframe 936 (which itself had literally been removed from the museum to do the race) and which had actually been designed for an earlier stillborn IndyCar programme.

For Norbert Singer, the man who would more than any other be responsible for the 956 and 962’s utter domination of sports car racing, it was the chance of a lifetime and the results spoke for themselves. “Of all the cars we made,” he told me, “this was the one that was the most successful and over the longest period. It is my favourite.”

While others saw the problems inherent in the new formula, Singer saw opportunity. “It was great. It was a new challenge. We’d always tried to make cars with the minimum weight, maximum power and best aerodynamics and while that was never boring, it’s all we’d ever done. And now with having to take fuel consumption into account, it was suddenly very interesting.”

Here’s the same 962 making history at Le Mans in 1987, at Dunlop Curve

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Jonathan Palmer told me that what he most liked about Group C was that it was an engineer’s formula and that the team with the smartest brains behind it would always do best. But so great a leap did the 956 represent over the 936 it replaced, that the limiting factor at first were its drivers. “I did some lap simulations in the car and realised that it would be quite fast,” explained Norbert, “but not even Jacky [Ickx] could get close to those times at first. It took some months until we did at test at Paul Ricard and suddenly him and Derek were going around three seconds a lap quicker in the same car, and we hadn’t touched it! They’d just got used to the downforce.”

The car was also prepared in astonishingly quick time. Six months before Le Mans 1982, not a single 956 had been built. Three months before not one had even run. Yet come the big day there were three 956s on the grid and, 24 hours later, three on the podium too. It ushered in an era of almost mind-boggling success: it was the first of six Le Mans victories in a row, and contributed to the first of five World Sportscar Championships. Across the Atlantic, the 962 won the Daytona 24 Hours three times in succession, and netted a hat-trick of IMSA titles on the way. And those are just the headlines.

A dream assignment for our writer, at the rear of a Porsche Group C cavalcade at Goodwood’s 79th Members’ Meeting in April

“The reason it lasted so long is simple,” Jacky Ickx once told me. “When it was new it was so far ahead of its time it took years for others just to catch up. Meanwhile Porsche continually developed the car to keep it ahead. I can remember when I first drove it thinking ‘this is special’ but I didn’t realise how special it was.”

And that’s the point. Once Porsche had got its advantage, it didn’t squander it. It pushed on relentlessly, developing the car, keeping ahead of the opposition until finally the fundamental age of its design and the inherent weakness of its aluminium monocoque was exposed by the new era of carbon tubs like those sported by archrival Jaguar. But by then its legacy had already been long secured.

I approach the 956 as you might an unexploded bomb. The car is unique, so valuable and precious I fear that one false move on my part is all that would be required for disaster to unfold. By contrast, the team from the museum who look after it are completely relaxed. You can’t stand or rest any part of yourself on the door sill, otherwise, it is completely robust. So I swing myself into it and down into a tiny cockpit

To me the outside still looks modern and beautiful, but in here, frankly, it’s all a bit of a mess. There are buttons, switches and dials I recognise from period 911 road cars, bits of Dymo tape labelling gauges, a leatherbound Momo wheel with a radio transmit button attached and nothing else. I can see where the edges of that wheel have been worn smooth and discoloured by Jacky and Derek’s gloves as they wrestled with this car for a day and night to bring it home at an average speed including all stops of over 126mph. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

The start procedure could scarcely be more simple: turn the key. You don’t even need to press a button. Keep your foot off the throttle and wait for the flat six to burst angrily into life. Which it does, and then idles as easily (albeit rather more noisily) as a 911 SC. The big difference between this engine and that of even a 911 Turbo of this age is that the race motor needed greater efficiency than could be achieved with single cam, two-valve heads, but it would not be possible to use a twin cam, four-valve layout with air-cooling, so this Porsche is cooled by both air and water, the former for the block, the latter for the heads. It’s capable of producing around 650bhp, which was already probably slightly more than the rule makers had envisaged.

