Carrera RSR IROC: The Sensory-Overload Porsche 911 — The Carmudgeon Show w/ Cammisa & DTS — Ep. 220

Hello. Hello. It is 2026 for our listeners. Yes. Yes. We have to pretend. Okay. So it's

it's already 2026 for us. Welcome to this week's episode of the Car Margin Show. That is a

Jason Camisa. Yes. I'm a Derek Tam-Scott. This week's episode is driven by Haggerty.

Well, actually it was driven by me and I work for Haggerty. So technically it was driven

by Haggerty. The transitive property of driving in Haggerty's. Yes, exactly. This week's episode,

we're going to talk about two things. We have two main topics. One is I give a heartwarmingly

upsetting update on my double body swap going on in my garage. Some good news, some bad news.

Was there good news? It hasn't killed me yet. And then we will spend some time talking about

these black portion 9-11 behind us. That is a series of letters and names and acronyms in it

as a Carrera, RSRIrock. Is that, did I get that right? Okay. Could possibly be the spiciest 9-11

ever. Yep. I'm one of 15 and we're lucky to have it here with us or happy or deaf to have it here

with us. What? More after the clap. Funny enough, you asked before we started the cameras on, was

that high pitch ringing or is that my ear? And I think it didn't occur to me until right now. This

is tinnitus from the hearing loss from that thing. Yeah. And so congratulations on you.

Race car things. Yes. Yes. On my new disability. Okay. So when you clap, you're going to have to

do a silent clap. Well, you're going to have to tell me whether you actually contacted your hands

or not because I won't be able to hear it. That was shitty, right? Yeah. That was it. You're going

to have to do that again. Yes. I learned. Oh, they've been sitting here waiting for quite some time.

We've been sitting here waiting for them for quite some time. It turns out no one said anything.

Oh, okay. So this episode will be the first to air in 2026, even though we are still in 2025.

Barely, by like a day. Well, okay. Don't tell me that because it's my goal to hear the VR6

in the Cabrio run in 2025 and that, that goal might be stupid. Well, you better get out of here.

This has been a quick episode of the Carmageddon show. Thank you. Join us next week.

We'll see. Because today's the 30th in actuality that we're recording. So you've got all day to

half a day today and tomorrow. Because it's just about noon. You've got 36 hours.

I haven't slept in a week and a half because of this engine swap. I have not been sleeping

much lately, but for an entirely different reason because I got a dog, a puppy. So I'm dealing like

with that. So fat. We might both be extra stupid and slow. Welcome to the sleep deprived episode

of the Carmageddon show. My name is... Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I keep waking up in the morning in a panic.

So the problem is... Me too, looking for feces.

Is the dog shitting all over you? No, no, no. He's only done that inside once.

Okay. Cause the car is shitting all over my... So I took a video for those of you watching this on

YouTube last night at 10 o'clock at the 13 hour mark when I finally decided to call it...

13 hours of yesterday. To be clear. And this can be playing in the background of just what the shop

looked like. And it reflects my mind. So every... The problem is I'm doing... So

recap, I bought a Mark III Cabrio over in the summer, a 70,000 mile beautiful car. I hate the

two point slow. I genuinely, I should say, hate that engine. I think you had won the award for

worst car you drove last year. No, it was slowest. Slowest car at the racetrack.

I thought you don't nominated the worst drive of the year.

It's amazing to me. Anytime I drove that car, I just thought, who had the gall to put this

engine in this state of tune in a car that had a GTI badge on it. It's just, it's the least GTI.

Anyway, long story short, it's getting a VR6. I found the donor car, but I'm not just doing

an engine swap. I'm doing a full driveline swap. So it's rear suspension, front suspension, steering,

brakes, engine. Rear suspension such as it is, it's like one piece.

It is technically one. I removed it as one piece from the car.

I'll go to the detail in a later episode when I do the recap. 90 pounds for the Cabrio's

rear suspension with discs. Oh, with drums. 102 with the discs. I weighed it.

Oh, so it's the heavy weight. It's the luxury model deluxe.

Yes. It's also a bigger suspension front. It's a bigger torsion bar, I think,

with a bigger engine sway bar. And this just, it's just bigger. Everything is bigger. This

is the plus suspension. Anyway, so I'm doing all of this, but I'm doing a wiring harness to do this.

I was told this was a plug and play engine swap. That construction of that sentence implies that

it was not in fact plug and play. The question that I got yesterday was now that you know what it

took to get to the point where I am. Last night, I hit, yesterday at some point, I hit the inflection

point where I've stopped removing all parts from all cars and now everything from here on is

reassembling, which is a really nice milestone. But so the question was now that you know,

and the answer was no, I wouldn't do this because I actually had to pull the complete dash of both

cars to get the pedal cluster out because one is, was a clutch cable and the other one's hydraulic

and you have to swap the pedal. You don't have to, as it turns out, everyone was wrong.

There's so many variants of different parts. I probably could have gotten away with not

removing the full dash, I think, but either way, it's been a nightmarish job. The best part is

I'm now a week of 12 hour days in, into this. That's the best part. Right. Well, and everything is

labeled and everything's fine. The wiring harness is in the cabrio on both side, on the engine side

and the firewall side. Everything is plugged in as far as I can tell. So in theory, I'm now,

after I do a bunch of, I basically have to. Is the engine in the car? No, but the engines understand

I have one power steering pump left to replace on the engine, which is a couple of bolts,

and then the engine is physically ready to go in once I do the hydraulics, because the brake

and clutch master cylinder are basically inaccessible once the engine is in place,

and I can plug it in and start it or try to start it. So yesterday was that point.

Yesterday was also the point at which I learned that the engine is unsalvageable.

What?

Done. Toast.

The V6?

The VR6, yeah.

Gone.

What happened?

I pulled the plugs to do plugs and while I was in there, compression check, and one of them came

out a little weird. It just kind of felt weird on the way out and then whatever, it's fine.

And I did, I was going through all six cylinders and I got to cylinder number 1234

to do compression, and I just couldn't get the compression tester to thread.

And I'm like, look down in there. I'm like, what's going on? Whatever.

And I put the plug back in and plug threads fine. And then I pull it back out and I realize

the base of the plug is a lot larger than the base of the other plug because it's-

It had been in failed before.

It failed in somebody time-certed, and the time-cert came out of the head with the plug.

But okay. It's not a time-cert brand. It's some other ghetto fucking auto zone, no.

You needed a new head.

I needed a new head.

So, well, here's the thing.

Doesn't have compression?

I don't know. So here's the, yes. So I did it. Here's the thing. I called a bunch of friends

who build motors and whatever. So I've bill Arnold, my good friend who's my awesome, my race

team captain. He's won Dargon Newfoundland four times. We've talked about him. He builds a lot

of engines. And I had him come over and look and he's like, I can absolutely read time-cert that.

The problem is the hole that they made for the time-cert like thing that they put in there

is way too big. Time-cert will just fall in. So we had to reuse the insert that they used,

which is kind of a crappy design. And it went in just fine.

Is it hard to get it off the plug?

Yes. It was a monster to get it off the plug. And he spent three hours filing the threads

down to get it to be right where it needed to be. Got it in and we let it, we locked tight it

around. So we locked tight it around the insert and then anti-seize around the plug. So the

idea is maybe one day I'll be able to get the plug out, but we won't even try. We're just going to

lock tight it, let it sit overnight. And then the next morning I put a battery on it and just

cranked it to see, sounded fine, but then I poured water down the spark plug hole and you can see

bubbles, every compression stroke. So air is leaking past it.

From the bottom end.

From, well, from the plug.

Oh, I see.

So that means the time-cert didn't seal.

So you just need one head.

I mean, it's not the whole motor.

We don't, who knows what the fuck the rest of the, I mean, there's a bunch of little other

fuckery in that. So the guy who sold me the car, look, this is on me. You do do due diligence

when you buy a car for a motor swap, you should really spend a lot of time on the motor. I didn't.

I needed the whole car. So I needed the suspension. I needed the subframes. I needed everything else.

The wiring harness and all of that looked good and it wasn't tweaked and it wasn't hit and the

engine started and ran. It took a while to get it started, but it started and ran. It was powerful

and it had no codes and everything was happy. So I thought, all right, I can deal with the

rest of the stuff later. VR6s are kind of unkillable. So it doesn't really matter.

