The Mystery of the Dual RS/RSR

I first saw her at the Nurburgring in August 1990. I was there to take part in the "Old Timer" meeting in my lovely old Lola T70 in the "Thundersports" race. It was glorious weather, I remember, and as I walked to the exhibition tents for a quick look around before practice on the Friday morning, F111’s were passing over low, obviously coming to also take a look, but at a somewhat faster speed!

I seem to remember that it was in the first marquee that I visited that I first encountered 9089, or, to give her her full chassis number, 911 460 9089. Looking very dramatic in silver and blue "Martini" colors, there sat what appeared to be a very genuine 1974 Porsche RSR, with cracks in the fiberglass.

Now RSRs are a passion with me. I wrote a book on them in 1987, which subsequently went into four editions, so I’m always interested when I find one that I hadn’t seen before. I went to take a closer look. Certainly this car looked as if it had seen some hard racing, with the afore-mentioned cracks in the paintwork, a well-used driver’s seat and belts and generally "well-used" look. According to the notice on the windshield, the car had been raced heavily in the 1970s, put away wet, and had just been bought by an American who liked Racing Porsches. I made notes, couldn’t find anyone knowledgeable on the stand and went back to racing the Lola.

When I got back home, I looked up the factory records on this RSR, that Jurgen Barth had kindly supplied to me years before. To my surprise, I found that 9089 had originally been noted as an RSR, but subsequently, the factory had told me that this was a mistake, the car had been sold in RS form when new. I thought little more of the matter.

Years later, Ulrich Trispel in Germany, that doyen of finding these racing Porsche’s race and ownership histories, wrote to me to tell me that the car, as an RS, had raced from 1974 to 1977 in German National races and hillclimbs, being owned by Rolf Blind, before vanishing from sight. The car had been very successful in Group 3 races, even managing to win outright the thirty hours of Hockenheim in 1975, with Rolf Wutherich co-driving. In 1976, the car was re-painted in White and became a part of the "Dinkel-Acker" beer-sponsored "Hahn-Sportwagen" team. It won three races that year. Halfway through the 1977 season, the RS received an RSR engine of some 320 horsepower and now took part in the Group 3 class. After this, it was sold to Luxembourg.

Quite co-incidentally, a few years later, I was contacted by Marios Stafiloplates in Athens, who told me that he had acquired the RSR numbered 911 460 9089 from Willy Holzenthal in Germany. It turned out that the American owner, Roy Waltzer, had never taken delivery of the car and had sold it back to Willy, who in turn had sold it on to Marios. I congratulated Marios on having such a wonderful old racecar.

In October 2003, I received an email from an enthusiast in Belgium. In it, he told me that he had just bought an RS 3.0 from 1974 with the chassis number…yes, you guessed it! 911 460 9089. He had bought it from a frenchman who had bought it from Lembo, a dealer in Rheims. He sent photos of the car to me as it is today, in white, with blue "Carrera" graphics and wheel centers. It looked a correct-spec. RS 3.0 but had a 320 horsepower twin-plug RSR engine fitted. With that relatively narrow bodywork fitted, I thought, it must be one quick car.

In his email, the new owner asked if I had photographs of the car, and also asked me if I could find out what had happened to the car after it was sold in 1977 to Luxembourg. I happily took on the task and called Willy Holzenthal to see if he could remember from whom he bought the car to sell to Roy Waltzer. He told me that the car had been bought from a shop called RS Tuning in Germany, who had restored it and gave me their number. I contacted them several times, but was never able to speak with the owner, Reinhold Schmirler.

So back to the American owner, Roy Waltzer, in 1990. I spoke with Jim Newton in Connecticut, who looks after his cars. Jim told me that, on finding out that the RSR had originally been built by the factory as an RS, Waltzer had sold it back to Willy Holzenthal. I then spoke with Marios Stafiloplates, the owner of the RSR "9089". Yes, he told me, he had indeed bought the RSR from Willy and loved it. He was kind enough to fax me the race history from 1974 to 1977, which I subsequently found had been supplied by Ulrich Trispel and was exactly the same as that which had been supplied to the Belgian owner of the RS 3.0! This is a very small circle of enthusiasts.

Then I had a stroke of luck. It was whispered, I was told by a fellow Porsche enthusiast, that the car had caught fire and burned, after Rolf Blind had sold it to Luxembourg in 1978. The owner inspected his RS further and found unmistakable evidence that the car had, at some time, been in a fire and subsequently rebuilt. It still had all the "traditional" RS 3.0 features of strengthening plates added, but the wheel arches betrayed the fact that this RS had been rebuilt with Turbo wings/fenders, as RS 3.0 wheel arches have a more "rectangular" outline, when looking at the side of the car.

My conclusion, for what it is worth, is that someone knowledgeable knew that there had been confusion over whether this car had originally been an RS or an RSR and believed that they had found an RSR that had "disappeared." So they created one. It is noticeable that on the "9089" in Greece, the RSR, the bottom of the dashboard has been cut away, and that is where the Porsche production number is located, so that cannot be checked. That number is, however, in the RS 3.0 in Belgium. Then the burned RS came to light and this was subsequently correctly rebuilt/restored.