Paranormal Porsches Part 2 (or 3): The Forgotten 907

We missed photographing the Porsche 907 on our 2017 visit to the Revs Institute Collier Collection because it was in their impressive restoration shop for some work.  The 907's absence might not have been noticed in a normal museum display of historic cars, but the Collier collection might be called Paranormal, as it contains at least one of every type of road racing Porsche, from the first Type 550 from 1953 through the 917 twelve-cylinder cars that achieved peak fame and power (as in 1,000 hp) in the 1970s.  In a way, the empty space for the 907 was a bit like its place in history, overshadowed by the 908 and 917 that came after it...  

This neglected status may have been due at first to the 907's brief racing career; it was first raced at Le Mans in  the summer of 1967, and was only campaigned by the Porsche factory team into 1968, when it overlapped the introduction of its successor, the three-liter 908. Then there was the business of the numerical sequence; the 907 appeared, confusingly, the year after the 910 racer, and three years after the 911 production car.  The likely reason for the out-of-order number sequence is the French car maker Peugeot.  They objected when Porsche introduced its new six-cylinder road car, the 901, at the Paris Auto Show in October 1964.  It seems Peugeot claimed to have copyrighted three-digit number sequences with centered zeroes flanked by non-zeroes (203, 403, 404). Porsche directors obligingly changed the designation to 911, and when they followed their successful 904 racer with the long-planned 906 showcasing the new 901 engine in 1966, they introduced it as the Carrera 6 to avoid making Peugeot unhappy.  The next development of the flat six sports racer, called the 906-10 internally, was called 910 for public consumption.  By the time the next iteration of Porsche's endurance racer was ready in 1967, Porsche had perhaps noticed that BMW had gotten away with the 503 and 507 for years, and that Bristol had followed its long-running 405 with models 406 through 409 without incurring lawsuits.  So Porsche called its new car the 907, with no apologies.

The 907 didn't need any apologies on the technical front either.  Porsche's 2 liter 6-cylinder 910s had finished 1-2-3 at the Nurburgring 1000 km in 1967, beating larger-engined cars from Ferrari and Ford, but Porsche felt they needed a bit more power to take the elusive podium at Le Mans, so their engineering department based the 907's mid-mounted Type 771 engine on their horizontally-opposed 8 cylinder, 1.5 liter Formula 1 engine, stretching it to 2.2 liters. It featured 4 shaft-driven camshafts, a roller-bearing crankshaft, and consumed 200 hours of labor to assemble. Technical refinement was not spared on other fronts, with aerodynamic smoothing of the 910 body design, a NASA-style driving suit with internal cooling system for driver comfort, and a switch to right-hand drive for the largely clockwise road courses.  The narrow, wind-cheating cabin with steeply curved greenhouse allows barely enough width for the driver and FIA-required passenger seat...

The 907s first raced at Le Mans in summer 1967, but with the 2 liter six because the eight was not ready; the best result was a 5th place finish. The eight-cylinder 907 was ready for the Sebring 12 Hours in March 1968, where Porsche entered four long-tailed cars, and Hans Herrmann and Jo Siffert took the pole position and the race, with another 907 in 2nd place. This is the winning Herrmann / Siffert car, chassis 907-024.  Apparently not all chassis numbers were used, as the Revs Institute estimates Porsche built only 21 Type 907s.  In keeping with Ferdinand Piech's policy of building superlight racers needing early and frequent rebuilds, many 907s were converted to 908s when the new 3 liter flat 8 engine was ready, further obscuring the 907's place in history. Ironically, Peugeot won Le Mans in 2009 with a car called the 908. There is no evidence that Porsche ever objected to Peugeot's borrowing their famous number sequence... 

*Footnotes:  For a survey of the other Porsche road racers at the Collier Collection, visit our Archives for "The Revs Institute Part 2: Pantheon of Paranormal Porsches", posted March 19, 2017.  

Photo Credits:  Our photos were kindly supplied by amateur racer and photographer Paul Anderson, who revisited the Revs Institute earlier this spring.