The engine is unkillable, but when you have a fucking hack

mechanic who uses a fucking impact gun to drive a spark plug in there and fucks it all up,

well, that's what you have. So unfortunately, yes, I could find a head and I have a head gasket

sitting around from, from a video that we did on VR6 anyway, but I'm just, I got to the point

where I'm like, I'm done with this whole project. Like I don't know what to do. So I called Colin

at Tectonics tuning. I've always dreamt of having a Colin built 16 valve in any of my cars

because he makes major power and he makes great engines. I think I have an idea of where this

is going. And I said, will you build me a VR6? And he said, yes. So I'm going to have a factory

fresh, well not factory fresh, a Tectonics tuning fresh VR6. Is he using your existing

motors at core? No, he said, I'll start on it today. He's such a sweetheart. He made me feel

so much better about this because I'm like, I'm crushed over this. You know, I was just

devastated. I'm like, here we go. I'm like, I don't even know how many hours and, and I, and I,

I've bought the parts count that just the dollar amount of that I've spent on parts is

three to four times the parts price of each one of the cars, depending on which one,

it's a lot of money because I'm doing everything. I'm doing it right. And yeah, but he was like,

okay, I got you. Don't worry. So he's going to start, he started yesterday immediately after

we got off the phone and we'll figure out the final spec of the, of the motor, but he typically

builds 2.9s. He overbores them to 2.9 and I think might do a three liter for me. So he does a three

liter with cams, 12 valve, 12 valve that does two to about 240 horsepower. And so that should

shut me the fuck up. That should make me feel a little bit better that I'm spending quite a lot

of thousands of dollars on an engine, but I'll have a fresh monster of a three liter rather

than a fresh, you know, 2.8 and effort not much more. Can you give him the 2.8 as a core?

I will ask him if he wants it. If he needs it. Yeah. If he needs it or wants it. Otherwise,

I mean, the blocks probably fine. I don't think the head is salvageable. So Bill's guess is that the,

when they drilled that time certain, because it's so much bigger than it needed to be,

they probably just cracked the head around it. So we could pull it out and see if we can

find a different insert. It's, to me, it's not worth it. No, no. I mean, it should at

minimum get a head. Right. One head or it's all one head. It should get head. Yeah. It should get

something. Yeah. It should get consolation. You know, it's a lesson for me. Like, you know,

it was too much to look at. I went under duress. You know, there was a guy that the Jetta was

being sold by a guy that was parting it out. I said, stop, I'll take the whole car. He sold a

bunch of things off the car that were no problem, like the seats and whatever,

but he then also sold the engine cover, which is fucking not available anywhere in the goddamn

world. And so I've been trying desperately to find engine cover parts and like stupid

shit like this. This is like the C 36 crossover tube. It costs more for a C 36 crossover tube

than it does for the rest of the engine probably. I could buy the, I could buy a used VR6 for far

less than I can just the cover, the plastic covers. So, you know, I'm hoping, as I look

directly to camera, I'm counting on the generosity of strangers who have one sitting around that'll

sell me the full set because there's, you know, the, I have the silver VR6 cover. I bought it out

of the UK and had it shipped over from eBay, but then there are black trim pieces that where the

spark plug wires go in and I don't have any bolts. Which are beautifully like sort of

it's cool looking. And you know, there are sort of weird bolts that hold the whole thing down

with chamfered edges and whatever. And I just don't have any of it because this dickbag sold it.

He also sold me an engine that he probably knew was fucked. But the rest of the car,

like all the stuff that I needed appears to be fine. So I'm not, yeah. So anyway,

wasn't all for naught. Yeah. It's going to be, I will have a lot of money invested in this car

and to say nothing of time, but I imagine though it'll still cost less than like a

base civic with options on it. If we count my labor at zero. Yes.

Yes. It will be, I think I'm in now. My prediction is by the time this is done,

I will be in 18 and that 18,000 dollars and that'll be

including selling the Jetta. And, and, and the Jetta will have the two liter with 72,000 miles

in and then, you know, the transmission and every, all the dry line from the 70,000 mile

cabriolet, I am not hooking it up. I mean, I could probably make it run in a half an hour.

I'm not doing it. It will be physically in the car and you can, somebody can push it by it,

have videos of it running, have a dyno plot. I don't need to do any more than that. But

that will be the perfect Lemons car, like perfect race car because it's a, an unhit

fully functional car. Well, lemons will fix that. Yeah. But it's, you know,

no longer be unhit, but the suspension, you know, we'll have the bushings all have 70,000

miles on them. You know, so it should, yeah, it'd be a great, great donor car for that. But

18,000 bucks is more than you can buy one on bring a trailer for, but at least I'll know

everything was done and done properly. And this will have a fresh, but I don't think you can buy

one on bring a trailer is the point of all this. No, they do. They come up every so often. BR6 swaps.

Yep. And there, there is a BAR. So California, you know, you can swap a motor from a later car

legally and same age or later, same age or later. And you get a sticker, you go to a referee and

you get a BAR label, we call it. Bureau of automotive repair. Yes. That says this is a smog

legal shop, a smog swap and it's smogged as the newer car. And there is one with a BAR label on it

for sale. And it's not that much money. It's kind of a rough, it's rougher on the edges. So

swaps often are and that's why people, and their labor is so much and so hard and so specialized

that that's why people are always willing to pay up for extra nice stuff because they want a nice

car, but they'd have to write, I mean, if someone were to commission this build, they'd have to

stroke a $40,000 check, maybe. Easy. First of all, find a cabrio and condition. This is why I bought

the cabrio in the first place in this condition. And then I'm doing everything. So it's all

documented in my stories. I don't want to plug up the Instagram and I'll try to limit it to 100

stories, but like even there's emissions components that are inside the fender liner on the VR6 that

aren't there on the two liter. And so we drilled out the spot welds to get that bracket off,

that whole thing off the Jetta and then treated it and then riv-nutted the factory bracket onto

the cabrio with rust treatment in the same spot, whatever. Like I'm going to that great. This will

be a factory GTI VR6 convertible when I'm done. And that's really cool with now a big motor.

Not factory. It's all not factory motor. The motor will be not factory.

There might be factory pistons. It might be from a different VR and it doesn't matter. Either way,

yes, it will be basically as close as you can get to a, you know, whatever upsetting, but that's

where I am now. And everything hurts and my hand is fucked up and my knee is fucked up and whatever,

but my shop is a disaster. So can't wait to get that thing started.

And this is what you do for fun?

This is what I've done on my quote-unquote week off, because I'm stupid.

Fun. Good times.

It would have been fun if it wasn't unfun.

If I didn't have to pull the dash. And when people say you have to swap the engine harness.

Did you figure out the gauges?

No, I'm not even there yet. I mean, I know I can run either cluster,

but I'll figure out the mileage, the odometer later.

But the, you know, when, when people say you swap the engine harness,

I assume you swap the engine harness, the engine harness.

Not the whole car harness.

Well, it's the whole front end harness and it's a lot.

Not like a Mercedes Benz where there's an engine harness.

There is an engine harness on the engine and there is a big 68 pin connector that you just

disconnect and do that.

Oh, but you have to do both.

But then that connector on the car side of that goes through the firewall,

but also includes alarm, air conditioning, wipers and the entire front end harness,

which is headlights, horns.

You mean they didn't engineer this car to be easily motor swappable?

No.

When they designed it?

No.

And really to get to that fuse block, you kind of have to pull the dash.

Even if I hadn't needed to pull the dash to get the pedal box out,

which you absolutely do because you have to remove not only the dash,

but then the dash supports from it to get the pedal box out of the way.

Reaching, you can't really reach under because the wires come down from the top.

So you can't get to it.

Pedal box is not a consumable part.

So it's not designed to be exchanged.

Fair point.

I mean, this is just the way they...

Why would you engineer two different pedal boxes?

One for manual, one for...

Other manual.

One for manual and one for other manual.

They should be the same box where you can just put in a clutch pedal, whatever.

It's fine.

I mean, if the thing starts.

So my thing is I'm actually...

This was yesterday's realization is like, I was going to give up and just say,

well, it's going to...

I have two cars on a lift.

I can't get rid of the Jetta until the Cabrio is running with the VR6 in it

and no codes and no lights to make sure that I didn't forget anything.

Right?

Because I can't throw away the donor car until I'm absolutely sure.

And Colin's going to super like drop everything, expedite this build,

but it's still going to be a couple of months.

You know, by the time the machine job, machine works have done whatever.

And so I can't have two cars and taking up and all the ancillary shit,

taking up my whole shop.

Because I kind of do have a bunch of other cars, if you notice.

But it occurred to me yesterday after like mourning a little bit,

hold on, wait, I will throw in this VR6, start it, make sure it runs.

Make sure it...

Even if it runs poorly on that fifth cylinder runs that everything functions.

