Petrolicious, the creator of high quality, unique movies and articles for traditional automobile fans, has launched its newest video, that includes Gen Shibayama’s Koenig 962, a avenue 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 excellent 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.
In the present day, 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 laws, they labored round them. Group C might not have needed 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 received all the pieces.
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 acquired it by means of the door in America, whereas it continued to dominate throughout the pond.
It was one automobile 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 beneath 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 avenue automobiles, however it simply… wasn’t… Group B.
Group C outlived all of it briefly, however 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. Considered one of them, broadly believed to be chassis CK6 02, ended up in Munich. Whereas no definitive supply ties the Japanese Koenig 962 avenue automobile on to CK6 02, it’s the strongest candidate primarily based on race historical past, building 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 achieved. Twin-turbo Testarossas. Widebody SECs. Something extreme and aggressive, they have 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 swap, 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 needed to assault you.
Ultimately, the chassis ended up in Japan. Within the fingers of Gen Shibayama. A person who understood precisely what the automobile was, and what it demanded.
“This automobile will kill you for those who make a mistake,” he says. “However for those who drive it the best way it needs to be, it handles corners tremendous properly.”
Gen had already tangled with the Porsche turbo fable. He wrecked a 930 in Tokyo years earlier, caught out by basic lift-off oversteer. It grew to become private. A mission. He labored his approach by means of the air-cooled Porsche catalog till he landed on essentially 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 swap. Battery. Gas 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 acute 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 reside. 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 insurrection however nearly as behavior. It’s what the automobile was all the time constructed for.
