The Porsche 956 and 962 is already acknowledged as the most successful sportscar of all time.

The Porsche 956 and 962 is already acknowledged as the most successful sportscar of all time.  It was designed and built to endure the current Grand Prix drivers racing flat out for 24 hours, but also to cater for privateer teams running them easily, and with every chance to win long distance races. 

It even featured an all synchromesh gearbox which now makes it the most exciting and easy to drive collectors item you could ever imagine. To experience a Porsche 962 around a flowing circuit like Spa is the 'ultimate' track day experience and, of course, it can also be raced in the two driver endurance races.   

One such event is the feature support race for the current Le Mans 24 hrs that is now a feature of the fast growing Group C Racing series of today. These events even offer the opportunity to share the car with a hero driver from the era in which the car first raced.  

This particular car is a very rare, factory built example - one of only 3 examples supplied to the front running Brun team for 1990.  

It was raced as a Repsol car,  the most famous and iconoc livery of the year.  Next to the factory Rothmans team, who withdrew mid way through 1987, the Brun team was the most successful in world sportscar racing, actually beating both Rothmans Porsche and Silk Cut Jaguar factory teams to the world title in 1986.  This car, chassis 962-163  was built in July 1990, making it the very last example built to run in the 1990 world championship – the swansong of the dynamic Group C era – and is hence the ultimate evolution of the ultimate Group C racing car. Brun ordered and ran three cars for this season and this example is the one that remained accident damage free.   

As the Golden Era of Group C came to a close in 1990, the car joined a very important car collection in Spain for a somewhat premature retirement having competed for just the final two races of the season. It's debut at Montreal had resulted in retirement after just 22 laps and a further 56 race laps in Mexico were completed before a broken driveshaft forced retirement at this final round of the Championship.  As such, the present condition is absolutely incredible, and similar to that of an ultra low mileage road car with, for example, no wear on the steering wheel and a dash and instruments that still look brand new.   

This presents a unique opportunity to acquire a car that has the potential to win in the fast growing Group C racing series or just as importantly, nestle within the very best Porsche collections around the world. No doubt it will also be added to the list of ‘desired’ cars for such events as the Goodwood Festival of Speed, or next year's Monterey week, where Porsche is the featured marque.  

Factory built 962 overview 

The factory built 962 is much rarer than many initially realise, with just 27 cars built to contest the World Championship  Only seven examples were built between 1985 and 1986 to contest in the World Champiohip for Sportscars.  

Five further examples were built and supplied for the 1987 season, before it was announced production would end at chassis 962-138 (note the works cars were taken from within this numbering system before being allocated a team car identity)  One new car was built - initially chassis 962-140 - renumbered 962-010, specially constructed for the factory to return to Le Mans as a works team for one last time in 1988. 

The two 1987 team cars were stripped and rebuilt to the latest specification of fully water cooled three litre engines and new Bosch MP 1.7 ignition and fuel systems. These cars proved extremely competitive, and achieved the top three places on the grid in qualifying and one of the closest ever finishes.  Ex factory driver Vern Schuppan had a great relationship with the factory and persuaded them to build him a new car to this works specification for the 1989 Le Mans race.  

There was such customer demand that the factory put the 962 back into production, to this 'works' speciifcation and supplied a total of 9 new complete cars for the 1990 world championship, with a further two cars for that year's Le Mans.  Two further cars were built for the 1991 championship, where a year's grace was added to the outgoing model, as the new 3.5 litre, non turbocharged era took over.