And then that gives me two months to do the suspension and the brakes and all the other

stuff that I wanted to do around it.

Oh, you do that while the subframes installed in the car?

Yeah, I can do everything else.

So I'm doing anything that I need the engine out to do now,

but then like suspension stuff you can do with the subframes in the car.

And I will have a startable, movable, drivable VR6 Cabrio

that I won't really go anywhere with,

but at least can move out of the way and I can use the lift for some other stuff.

And dispose of the parts car.

And also probably referee it, like bring it and have it done on this engine.

Because the engine did...

Because it's got stock cams in it.

Stock everything.

And if I can't, then I'll keep, then I will have Colin just not do the three liter,

because we have plenty of time to make that decision.

Just do a stock engine and it just gets a stock engine and goes.

And then it's...

But the three liter with cams should pass smog anyway,

because it'll set monitors and they blow clean enough with cats on them.

But that's not technically smog legal,

so I won't referee it with any mods on it.

And that's just a maybe down the road.

So either way, but I'm going to try to get it refereed with this engine,

which just means get it in, get it started,

make sure function test and then drive it without the dash in it.

So I can see what works, make sure lights, horns, everything else.

There are so many wires behind that fuse block that like...

What a fun adventure.

And there are dead end wires too.

The things that are just dangling.

And they were somewhere there before.

I have one red wire that I can't find anywhere on any wiring diagram.

I don't remember it being there before,

but it's such a one foot in diameter bundle of snakes.

You can't fucking see anything.

You can't see it directly from what angle you need to.

And so that I traced to the headlight switch,

but it goes to the headlight switch harness.

But I don't know if anything's actually there.

And I don't think it does anything.

It's not on any wiring diagrams.

So maybe I'll have lights or maybe that connector fell

out of the back of the fuse block somewhere and I'll never know.

So we'll see.

How fun.

Yeah, should be fun.

Really enjoyable.

So bear with me while I'm sleep deprived and sore and

devastated that my VR project has turned into a fucking VR nightmare.

It is not uncommon with swaps.

I'm glad I'm doing it.

I will be really grateful when it's done.

This is type two fun.

Type one fun is fun while you're having it.

Type two fun is fun after you've had it.

I hope so.

I mean, yeah, anyway, we'll see.

We'll find out.

Maybe I'll hate the VR.

What?

I don't think so.

I mean, I drove it a mile in the in the Jetta

and fucking laughed myself sick the entire time.

I think I have video.

Shall I?

And it had a huge exhaust leak.

So it had a bit of a shh on top of the great VR noises,

but it was it was so fast.

It was so much faster than I thought it was going to be.

Well, because there was a lot that was missing a door and the interior.

Weissach package.

Yeah.

Lightweight.

Yeah.

Competition pack.

Like this car.

Yes.

There's a transition into this car, which is also lightweight.

A Volkswagen, a lightweighted Volkswagen with a very sonorous engine.

Yes.

Almost as sonorous as a VR six.

It sounds very different than a VR six.

Yes.

Interestingly, you've heard on on corked VR sixes.

Which would you say sounds better?

This is more of a barrage or wall of noise.

And there's more melodicness to a VR six, I would say.

This isn't super melodic.

This is brutal.

That is possibly the loudest car I've ever heard in my life.

Really?

Yeah.

So.

No, like a Trans Am car at the Monterey Historic is loud.

Okay.

I mean, like on a road.

Oh.

So this 9-11 behind us for those.

I mean, we've we will have talked about in the intro.

I drove and inside the car, it is 100% experience.

It is amazing.

And then I stepped out and you drove away and, you know, you

blip the throttle a couple of times as you're like backing up.

And I'm like, wow, God, that's meaty.

Like, man, is it whatever.

And you took off and I don't think I think the world ended for a slight.

Holy shit.

It is, it's not a one pitch, like one note.

Like that, you know, if you look on a spectrum analyzer,

some cars have that one note that it's tuned for.

It is, like you said, the whole spectrum analyzer just goes to full,

full max.

It's a water.

Of noise, but it's so deep and bassy.

It carried.

You were long in third gear and it was 100 times louder than the cars

that were driving by right there.

And all of that from three liters.

That's truly the best sounding 9-11,

vintage air-cooled 9-11 I've ever heard, period.

And by a long shot.

Yeah.

It is quite to the experience.

So, yes, this car is a 1974 Porsche Carrera RSR Iraq, a mouthful.

What is the best way to contextualize this car?

There were 15 of these cars made.

They were all commissioned by Roger Penske, who had a racing team.

And he raced kind of in everything.

He did Trans-Am, Can-Am, NASCAR, and kind of if it existed,

and it was done in the U.S. and it was at a high level,

he raced in it and he did so successfully.

And so his idea was to have 15 mechanically identical cars made.

And he would, this was kind of the first one make race series ever.

So it was called International Race of Champions, which is Iraq.

Wait a second.

Growing up, I was told Iraq stood for something very different

because there was all on the Camaros.

And it was two different stories that I had heard.

One was it was named, one of the engineers,

uh-oh, I thought you were chuckling.

I was gonna say that Mike knows this story.

So the story that I was told as a kid,

but like there was sort of like a common lore

among the car guys in eighth grade,

was that the engineer for the car accidentally killed his best friend, Chris.

And so the car was named Iran over Chris was Iraq.

And then later, a Mustang guy who owned a Fox body said that,

no, no, no, that's not.

It's actually stands for Italian retard out cruising because we're,

and I know you're not allowed to say any of those names, words anymore,

but where we grew up, it was all of the like the guineas, all the, you know,

Italian kids, Guidos, that's it.

All the Guidos drove, you had either Fox bodies or Camaro, Iraq seas.

And so it was the time.

Anyway, so yes, it turns out

Iraq stands for International Race of Champions,

which I knew, obviously, but not really, not at the time.

Not in that context.

And there were no guineas driving these cars around.

How are you going over there?

I'm like, Porsche.

Well.

Oh, and ready.

Yeah.

And in ready.

Yeah.

Okay.

And Emerson Fittipaldi, but he was Brazilian.

He's not.

Yeah, I was going to say it's not really Italian,

but it's an Italian name.

There are some Italians in South America for various reasons.

In any case.

Can be nearly moving there in the 1940s.

Anyway.

Okay.

Anyway, so International Race of Champions,

they were as one mark,

one car, everybody's driving the same car.

And the racer, the people who drove the cars

came from all sorts of different types of racing.

And so the goal of the race series

was to answer the question of like,

which types of drivers are fastest?

So there were F1 drivers, there were NASCAR drivers,

there were Can-Am drivers, there were sports car drivers,

all circulating in the same car,

going around the same track at the same time.

And that was the whole purpose of the experiment,

was to see, you know, which cars, which driver,

and which types of drivers were the fastest.

So that was the purpose of doing this.

They ran this like maybe 30 times once a year.

And the last one was like in 06 of IROC.

So it happened a lot of times.

This was the first, this was the first one.

And it was the only time they used Porsche's.

Subsequent races, they used a whole bunch of different cars,

all of which were Americans.

There were Camara, which they used for a long time,

hence the IROC-Z.

And Dodges were used for a while,

and Firebirds were also used.

Dodges initially were,

what was the front-wheel drive laser or something?

The thing that was also bad is the Plymouth laser,

the Dodge Avenger or something like that.

They used Avengers.

And then before that, there were some other,

like actually rear-wheel drive car.

They were always using rear-wheel drive cars,

but when the production of whatever the rear-wheel drive thing

that they were using, the Daytona.

That's right.

When that ended, they re-bodied the replacement,

which was the Avenger as a rear, it was an Avenger body,

but I think it was rear-wheel drive,

because they needed rear-wheel drive for racing,

but they needed it to look like a car

that you could buy at that time.

The dealership, yeah.

The dealership.

That's crazy.

So that's what they did.

This is like late 80s into the early 90s,

and then I think there were Firebirds after that

and Camaros before that.

So the first year they used Porsches, these cars.

So Roger Penske ordered 15 of them.

The cars were all identical,

but every one of them was a different color,

because they developed this because Roger Penske was like,

okay, we're going to create this race series.

It's a race series.

It has to, there has to be some way to make money.

In order to get the world's best drivers to show up,

we have to pay them, because this happened in October,

and there were three races, there were four races total,

three in October, all the same weekend at the same track,

which at Riverside in October,

I think it was 27th and 28th of 1973.

And then the top six after those three races

would go on to the finale,

which was Daytona in February of 74, Daytona Speed Week.

It was one of the events during Daytona Speed Week.

And so in order to get the best drivers to show up,

they had to pay them.

