Petrolicious, the creator of high quality, unique movies and articles for traditional automotive lovers, has launched its newest video, that includes Gen Shibayama’s Koenig 962, a road automotive 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 neighborhood 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 inside the confines of the foundations. However Porsche discovered methods to make it match, barely. They didn’t meet the rules, they labored round them. Group C could not have needed the 962 and in the event that they noticed it coming, it was too late to rewrite the rule guide. And by the point anybody discovered how harmful it was, the factor had already gained all the things.
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 received it via the door in America, whereas it continued to dominate throughout the pond.
It was one automotive following (barely) two units of guidelines. However it was nonetheless a prototype. Nonetheless a blunt-force win supply system. Nonetheless one of many final actually harmful race automobiles we’d ever see. Group B died in 1986, buried below its personal violence. Group A got here subsequent, safer (boringish), slower (kinda boring), extra civilized (fairly boring). The automobiles have 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 have 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. One among them, extensively believed to be chassis CK6 02, ended up in Munich. Whereas no definitive supply ties the Japanese Koenig 962 road automotive on to CK6 02, it’s the strongest candidate primarily based on race historical past, building particulars, and its timeline. The automotive 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 achieved. Twin-turbo Testarossas. Widebody SECs. Something extreme and aggressive, they have been into it. However turning a Porsche 962 right into a highway automotive? That was one thing else completely.
Koenig added simply sufficient to get a plate on it. A special nostril with pop-up headlights. A fundamental inside with seats and vents. A customized immobilizer, an influence change, and a gasoline pump prime that needed to run for thirty seconds earlier than the automotive 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 needed to assault you.
Finally, the chassis ended up in Japan. Within the fingers of Gen Shibayama. A person who understood precisely what the automotive was, and what it demanded.
“This automotive will kill you if you happen to make a mistake,” he says. “However if you happen to drive it the best way it must be, it handles corners tremendous effectively.”
Gen had already tangled with the Porsche turbo fantasy. He wrecked a 930 in Tokyo years earlier, caught out by basic lift-off oversteer. It turned private. A mission. He labored his means via 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. Subsequently, I needed to have it.”
The automotive is barely a highway automotive. You need to take away the steering wheel to climb inside. You begin it in levels. Kill change. Battery. Gasoline pump. Ignition. The turbo lag is gigantic. The enhance 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 automotive 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 automotive that beat the race rulebook as soon as, after which beat the federal government’s rulebook the second time round. Not as insurrection however nearly as behavior. It’s what the automotive was all the time constructed for.