Petrolicious, the creator of high quality, authentic movies and articles for traditional automobile fans, has launched its newest video, that includes Gen Shibayama’s Koenig 962, a road automobile immediately associated to Porsche’s legendary Group C racer.
After a few years away, the Petrolicious web site and YouTube Channel has been not too long ago rebooted by duPont REGISTRY Group, and new movies at the moment are dropping each Friday. Petrolicious celebrates the innovations, the personalities, and the aesthetics that ignite a collective lust for excellent automotive machines, and it seeks to tell, entertain, and encourage its neighborhood of aficionados and pique the curiosity of those that have been lacking out.
In the present day, Petrolicious takes up Gen’s story…
The 962 wasn’t constructed to comply with the chief, and it didn’t actually match inside the confines of the principles. However Porsche discovered methods to make it match, barely. They didn’t meet the rules, they labored round them. Group C might not have wished the 962 and in the event that they noticed it coming, it was too late to rewrite the rule e book. And by the point anybody discovered how harmful it was, the factor had already received every part.
Born from necessity after the 956 was banned in IMSA for its pedal field being forward of the entrance axle, the 962 took form as Porsche’s workaround to maintain competing on each side of the Atlantic. It was by no means about innovation for innovation’s sake. It was survival. An extended wheelbase and new security compliance obtained it via the door in America, whereas it continued to dominate throughout the pond.
It was one automobile following (barely) two units of guidelines. Nevertheless it was nonetheless a prototype. Nonetheless a blunt-force win supply system. Nonetheless one of many final really harmful race vehicles we’d ever see. Group B died in 1986, buried underneath its personal violence. Group A got here subsequent, safer (boringish), slower (kinda boring), extra civilized (fairly boring). The vehicles had been undeniably cool, born from actual road vehicles, but it surely simply… wasn’t… Group B.
Group C outlived all of it briefly, but it surely was the final time producers had been allowed to construct lethal weapons disguised as race vehicles. And when all of it got here crashing down within the early 90s, there have been leftovers.
Retired vehicles, wrecked tubs, race-worn spares. Some went to collectors. Some vanished. Certainly one of them, extensively believed to be chassis CK6 02, ended up in Munich. Whereas no definitive supply ties the Japanese Koenig 962 road automobile on to CK6 02, it’s the strongest candidate based mostly on race historical past, building particulars, and its timeline. The automobile raced at Spa, Silverstone, Monza, and the Nurburgring earlier than disappearing from the paddock and reappearing, improbably, with plates.
Koenig was recognized for doing issues that most likely shouldn’t have been performed. Twin-turbo Testarossas. Widebody SECs. Something extreme and aggressive, they had been into it. However turning a Porsche 962 right into a street automobile? That was one thing else completely.
Koenig added simply sufficient to get a plate on it. A unique nostril with pop-up headlights. A fundamental inside with seats and vents. A customized immobilizer, an influence swap, and a gasoline pump prime that needed to run for thirty seconds earlier than the automobile would even take into consideration beginning. It nonetheless had a 650 horsepower twin-turbo flat six. It nonetheless had its authentic race {hardware} beneath. It nonetheless wished to assault you.
Ultimately, the chassis ended up in Japan. Within the palms of Gen Shibayama. A person who understood precisely what the automobile was, and what it demanded.
“This automobile will kill you for those who make a mistake,” he says. “However for those who drive it the best way it ought to be, it handles corners tremendous effectively.”
Gen had already tangled with the Porsche turbo fantasy. He wrecked a 930 in Tokyo years earlier, caught out by basic lift-off oversteer. It turned private. A mission. He labored his means via the air-cooled Porsche catalog till he landed on probably the most excessive of all of them.
“The Porsche 962 is the last word turbo Porsche. Subsequently, I needed to have it.”
The automobile is barely a street automobile. You need to take away the steering wheel to climb inside. You begin it in phases. Kill swap. Battery. Gasoline pump. Ignition. The turbo lag is gigantic. The increase is violent.
Koenig solely made three. Two survive. One lives with Gen in Japan, the opposite is hidden in a European assortment. The third is misplaced to time, or the intense secrecy of an unknown collector.
The Koenig 962 was not a one-off fever dream. It was inevitable. It was the logical conclusion of what the 962 already was. A automobile that by no means ought to have been allowed to exist, discovering a second life it by no means ought to have been allowed to stay. A race automobile that beat the race rulebook as soon as, after which beat the federal government’s rulebook the second time round. Not as revolt however virtually as behavior. It’s what the automobile was at all times constructed for.