And so they had to come up with a bunch of money,

not only to buy the cars,

which were over $20,000 a piece at the time,

which was probably twice as much as a road going 9-11 at the time,

and paid them a substantial purse and logistics

for getting the cars, places, and spectators,

and tickets, and all that shit.

And so there were three guys together,

including Roger Penske, him plus two others,

who sort of set the whole thing up.

One of the guys was responsible for scrutineering

and legal stuff,

and then there was a guy who was responsible for marketing,

and he was connected in the television world.

And so the races would all be broadcast on ABC in color.

And so all the cars were different colors

because they wanted to be able to tell them apart on track.

And so the drivers were all pretty illustrious,

coming from all those different places,

A.J. Foyt, and Mark Donahue, and George Fulmer,

and Denny Hulme, and Emerson Fittipaldi.

I think there was an Andretti,

but maybe not because all the right,

one of the sponsors that they got

in order to pay for this whole thing to happen was Goodyear.

And I think it was, maybe it was Andretti

and one of the unsers who had a sponsorship with Firestone,

and so they were not allowed to participate

because the races were done on Goodyear tires.

And Goodyear was the title sponsor,

and they would provide tires for the races

and sponsorship money and a blimp as well.

One does.

For, as one does.

Well, no, actually they put a TV camera in it

and used it to get aerial footage of the cars racing.

So it was actually useful to have the blimp,

but the blimp was not racing.

They're not very fast.

They don't handle very well.

So once a year, I think in the April issue of Road and Track,

they would do like an April Fools road test

of some absurd thing.

And I remember one year they did,

and they'll do like the full test panel,

where they'll be like lateral acceleration

and like zero to 60 and all this shit,

or whatever the number is relevant for the thing.

And one year they did do the Goodyear blimp.

Another year it was like a snow cat

and like a, maybe they got a tank one year,

but that would used to be an annual tradition,

like in the 70s and 80s.

I remember that.

At Road and Track, it was always very funny

because you'd see like them trying to go around

the skid pad in a snow cat.

You blimp, right.

The pictures are funny.

I think we probably find an insert for that.

So Goodyear was one of the sponsors.

Champion was, the cars are basically solid colors

with only a few sponsor labels on them,

one of which is Goodyear.

Champion is another one that's on the front bumper,

and then the rear bumper has Union 76 who provided fuel.

So all of these three companies provided stuff

for the race cars, and they were the main sponsors,

plus the TV contracts also paid for it.

So that was how they made the whole thing work,

although it lost money.

And I think it maybe often lost money,

IROC generally, but at least it had a chance maybe

at making money.

So all these guys out there,

and so the cars were all set up the same,

and Porsche would get as close as they could

in every car at a 316 horsepower was the number.

Out of three liters.

Out of three liters, two valves per cylinder.

Single cam.

Single overhead cam.

Right, that's crazy.

Mechanically fuel injected.

And the compression ratio was like 9.8,

like not that insane.

It was a lot for then, but not like,

it wasn't like a 12 to one compression ratio.

They probably run leaded gas too, right?

Yes.

And so the cars were all different colors,

and the deal was that so you didn't get,

like some cars were better than others,

the every race, the drivers would swap cars.

So you didn't get a car that was yours.

And so you can, if you see a picture from an IROC race,

if you like cross-reference it against the,

like who drove each car, each race,

if it's a color photo, you can be like,

you can tell which race number of the four it was,

based on which name is on what color car.

That's correct.

So this is the black car.

The only one.

The only black car.

Each, there were no repeated colors.

So there's like white, black,

there's like a dark purple, aubergine car,

there's orange, you know, a red, magenta,

like three shades of green, two shades of blue,

a like kind of beige color and then like a creamy yellow color.

So each of those cars now has, you know,

different history and was differently successful.

This was one of, so there were 12 drivers, 15 cars,

and they were intended to be three spare cars,

which they did, I think, there was only one car

that never got raced.

One of the green cars was never raced,

but every other of the cars ended up getting raced

because they needed the spares.

So this was intended to be a spare car,

but it actually participated in two of the races,

which tells you, you know, that the cars got used.

Only two races ever in that one year.

Two of the four, I guess it is.

This car participated in two of the four races.

Some cars participated in all four races.

One car participated in zero races.

Some cars, one race, some, you know,

just depending on what happened

and where they needed to spare and whatever.

So this car was raced by George Fulmer

and Mark Donahue, just by luck of the draw.

And they happened to be teammates

that year racing for Penske in Can-Am, driving 917s,

which were those turbocharged 12-cylinder cars

that in qualifying boost made 1500 horsepower

and they weighed 2000 pounds or something like that.

I mean, just Can-Am is famously unhinged.

So it just happened to get drawn by each of those drivers.

And it won both of the races that it participated in.

It's the only of the 15 cars.

It's the only one to have won more than one race.

Really?

And 100% of the races that entered too?

Yes. Yeah.

So it's got interesting history.

There's other parts of the history

which we can talk about in a minute,

which are also interesting for different reasons.

So the races were won by white car, two by black car,

and then the final race was won by the orange car.

And at some point, I guess we should talk about the car itself

and its specs.

But since I'm this far down,

then the car's history may as well finish it.

So the first three races were all at Riverside International

Raceway, which existed until it got torn down

and turned into a shopping mall, of course,

because the land was too valuable

to keep having it be racetrack.

You've paradise, put up a parking lot.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah, if Paradise is a racetrack to you,

then that's exactly what the song is about.

So the three races, yeah,

Saturday and Sunday, the 27th and 28th of October,

and then Sunday, later on in Sunday,

there was a Can-Am race,

which Mark Donahue then won in a 917.

Had a good weekend.

And so Mark Donahue won three of the four races.

And Fulmer won one.

So it just so happened that Pensky drivers,

for some reason, conveniently, convenient.

And so, I mean, I don't think it was fixed,

but what I think it was was those guys

were both really good at driving Porsche's.

And so a lot of the drivers,

like guys who came from NASCAR,

and a lot of guys put up really good fights

and were in contention,

and there were mechanicals and stuff

that weren't related necessarily to driver skill

and reasons why other drivers didn't win.

And some of the races were led from the outset,

but others, one, there were a lot of shuffling around,

and when Fulmer won,

I think he snuck through the field in some sense.

So it was genuine racing.

But a lot of the guys who weren't used to driving 911s

hated them.

And I forget which one it was,

but one of the guys who didn't have any 911 experience

bought a 911 as his personal road car

and took it home and hustled it

so he could figure out how to drive the thing

because he wanted to be reasonably competitive

when it came time to race.

And they did all the three races all during the same weekend

because they wanted the drivers from all around the world

who some of which were doing F1 and stuff.

Like they all had to travel.

And so they've said,

let's do it all at the same place at the same time

because we can't be trying to get this many of these drivers

who are in the middle of other race series seasons

to the same place at the same time.

That's efficient financially too.

And you only find them over once.

Correct.

Because Henskis or IROC,

I guess the organization IROC

was responsible for vehicle logistics.

And so Porsche built these cars

and IROC had a guy who they stationed in Germany

while the cars were being built and shaken down.

And they hired a guy who was a development driver, Al Holbert,

who then after IROC actually bought this car

from the IROC series and raced it the next year, 74.

And he was one of the development drivers together with,

I think it was maybe Peter Gregg.

Peter Gregg.

So now this is maybe the time to transition

into the history of the RS and RSR.

We've talked about the RS story before

about how it was a response to the 917

and they needed to go racing with a less expensive car

and enter the RSR.

And so the RSR debuted at Daytona in 73,

which is in January, the 24 hour of Daytona.

And there were two RSRs racing against each other in that race,

one of which was a Penske car driven by Fulmer and Donahue.

So our dynamic duo.

And then the other car was the Brumos car,

which is white with red and blue stripes.

And that car was being raced by Peter Gregg and Hurley Haywood.

And so those were the two cars, the Penske car broke

because it was that race was the first time

that one of those engines that was, it was a new engine

had been like a new 2.8.

I think it was engine had been run for more than 18 hours ever.

And they did it in a 24 hour race.

So one of the motors, of course, blew up.

It was the Penske motor.

And so the other car, the white car one,

the Penske cars always are dark blue

because it's a Senoko livery,

which is the livery you would always see like on a 917

dark blue with yellow accents, the Senoko oil logo.

So the RSR debuted in 73 and they raced them all through 73.

And the development, they used it as the basis for this car.

This is the new 74 RSR.

The RSR in 74 normally has center lock wheels,

which this car doesn't, and it has wider fender flares.

