The Porsche 962 with no number

For a comparatively recently made and raced car, there are untold mysteries surrounding the Porsche 962 Group C and IMSA GTP cars. There were approximately one hundred and forty cars built, by both the factory and various race shops. Chassis plates were swapped around with abandon in the period from 1984 to 1993 when these cars were raced just about every weekend, somewhere in the world, thus making the life of the 962 historian extremely difficult. This is the story of just one of the "unknown" 962s and our efforts to identify it.

I first encountered this mystery 962, when the owner called me earlier this year. He had just bought it, with no chassis plate, and little to go on but the ownership trail, from that great dealership of historic motoring treasures, the Symbolic Motor Car Company, of San Diego.

As you can see from the first photograph of the car in white, it had been converted to a road-going car, with lighting for the street, suede-trimmed cockpit and modified long-tail bodywork. Like all of the converted "street" 962s, it retained its on-board jacks.

There were several companies who converted race 962s to road-going specification, amongst them Dauer Racing, Schuppan Racing, DP of Germany plus various "one-off's". Fairly obviously, this 962 had to have come from one of these companies/builders. Whatever it was, one thing was clear, it had a factory-built 962C Group C chassis and running gear, all very well put together.

Symbolic’s classic/racing car salesman, Bill Noon, told the new owner, an enthusiastic racer from Miami, that the car had come from a Japanese collection in February 2003, where it had been for several years. When it was sold from Japan to Symbolic, the export papers from Japan carried a Porsche part number (962 331 021 00X0 - a suspension upright!) to identify it, as there was no chassis plate. Bill Noon thought that, based on his conversations with Philippe Olczyk, a previous owner now living in Cannes, this 962 may have been 962.141, which had been owned by Jochen Dauer, crashed by his co-driver at Mexico City in late 1989 and then had the original chassis repaired and built into this street car.

However, voluminous correspondence between Dauer Racing and Serge Vanbockryk of Belgium, a journalist who has been researching the history of Porsche 962s for over ten years now, seemed to show that 962.141 is currently in the possession of the Sultan of Brunei.

Serge and I inspected the car at Sebring in February, where the owner was displaying it alongside his "other" 962C, an ex-Dyson car. It had a "standard" Group C layout, with an air/water-cooled engine, although the wheelbase appeared to be an inch shorter than the standard specification. A visiting German Porsche race mechanic, who had worked with Dauer, thought that the chassis was built: "between chassis numbers 130 and 150."

What is certain is that this 962 had been sold via an American broker, David Gizzy, on August 7th, 1996, through Philippe Olczyk to a Mr. Okamoto in Japan. Olczyk claimed that he had bought the car: "from a friend in Germany" and, indeed, there is a letter from a Belgian, one M. Fabian Gerard, in which he states to Symbolic that he owned the car in 1995. M. Gerard goes on to say that he still has the street registration papers for the car and would be happy to supply them. I wrote to M. Gerard advising him that the present owner would very much like a copy of these papers. I received no reply.

Philippe Olczyk sold several Porsche 962s in the 1990s and it is conceivable that he is mixing up chassis number 962.141 with our subject car, perhaps a completely different car. But certainly the mix-up over the chassis number of this 962 appears to come from the time that Olczyk owned/brokered the car. Serge Vanbockryk had written to Olczyk about a 962.141 that Olczyk had advertised in July 1996, and Olczyk had replied by fax the next day, now stating that the chassis number of the 962 that he was selling was "003." This was Dauer’s internal numbering of his cars, in which case, this is the "first" 962.141, 962.112 being 001, 962.133 being the second and so on.

The history of 962.141 is worth a book in itself. The first "141" was raced by Jochen Dauer in 1989 and, as related above, was crashed in practice at Mexico City. Dauer Racing say that another, un-numbered chassis was bought from Porsche and the car rebuilt around that. So what happened to the original chassis? Well, that was repaired and built into another "141", that was, apparently, later sold to Symbolic and then its current owner under another number. That has now been corrected.

After Dauer’s 962 had been crashed at Mexico City, he urgently requested a new 962 from the factory as his 141 was being repaired. They sold him 962.8.001, a car used to test the idea of a twin-turbocharged V8 engine from a 928 project that did not materialize. This idea had, apparently, come from Erwin Kremer as a possible answer to the Sauber-Mercedes Group C cars that were then sweeping the Group C fields. Whatever, 962.8.001 was constructed and tested by the factory but there was not enough money to develop it. Dauer bought it, engineless, at the end of the 1989 season, re-engined it with a "standard" 962 water/water-cooled engine and raced it through 1990. After this, it was converted to street use and it also is with the Sultan of Brunei.

So, in the photos, you can see the numberless 962 as it was when brought out of Japan, in white. Whilst in Symbolic’s possession, it was rented out for a television advertisement and painted in dark gray, as it is today. Someone out there, probably in Europe, built this car in the 1990s. Where are you now and what can you tell us about it please?

On October 20th, 2004, Philippe Olczyk telephoned me with the following comments on the mystery 962 story.

He told your author that he first saw the 962 advertised in the German magazine "Auto Motor und Sport" in about 1995 or 1996, he couldn’t remember which. He did remember that the car was in Northern Germany, he thought in the Dusseldorf/Cologne area. He sent his mechanic with a truck to go and inspect and buy the car, so he never met the owner. He was adamant that it was a "street" 962, as he had driven it on the street.

M. Olczyk was insistent that the car was sold with a chassis number plate between the seats, on the bulkhead and a "Farben Brief" (logbook for the street), as the car had to come through two customs inspections in order to be sent to M. Olczyk’s partner in England. M. Olczyk then sold the car to David Gizzy in Los Angeles, traveling there to do the transaction himself.

Throughout our conversation, M. Olczyk was insistent that he couldn’t remember the chassis number that was on the 962.

So – Does anyone out there have a 1995/6 "Auto Motor und Sport" that advertises a 962 in Germany? If you do, look it up as it may have the solution to our mystery car!