It’s testament to Porsche designer Norbert Singer that the 962 still looks modern... — It’s testament to Porsche designer Norbert Singer that the 962 still looks modern… …but inside, with its dials, buttons and switches, we’re back to the 1980s

Marc Riccioni

The gearbox has five speeds, laid out in a conventional racing pattern with first back and towards you, and in traditional Porsche racing practice, it also has synchromesh. This means the box is a little heavier and the change a little slower, but Porsche deemed that small price to pay compared to the number of retirements suffered by rivals with uncompromising dog boxes. First requires a healthy tug on the lever, and like all the other controls the clutch is heavy, but the motor sufficiently tractable to allow a smooth getaway. And there you are, driving the 1982 Le Mans winner around Goodwood.

“The 956 was utterly viceless, the quickest out there and so forgiving on the limit”

It’s obviously not a track where Group C cars ever competed, but with its long, flowing high-speed corners it’s a natural fit for such a car, though you’d want Porsche’s short-tail high downforce bodywork for racing. And once you’ve got a feel for the way the controls want to work, the car is utterly reassuring from the outset. Unlike a Jaguar Group C car, which needs watching both while braking into and accelerating away from corners, the 956 seems instantly on your side. You feel everything through the steering which writhes gently around in your hands while it lets you pick your apexes with pinpoint accuracy. The overall gearing is high which means that first is actually a proper gear which might even have been used for maximum thrust away from Arnage or Mulsanne, while fifth will take you to 230mph and beyond.

Derek Bell describes the 956 as “utterly viceless, a car that rewarded the professional driver by being the quickest car out there and the amateur by being so forgiving on the limit. Porsche understood better than anyone that it was not enough for the car just to be fast: it had to be fast for 24 hours, regardless of the talent of the man behind the wheel or how tired he was. Which meant it had to be easy to drive.”

But the engine, despite its water-cooled, multi-valve heads, still feels decidedly old school. With a compression ratio of something like 7.0:1, it’s lethargic off boost, with the power arriving in a single shot somewhere between 3000-4000rpm, hurling you down the curving straight towards St Mary’s at a simply staggering velocity. A glimpse, and no more than that, of what Messrs Bell and Ickx experienced at Le Mans 40 years ago hoves into view. And you think: two drivers, unassisted steering, heavy controls, zero air-conditioning, 54 other cars on the same track, night time, rain… and you conclude these people are supermen, for there is no other rational explanation for what they did, not as a one-time, never-to-be-repeated all-out win-or-bust bid for glory, but part of their every day job.

And they kept on doing it, in Bell’s case as the only driver the factory retained from the very start of its Group C adventure in 1982 to the very end in 1988 where, having already collected an unprecedented succession of seven straight wins at Le Mans, it failed by minutes to collect an eighth. So that last win came in 1987 with chassis 962-006, and on first inspection you might think there was little difference between the two machines. And in one sense they are very similar, in others really rather different. So we’ll deal with the red herring first.

The 962 may have had a new name, but it was not a new car. It wasn’t created to win Le Mans, but as a direct response to IMSA banning the 956 because it placed the driver’s feet ahead of the front axle line. The 962 was a long wheelbase 956 with what was added between the axles removed from ahead of the front wheels, which is why it looks more snub-nosed and less graceful than a 956. The 962 made its US debut in 1984 and when IMSA safety standards were adopted for the World Sportscar Championship the next year, the 956 was replaced by the 962C for customer and factory teams alike.

It was the other changes, those that were less easy to see, that really upped the pace and potential of first the 956 and the 962. The first big change came late in 1982 when fully electronic Bosch Motronic engine management was introduced, bringing ignition and fuelling together under one system. This, combined with ever increasing compression ratios, rising from 7.0:1 to 9.0:1 between 1982-87, meant not just more power but, just as important, greater fuel efficiency. So they could not just go faster but, crucially, do so for longer on the limited fuel allowance.

Likewise the aerodynamics. Look at these two for long enough and you’ll realise they don’t share a single panel. “Porsche were never one to rest on their laurels, even when they were winning everything,” says Bell. “They never stopped tinkering.”