So this, the IROC spec is unique compared to all the other RSRs

that were built for 74.

And they said, well, we don't need center locks

because it's a 75 mile race.

We're not going to do a tire change in the middle of the race.

Everybody's just going to, it's a sprint.

And so they don't.

So it's a unique spec compared to all the other RSRs

that were built for 74.

Same body though, same flare or less?

No, these are, these are less flared

because the 74 regular RSRs have the flares

where there's like a discontinuity with the door,

like the back of the fender.

There's an open space and there's also these vents

in the front of the fenders.

We'll add an insert here to show that.

So it was, so there were only 15 cars built to this actual spec.

And then there were a bunch of like regular RSRs

which were used for endurance racing

because then you would, you would get some benefit

from center locks and you'd want the flares and all that stuff.

How many RSRs were built?

In what year?

73, there were 55 and then in 74,

the number is probably a hundred or so.

Wow, that many.

Yeah, of which these account for 15.

So the RSR was the racing version of the RS,

the 73-quare RS.

So that lineage of 73-quare RS that you see with the duct tail

is directly related to this car,

which was just an updated version of that original,

the road going version in order to homologate it

for endurance racing and all of that stuff.

So it's, they went, initially there were 2.8 liters

and then they went to three liters.

And the three liter engine is like,

I think it uses like the cam boxes.

And that's it from the original car.

Everything else was different.

Like the spacing on the bolts for the cylinders

and all that is all different.

They switched from magnesium to aluminum cases

because the magnesium, by the time they made everything

thin enough to accommodate three liters,

wasn't strong enough.

So, and it has this mechanical fuel injection system,

which you experienced.

I mean, it sounds like ITBs because it's ITBs.

ITBs and it's just like, they're just trumpets.

When you look in the engine compartment,

it's just composed, you didn't look in the engine.

Yeah, I haven't done that yet.

You should do that.

But it's pretty pornographic looking in there.

And then this is the competition injection pump.

I'd say the injection pump in this car is probably worth more

than the entire engine in like a regular 911.

Like this is a very, the people,

like I took it to a Porsche, a Weenie meet, the Easy.

It's just full of people who,

some of which know a great deal about these cars.

And like when I opened the engine compartment,

they all just like a crowd formed around it.

Because a lot of people do tributes to these cars

because you could basically take a 930

and put fiberglass bumpers on it and stickers.

And it'll look basically like this.

It has nine and 11 inch Fuchs, which are 15,

which are very, very expensive and hard to find,

if you can find a set,

because they were only used on stuff like this.

Even the road RSS never got the 9s and 11s.

So Fuchs, by the way, are wheels.

Fuchs are the, yeah, the forged alloy wheels.

So a lot of people do tributes to these cars

because it's quite easy to do

if you have any wide body 911.

And so I think everyone assumed this car was fake.

And then you open the engine compartment

and then the people who really know 911s,

well, like kind of lost it over the contents

of the engine compartment.

But you know, the thing weighs,

I think it's 2100 pounds or something like that

and has 300 pretty spicy horsepower.

What else did you find experientially?

So it's typical 911 where I am not 100% comfortable

with pedal placement, right?

So bottom hinge pedals,

just sort of not, it's not a fluent,

it's not an experience that you get in

as a driver of any other car and think,

oh, this feels familiar.

It's very different.

Shifter was great.

This one is very easy,

unlike some of the other 911s I've driven.

And it's a 915.

It's the one that everyone shits on,

but it just, some are good, some are not.

This one has a nice linkage, good sinker mesh.

Yeah, never once, even in the middle of a shift,

an upshift in the middle of a corner

that you don't even think about,

you know, sort of side loading or anything.

Brakes are magical, as they are on all Porsches.

There are 917 brakes.

Oh, holy shit.

Okay.

That would explain why it effortlessly

shaved off a lot of speed.

And I was trail breaking into all corners

and just sort of loading the engine.

So let me also say, we just drove this

on the sort of Revelations Hill Climb route.

And it was wet in spots.

And I was not about, this is a, how do I say,

very expensive, very rare car piece of history.

And I was not about to have a moment,

especially because it doesn't have a passenger seat belt

and you were on the passenger seat.

Yes, originally these cars only had one seat in them.

So this one is not correctly presented

because it has two seats in it.

Two seats in it.

I would also say that doing a Comerichin episode

from the ICU with you in a coma

would have been less enjoyable.

Ended up gaining.

So yeah, so I did bring it down.

So I sort of trail-braked in

and then sort of preloaded the engine

to smooth that transition onto power.

And at no point did the brakes even smell.

And often that hill climb, just going up the hill,

will roast brakes on cars.

It is the most experience I've ever had in a 911.

In terms of, like it, it's all of the things

that are missing from a regular 911

in terms of the fizzy nature of it all

are present and accounted for.

The gears are incredibly short.

This isn't like fizzy.

This is like a fricking, like an air gun.

Like a jackhammer.

It's not a fizz.

It's a jackhammer.

It's not rough.

I mean, by the way, so it's the engine itself is smooth,

but the noise is genuinely ridiculous.

It's deafening in the car in the best possible way.

And the gear ratios are so short and so closely stacked.

I think you might be able to hit an indicated 60 in a second,

but I'm not sure.

It's maybe.

And the thing is, there is no red line on the tack.

There's a sticker on the dash

that says 7,700 RPM max engine speed.

But I don't think...

Did you see the other thing that the sticker says?

Yeah, please press the clutch all the way in or something.

It says like depress clutch to floor for up and down shift,

which I think is such an absurd,

like their professional race car drivers driving this car.

Trying to win.

And for some reason, the instructions are like,

please use the clutch when changing gears.

Not their car.

And they know it only has to survive one race,

and the more they damage it.

The slower the other guy will be in the next race.

I'm guessing they never got the same car twice, right?

I mean, if it did, it would be statistical anomaly.

Okay.

Anomaly.

And that was also when they were deciding

what car to use for this race.

And we can get into that story in a bit.

But they were like,

these cars are pretty much indestructible,

except for the gearbox was sort of the conclusion

that they came to.

But they were like,

it's pretty otherwise indestructible.

And so that's one of the reasons why they ended up using

these cars for the first IROC.

Although I guess the experience was not good enough

for them to continue to use Porsches in 75 or any other year.

Or maybe Porsche just didn't have a new enough car

or something substantially changed to draw a crowd in.

Right?

Yes.

I mean, if you're trying to draw a crowd,

you're going to have the newest latest car.

I think it was a little bit polarizing

because these cars need unique technique to drive.

And it felt like it gave an unfair advantage

to the two guys.

Let me tell you,

who had won, who had raced 24-hour day,

Tona in one.

Speaking, driving one of these cars every time,

I feel like I'm trying to learn a new language.

They're just different.

And it's not the weight distribution

because they're, you know,

they sort of drive like newer 911s

in terms of the rulebook.

It's the pedal placement, the position of everything.

And just the way everything feels,

the cars just feel foreign to me.

Even the steering, they're kind of vague on center.

But then they're really accurate once they're loaded up.

You're not pivoting around the car center of gravity.

Like the whole experience is just very unsettling.

You're not pivoting around the center of the car.

You're pivoting around some point that is.

This car felt like it has an understeer gradient,

you know, below the limit.

So it just doesn't feel normal.

And so, you know, I don't know.

You were sitting in the passenger seat unbuilt.

It was probably quite an experience too.

But I'm guessing it felt like we were moving at one mile an hour.

And I was, my heart rate was 200.

Because the perception of speed is so high

because of all the noises that it makes.

And so it didn't feel slow.

And I don't think we were going slow,

especially in light of the conditions.

I think it was certainly,

I mean, we definitely never lost traction once.

We did slide around one bend.

Did we?

Yeah.

There was one very minor four wheel drift.

It started on the front, so there was a slick patch.

And it started the front let go a little bit.

And then the back just took it.

It was so, it was a very, very minor thing.

But that was my like, oh, here is the limit.

You're going to slow it way the fuck down, Jason.

But I just, it felt like the whole thing was a lot of work

to go incredibly slow.

And on purpose, I, you know, I wanted a lot of works on the streets

and a lot of downshifts and a lot of noise and a lot of fun.

But I would be terrified to drive that car,

especially in poor conditions on a racetrack until I was used to it.

Well, it was Riverside in October.

So the conditions were perfect and it was 75 mile race during the day.

Yeah. 75 miles is not enough to learn to be comfortable on that car.

Whoever it was that you said that bought one of the cars did the right thing

because you just need to translate.

He hated it and sold it as soon as you could finish the race.

Really?

Yeah.

I don't.

