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