The engine itself grew in size, with a new 3-litre, fully water-cooled motor introduced for the 1987 season which not only used less fuel than the 956 engine, it also had 750bhp, at least 100bhp more than the 956 motor. A special qualifying engine for the 1988 race was reputed to put out over 850bhp.

How much faster was a factory 962 than a 956? Well a simple comparison of Le Mans pole times revealed the 962C in 1987 was 7.3sec a lap quicker than the 956 had managed in 1982, which perhaps isn’t that extraordinary given natural development over a five-year period. Until, that is, you consider that the 1987 lap time was done after the installation of the slow chicane before the Dunlop Bridge, requiring drivers to shed and then regain something close to 100mph. Then it is astonishing.

“Porsche were never one to rest on their laurels, even when they were winning everything”

I’m more comfortable inside the 962C, not because of the longer wheelbase, but because the lanky Hans Stuck joined Derek Bell and Al Holbert in this car for Le Mans in 1987 and his seat is still in it. The dash has changed a bit: there are a couple of small digital displays where you can call up information via one of three rotary dials, the others adjusting mixture and boost. But it’s still very familiar. The start procedure is the same, the pedals feel the same as does the gearbox. I’m told that today the car is running at around 660bhp, a long way off maximum boost but probably close to what you’d use for long-distance race pace.

And what does that feel like? Well if I tell you its power-to-weight ratio even in this trim is more than twice that of Porsche’s current sports car flagship, the 911 Turbo S, you will appreciate that here is a car that will accelerate in a manner that even those experienced with some of the fastest supercars could even conceive.

Yet for all its extra power, it has less lag and a more progressive power delivery than the 956, for which you can thank Motronic, the extra cubic capacity and higher compression ratio. It builds, quite gently at first. Between 3000rpm to perhaps 4500rpm it’s going nicely, accelerating like a rather healthy hypercar. But then it lunges into a different dimension of performance, one which makes your stomach feel hollow and your legs go weak. Although no one asked me to, I changed at 7200rpm out of respect though the line on the dial says 8400rpm, at which point I’m sure it would still be pouring on the power.

Derek Bell lets his hair down after taking his fifth and final Le Mans 24 Hours victory

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We only had 15 minutes for the demonstration, enough for perhaps nine laps of Goodwood, probably less than a third of a stint at Le Mans. I tried to imagine, tried to relax into the car, forget its importance and value and make like Derek or Jacky in France. And of course it’s not possible because, apart from anything else, we weren’t allowed to overtake and had to follow a course car, which in this case was a 911 GT3 going as fast as a skilled driver could make it go, but which by 962 standards wasn’t fast at all. I hung back, created as big a gap as I dared and then went for it until I caught the back of the Group C train again. And it was enough to feel the bodywork start to generate some downforce, enough to put some loading in the suspension, enough to gun that incredible motor through the gears until I saw 6000rpm in fifth. I don’t know how fast that was; probably not fast by 962C standards, but by Goodwood standards it felt like it was flying.

Honking around the back of the circuit with the sun dipping and the headlights of a grid-full of Group C Porsches piercing the night ahead of me was as close to a romantic experience as I’ve had on a track. It was magical, not just to be in that car, but to see the greatest collection of the greatest sports racing cars ever made by the greatest manufacturer of such cars ever seen in action in one place.

“It was as close to a romantic experience as I’ve had on track”

And then it was over and 956-002 and 962-006 were back under their awnings. Will it happen again? Perhaps for the 50th anniversary in 10 years’ time, if such celebrations are even allowed by then. If not the spectacle provided those who were there to see it with a memory to last a lifetime.

Porsche 956

POWER: 620bhp
ENGINE: 2.65-litre six-cylinder boxer turbo
WEIGHT: 850kg
TOP SPEED: 224mph

Porsche 962C

POWER: 700bhp
ENGINE: 3-litre six-cylinder boxer biturbo
WEIGHT: 850kg
TOP SPEED: 224mph

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1982

1983

1985

1987

1990

1994

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Porsche 956

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