I forget who it was.

One of the, it was an American driver.

There, you know, there are cars on that hill climb.

Again, I've said this before.

I get in the, and we put cameras on the car and I go and there's one shot.

And we go once up the hill and once back down and it's over.

The whole thing is three miles and we're done.

There are cars that turn three.

I am sliding them around and I'm comfortable.

That was absolutely not.

I mean, as great as it was, I wanted to get out of it,

not because of the car, because I was nervous.

But it is truly one of the best experiences.

It's definitely my favorite air-cooled 911.

It's one of the most experiential cars I've ever driven.

The gears fixed the 911 problem.

The noise fixes the 911 problem.

Now, I kind of wish it wasn't as loud as it was.

I wish I didn't know how loud it was on the outside,

because there was a guy who I'm sure called 911 12 times on you.

And all you did was drive by.

You left, you drove by and you came back one more time and then picked me up.

And I'm, he was staring and holding a phone and he was not happy.

And I don't know, I hope the iPhone, I haven't even watched it back.

iPhone video picks up just how fucking loud this car is.

It would be, it's such an amazing noise.

It should not change.

It's perfect, but I would have a really hard time driving this.

If you're not on it, it's that fast.

But in a neighborhood, there is like,

I have a really high limit to what I think is socially acceptable.

This car absolutely obliterates it.

Fucking obliterate.

You know what's funny also is this car has a muffler

and the fact that race cars didn't have mufflers.

I mean, there's something that is muffler shaped and sized.

I think it's got a microphone, amplifier and speakers in it.

I just cannot believe the wall of sound

that's coming out of just three liters.

Absolutely magnificent.

I love it.

I would love to make a ratty looking like 9-11

with skinny tires, whatever, with that level of acoustic interest.

And I don't think you'd be able to do it

because I think part of it is the intake trumpets.

Part of that is exhaust, but it's this full sound unlike.

Both induction and exhaust, it's pretty high revving,

especially for something that old with single overhead cams.

I don't know how high I revved it,

but I did see on the last run I did before I swapped.

But that attack I think is optimistic.

The attack is optimistic.

So I saw 8600 on the attack, but it is getting, it sort of ramps up.

Spring loaded.

And so it has a lot of, some old cars,

you'll see the attack will start to wind up

and then the gear change, it bounces around

until it reaches what its actual RPM is.

So I think what I was trying to do

is I was watching the attack sweep earlier on,

because it's over 6,000 on this car that it,

or 5,000 that it starts to accelerate the attack.

The attack needle moves more quickly

than the engine sound tells me it did.

So I was aiming for acoustically 77,

which is what it asked for.

And I saw I think 86.

And it was probably somewhere around 7500 RPM.

And it was still pulling so hard,

I would swear to you it's got at least another 2,000 past that.

Yep, 2,000.

I mean, the 9,000 no problem.

I think the cars were,

so they were supposed to,

they're placarded to a certain RPM,

but the actual red line, that was for the races.

The actual red line is higher.

I think it's above 8,000 in those cars originally.

It was pulling so hard.

I would love to install a limiter on one,

or just do the math and figure out what's safe

and just figure out where I would love

to see how high that thing would go.

Cause it just wasn't, it was relentless.

The power is.

The power to weight ratio is quite impressive.

All I kept thinking is a Bugatti wishes.

It was this cool.

It's not Bugatti Veyron fast,

but how hard it pulls in gear is about as hard

as you would ever really see from,

let me think about this.

Would a current GT3 actually pull any harder

in any gear than this does?

And I don't think it would.

Yeah, I mean, this car has short gear ratios,

which really helps.

And obviously the power to weight.

Short gears, a lot of torque, a little bit of weight.

So I think actually peak Gs in each gear

would probably be higher than a, you know,

but it lasts for a second and you shift

and last for a second and shift.

As opposed to in a GT3, it's going on for longer

because the gear ratios are so long

and you are going faster.

And a much broader torque curve.

And, you know, even despite how tractable this thing is.

Yeah, but if experientially,

it's one of the quote unquote fastest cars,

fastest feeling cars ever driven.

Yeah, it's quite a sensational piece.

I wish Porsche stuff you could get this level of experience

and they were worth, you know, regular car money.

Yes. Well, you could, you could build something.

The motor character will differ to get this level of power.

Like you can certainly get 300 horsepower

out of an air cooled motor.

But it won't, its character maybe will approach this.

I think with Weber's and like a spicy modern build

where everything's light and balanced and titanium,

although these are titanium connecting rods

in this motor also.

From the factory?

Oh, I didn't know that titanium had ever been invented in 1973.

Yeah, it was being used in the SR 71 airplane also at that time.

Yeah, titanium connecting rods.

What were we just talking about?

Oh, to build a car that,

to try and replicate this car experientially.

Mechanical fuel injection is a big part of it,

but I think that Weber's might do a pretty good job

or a modern EFI would probably do a pretty good job

of it experientially.

As long as it was something with Trumpets

and this kind of exhaust design,

I think you could create this experience for certainly a,

I was going to say a 10th, but it's not,

it's probably more than that.

Maybe it's 150 to $250,000.

It's a lot of money.

Yeah, it is.

But it's a lot less than this car is costing.

Yeah, fair point.

But definitely the most, I've never driven 911 R,

I can't imagine it would be more crazy.

Yeah, because a 911 R weighs comparable to this

and then has 210 horsepower and this car was 316 was the target originally.

So these, you know, the big part of the appeal

is the mechanical fuel injection certainly.

They, the last race was at Daytona.

And that was a banked track, a little bit higher speed.

And so they changed the brake bias and stiffened the suspension

and add a little bit of downforce to the back.

And the cars actually all went,

the ones that were going to be raced at Daytona went back to Germany

and Porsche sort of felt with them a little bit

before they did their final race,

which Mark Donahue won in the orange car.

And this car was then sold into Al Holbert,

who had been like the shakedown guy who Penske had used,

who had also raced an RSR in 73 and crashed it.

And so he then bought this car and raced it in the 74 season

after Daytona, because Daytona is in January or February, February.

74, Irox season?

No, no, no, because Irox last race was February 74

and then that championship was crowned

and then, you know, everybody rode off into the sunset.

This was done in like SCCA.

And Holbert raced the car and won in a couple races in 74.

And then in December of 74, he was testing in Michigan somewhere

and he put the car on its roof and slid 100 yards on its roof

and it blew out the windshield.

And in his telling of the story,

there was like gravel and stuff going in his mouth.

So the car was crashed hard at the end of 74.

And then he had crashed an RSR,

actually his teammate crashed an RSR in 73.

He crashed this car, which was their 74 car in 74.

And so his dad who owned a Porsche dealer

who had been bankrolling all this was like,

you got to stop crashing cars.

We can't afford to keep racing if we have to buy a new car every year.

And so he was like,

what if we take all the stuff out of this car

and that other crashed car and buy a new shell from Porsche

and build another race car for 75, which is what they did.

So they were able to go racing again in 75

using the guts from both of the crashed RSRs,

one of which was this IROC.

And so this car then was like a shell

that had been pillaged for decades.

And then someone was like,

wow, this thing's kind of important and valuable.

We should probably like reconstituted,

especially because its period history is,

it's arguably, it's either the first or second most important

of the 15 cars in terms of its history

because it's one more than one race.

And including by Donahue and Fulmer,

it's just not the car that won the championship race at the end.

Which would have been the orange one.

Which is the orange one.

So the two most important of the IROCs in terms of history

would be the black car and the orange car.

But this car was heavily damaged and reconstituted,

which is a check against it.

So I would say that orange car certainly is worth more

than this car today.

And these are the types of things that influence value

in race cars because the physical object

in terms of what it takes to recreate it

is worth some percentage of its value,

which is seven figures for sure of this car.

Some percentage of it is like,

what is the actual cost of the car stuff?

And then some percentage of the value is its history

and what it achieved.

And that's true of race cars generally.

Would the roll over crash have impacted its value less

if it had happened during an IROC race?

Yeah, I think so.

But it helps that it happened in period.

I mean, the car was less than a year out from,

or a year out from IROC.

Plus with the guy who, the shakedown guy

was the one who was driving it.

Al Holbert, who is a well-known name,

and he went on to drive in IMSA,

and he was a really talented, successful driver.

And this was kind of the beginning of his career,

but he did a whole bunch of really cool stuff in the 80s.

So it was crashed by a big name.

But the question that people ask now about this car

is like how much of the original car is left

because they used bits of it.

So there's pictures of it getting restored

and you can see the tub and them sort of repairing the tub

and putting new this on and that on, but...

But it was married to its original engine and original...

No, it's a replacement engine.

So, you know, that's...

I'm guessing most of them are.

I mean...

A lot of them are, for sure.

I can't imagine they stayed in tune.

A lot of these cars went through weird stuff.

Like one of them, the red car,

I don't know if it was red in period,

but it was painted red when this happened to it,

got like a slant nose, like it looks like a 930 slant nose,

thing done to it in the 80s,

because that was what they did to the race cars, the 935s,

in that period.

And so that was like, you know,

some of them had some pretty ignominious things happen to them

because they were just used race cars.

Some of them, you know, in order to stay competitive,

they say, well, we'll put the wider other RSR flares on them

and we'll put...

Convert them to center locks and like...

The IA is not towards preserving a piece of history.

The IA is towards like, well,

I bought this discounted used race car

and I'm going to try and make it stay competitive

as long as I possibly can,

instead of spending 25 grand,

which was a lot of money back then,

to buy a new race car.

So they have, you know, various colorful histories

and, you know, one of them was owned by Pablo Escobar.

The beige, I think it was car,

was owned by Pablo Escobar at one point.

So it's got further supplemental colorful history.

But to return to the discussion of why they chose to use 911s,

I think a lot of it was due to Mark Donahue,

who was kind of the star driver of the Can-Am team,

because he really liked and was good at driving these cars

and had, you know, had a solid chance at winning at Daytona,

had his car, his motor not popped

when he was first racing the RSR.

And then they spent that whole season racing RSRs

and he went to Porsche and, you know, did a shakedown.

And because when the RSR first came out,

they did testing at Paul Ricard circuit in France

in December of 72, which was like...

And then they set lap times in those cars.

And then those cars in Europe would have raced

against other sort of touring cars.

That would be like BMW CSLs and like Ford Capris.

And the lap time that this car set at Paul Ricard

was like a second and a half faster than the CSL.

And it was like two or three seconds faster than the Ford.

And so everyone lined up to buy these cars

because they trusted Porsche to build

the best off-the-shelf race car.

I'm surprised it's only one, two, three seconds difference

from those other cars.

I mean, CSL was competitive, but it was not, you know.

They did win a fair number of races.

And this would be like on a two-minute lap.

Yeah, so the, let's see.

I was going somewhere else with this discussion,

which I have subsequently lost on account

of probably my supervision.

The reason why they chose Yes for Ireland.

So it was kind of the best race car

you could buy off the shelf in the world

in terms of just like turn the key and go.

And Porsche put a lot of effort into setting

all the cars up identically.

Like they'd run them around the skid pad

and make sure that they were all pulling

approximately the same G and they would dino the motors,

make sure they were all delivering

the same amount of horsepower.

And so I think I rock in order to get spun up

because they did the whole thing in the space of a year.

And that was like designing the point scheme

and getting the money and the sponsorship

and the TV contract and the venue and the racetrack

and the other racetrack and the logistics

and finding what cars to use and how they'd get set up

and all that stuff.

They did all of that inside of a year.

And so I think they wanted to buy kind of a turnkey solution

because it would have made a lot of sense

for Penske also to use Chevrolet products

because his first business venture that he started,

when you see like a Penske truck, that's the same Penske.

He had like this integrated empire of all this shit

that he did in addition to racing Indy cars.

Like he won Indy 500 NASCAR and all this stuff.

They do truck rentals and car dealerships

and it started with a car dealership

which was a Chevrolet dealer,

which is why this roundabout way of me coming to this

is that he owned a Chevrolet dealer

and when they started in Trans Am, they were racing Camaros.

And so they had a deep experience

and like connection with Chevrolet,

but they would have had to sort of like build race cars.

They would have had to buy something

and then set it up as a race car.

Whereas these, you could kind of just buy them

and say, here's what we'd like to do, Porsche,

can you set them up all the same?

And so Porsche was very intimately involved

and like IROC had a staff person that was in Germany

while the cars were being developed and tested

to make sure they were all...

Why did they send them back to Germany

between the two races?

It's kind of...

There was enough like modifications and alterations

in setup to set up for the banked circuit at Daytona,

which is higher speed and banked.

There's an infield.

This is the same way they run the 24 hours at Daytona

where they use part of the banked outer part

and then they drive them on the infield.

So it's to turn it into sort of a road course.

But they needed...

It's got to be so expensive to ship 15 cars to Germany

to modify them, to ship them back.

By that point, there were only six drivers,

plus I think two spares.

So they only did with eight cars, but still a lot of effort.

And of the first...

There's lots of famous photos of...

Because they look like Skiddle

because they're all different colors.

And there's famous photos of the...

There's...

I think the photo actually has 12 cars in it.

There's one where the cars are laid out

in the Porsche work like yard.

And I think it's 12 cars and they're all different colors.

And they have duck tails on them in that photo,

which is the smaller tail,

because what is called the whale tail wasn't ready yet.

And so the whale tails were actually finished

and sent later and installed before being raced.

And because the...

I think most of the cars came over via boat before Riverside.

And then like three or four or five of them came via air

because they weren't finished in time

in order to make it on time for the race.

It's been so interesting.

Then they sent wings over separately

and they got installed after the cars arrived here.

Dealer installed accessory.

Yeah.

So like...

That's wild.

I think they're all...

You never see them now with the duck tails

because the duck tails were removed

and actually know where they all ended up,

but not with the cars.

And so they chose something that was basically a quick solution

and coupled with, I think, Mark Donahue's influence.

He was the golden boy at Penske Racing.

And he said, look, these things are really good.

He made a case for the car and Penske was like,

yeah, that makes sense because we can buy these

and people can immediately use them.

And then he can win them.

And he continued to be the star.

Because he knows there's like a unique technique

to driving these cars

and that the guys who are coming out of NASCAR

are not going to be at a disadvantage.

Even guys coming out of Formula One cars

probably at a disadvantage to some extent.

And he meanwhile is just sailing around Daytona

all through the night for 24 hours.

It's an unfair advantage.

And in fact, that was the name of his autobiography.

Right, exactly.

So that was why...

But then after that,

I think they got enough guff from all the other drivers

where they're like, this is not truly a level playing field

because the car is somewhat particular.

There's no way to have a level playing field

when you have drivers coming from those different...

Yeah, diverse backgrounds.

Yeah.

But the idea was to try and level the playing field

and not have cars with weird handling foibles and vices to try.

So I mean, I think, okay,

I think it makes it more interesting,

especially if every year, everything changes.

Right?

I mean, if one year is a Porsche,

the next year is a Chevy,

the next year is something else that keeps moving around.

That keeps the series interesting,

even if each one individual year isn't particular.

Because you can't...

Somebody will always have more experience

with one type of car than someone else.

That's true.

And that's...

Some guys are really good at X or Y and not Z.

Endurance racing is very different from Formula One racing.

So yeah, they are unique pieces of history.

It was fun to get to hang out with this car

because I, as a child, idolized these cars

and sort of knew what they were,

but not enough to really study them that closely.

So where does it rank on your scale of vintage 911

in terms of experience?

Yeah, it's definitely the most experience

in a vintage 911 that I have experienced.

In some senses, though, it's almost maybe...

There's a usability trade-off.

There's a friendliness to a 73 Carrera,

which is that you could kind of just cruise around in it.

And this car is on the front...

Like, it's friendlier to drive than I expected it to be

based on what it is and what I know it to be.

And honestly, the only thing about it that's unfriendly

is that it's got a pretty aggressive clutch.

Not unspeakably so, but more aggressive than...

And it idols really well, strangely.

Yeah, it idols super well.

It's very trackable.

It's got a sweetheart of a motor.

The steering isn't excessively heavy.

Surprisingly light, considering that it's got

very sticky tires and nine-inch wheels,

actually, at the front.

But there's no weight on the front, which helps.

And geometry probably also plays some role.

But no heat.

Yeah, it doesn't have heat.

It's deafening.

It's really, really loud, for sure.

It's not that loud when you're off of it.

It's when you're on throttle.

It's actually civilized.

And this was particularly festive,

because I drove the car across the Golden Gate Bridge

this morning.

And after the Golden Gate Bridge, there is a long uphill.

And as I'm coming off the bridge, I see a CHP

pulling onto the entering the highway.

And it's like at a situation where if I...

Unless I stand on the brakes, he is going to end up behind me.

And I'm not going to stand on the brakes

while CHP is doing anything while we're on

at sort of highway speeds.

So I am like, I'm not speeding at this point,

but he ends up behind me.

And it's a long steep uphill.

I mean, what do you think the gradient of that hill is?

Is it 8?

12.

You think it's...

8, 10, 12 somewhere in there?

Yeah, it's a steep hill.

A lot of cars that will be maxed out in...

In top gear.

Well, most cars can't make it mad in top gear.

Most cars in the car.

Yeah, most cars, I would say if you have less than 200 horsepower,

you're not staying in top gear.

Probably not.

And so I don't want to do a downshift,

because that's loud.

And so I leave it in fifth at like 3000 RPM,

but it's kind of a non-trivial amount of throttle.

And he changes lanes behind me.

And I'm in the number two lane.

And then he goes one more to the left.

But he is taking his sweet time up the hill.

He was with me the entire way up the hill,

which is, I don't know, how long does this hill last?

It's probably two miles, maybe?

A mile and a half?

A mile, a mile and a half.

But I might have faked a breakdown, faked a misfire.

Bam, bam, bam, bam.

Just to get behind him.

Turn the kill switch off.

Yeah, just something to get him in front of you,

so he's not listening to that.

Yeah, I know.

So he, we did not have an interaction, but I was concerned.

Did he then go through the tunnel?

Because it's tunnel at the top.

Did he go through the tunnel with you?

We went through the tunnel together.

Shit.

He didn't pass me until we were going downhill.

That sucks, because the tunnel, that's a long uphill tunnel.

I know, it was like a lot of throttle.

So I was anxious, but he, then when we started going downhill,

he was like, okay, nothing is going to happen

that I want to intervene in.

So I'm going to fuck off now.

And he did flash his arrow board at me after he passed

the little yellow flashy lights on the car, on the top of the car.

Wide.

I don't know.

Just as a like, salutation.

I honestly don't know.

Salutation or I got you, I'm watching you.

Yeah, or like.

You just barely made it.

Or you just got off easy or something like that.

I mean, the car has a license plate on it.

It's titled and registered.

I also had a dealer plate in the car with me.

So I, you know.

You'd be fine.

But I don't think it was going to get impounded.

It is technically road legal.

I mean, it's got lights and all that stuff.

It is a race car, but it has all the things that are required.

And it's not, it's old enough that it doesn't need emissions testing.

So I genuinely think you could get this car road titled

in California and registered for sure.

So anyway, it's not, yeah, there's some trade-offs and like you,

you drive through some situation where there's detritus on the road

and the sticky tires and the lack of soundproofing,

you hear all the gravel and stuff bouncing around.

You don't notice it until you have a little bit of a gravel under it.

Yeah, or even pine needles or something like that.

You hear everything.

Yeah. It's, it's very uncompromising.

Look at a car, this is the thing I've said a million times.

The better a car is, the worse of a collectible it makes.

This is a terrible car in that you're not going to want to go grocery shopping

in it and sit in traffic.

But you could.

You could.

But it's, you're not, it becomes the part, your primary focus.

You're never going to like-

Yes, you couldn't text and drive in this car.

You couldn't take a phone call.

You couldn't drink a beverage.

You can't hear enough to find your phone.

Yeah, that's what happened to me.

I was, and I arrived this morning.

I was like, I have no idea where my phone is.

Why would you bother?

There's no point even looking for it.

You wouldn't be able to see it.

It's so loud.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's crazy.

Plus it's a really narrow seat with a four-point harness.

I mean, it's not, it feels very special.

Yeah, it really does.

I would love to have opportunity to take that around a racetrack

because I think it would be spectacular once you're, once I'm used to it.

And with, you have some space and some runoff and all that stuff.

But this is, yeah, it's really interesting because you try to,

there, of all the modern 911s, the most experience of them is a 911 ST.

Of the current 992.

I mean, there's just the difference between that.

I mean, this car makes an ST look like a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

It does.

Absolutely does.

Yeah.

Not so much in ride.

It doesn't ride badly, but in everything else.

Yes.

Yeah.

Old cars with 15-inch wheels with lots of sidewall, for sure.

No, I'm finally satisfied.

The current, the 2.7 RS that we drove two years ago now, I guess,

for the, during the Piacasso, that car was a sweetheart.

You get it on the road and it just becomes a normal car,

but the engine's really spicy up top and it just, it was, it was fabulous.

This shuts me up.

This is the, oh, you want experience?

Fine.

Yeah.

Fine.

Sorry about your ears.

Yeah.

And, you know, you could, this injection system is basically the same as a,

fundamentally in design and functionality, the same as a 73 Carrera system.

And if you put this exhaust on, you could have a motor that delivered,

you know, I think it would probably be 80 to 85% as interesting or exciting,

as long as you had the right power to weight ratio,

which would be hard to do.

We should put this on the scales.

I'm kidding.

We should not.

I don't want to know what it weighs, but it certainly feels fast.

Yeah.

It's fast as shit.

It's pretty terrifying.

I can't imagine, you know, I guess if, if Donahue was driving,

I mean, they were all driving 917s.

They must have thought this was slow.

Yeah.

The thing was slow as shit because it weighs the same as,

as the cars they were racing and those cars.

There's the horsepower.

No.

I mean, let's see 1500, a fifth of the horsepower.

I think when they were racing, then they would put the, turn the boost down.

So they wouldn't 900 horsepower or something.

No, I think it was like 1100.

Oh my God.

1100 horsepower.

I bet they didn't sound this good because they were turbocharged.

Yeah.

It's been a while since I heard one of those cars run.

Either way, fabulous.

Thank you for bringing it.

Yeah, it's my pleasure to share it.

It's been fun to get to hang out with it.

I, I don't know.

It's a small audience, so I don't know how easy it will be to sell.

And it's also a lot of money, but it's a historic artifact.

And it has to go to somebody who appreciates it for historic artifact

and likes the history.

I think you'd have whole history.

Whole history.

But I also, the history aside, I think you'd have a really hard time

replicating this experience in just about anything.

You know, and what's a, in terms of percentage of this car's value,

what's a two seven RS worth?

50%.

Yeah.

This is worth twice.

Experientially, it is certainly twice as much experience,

more than twice as much experience as a 73 career RS.

That is absolutely true.

It's like 400 times as much experience.

I'm trying to, I'm sitting here rocking my brain,

trying to think of what to compare it to.

The only thing that I can think of that came close to that

is the Alpine 110 that I drove.

That little, which is.

71.

It was quick, but like no, not different leagues of quick.

This thing is fucking fast.

Yeah.

There's just nothing.

There's nothing.

And what other motors like old, old car, new car motor would never

have this much texture.

Like, and it does all these explosions out the exhaust on trailing throttle

and the overrun noises.

I mean.

And it does that weird on D cell.

The overrun.

I love that.

I don't.

I'm trying to think of, you know, like a really crazy 240Z

with like a 3.1 psychomotor is.

Yeah.

Is.

But it's not going to rev like this.

I mean, you can maybe make them rev to eight.

I don't know.

I don't, there's kind of nothing I can think of.

Ferrari V12s have nothing on this in terms of.

Racing Ferrari V12s would be like this for sure.

I sat in a 250 Tester Rosa around Montrombon many years ago.

And it was wow.

But I'm not sure it was anywhere close to this loud or full of a sound.

330p4.

330p4 I think would deliver this experience for sure.

Where in terms of sound level and fullness of noise, this versus McLaren F1.

Oh no.

That's much more sanitized.

That car has a lot of inside the induction.

That's why I asked, that's why I thought of it.

But this car is like a metal, it's a tin can.

And so there's this sort of like proximity of it.

And also there's like this metallic, I don't know, tinnyness or something of the structure

that sort of transmits the noise in a very different way than a carbon fiber shell does.

Broadcaster amplifies it.

Yeah, yeah.

And this is much, this is, you know, just pure unmitigated filth.

Filled fissures.

Yeah, filth.

Yeah, which the F1 is filthy, but not like this.

Not like this.

Yeah.

Because it might be an F1 race car, potentially.

You'd have a really hard time replicating this.

I can't think of anything else that.

Yeah.

Pretty cool.

Anyway, that was, we're starting the year off with Porsche content.

I'm so sorry, air-cooled Porsche content.

That's right.

Let me go back to Volkswagen world as soon as we're done with this.

So we're both on brand.

Godspeed.

Yeah, I know.

What more of the same in 2026.

Thank you for joining us for this week episode of Car Mudge and Show.

Maybe next week there'll be a VR6.

An update about.

Well, then maybe the car will be here.

Oh, you never know.

Okay.

That is pointing the bat.

Carrera RSR IROC: The Sensory-Overload Porsche 911 — The Carmudgeon Show w/ Cammisa & DTS — Ep. 220

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