Homage to a glorious era

The race-winning GT1. Photo / Supplied

Porsche will show off three historic racing cars at a special event in Melbourne in November, part of the marque's 40th anniversary of its first outright success in the Le Mans 24-hour classic in 1970.

The three Porsche Museum cars, which raced at Le Mans from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, will hit the 3.1km Sandown circuit during the two-day annual "Return of the Thunder" programme.

The Porsche 356B Carrera 2000 GS/GT, nicknamed "Dreikantschaber" ("three-pointed scraper") because of its Butzi Porsche-designed wedge shape, competed at Le Mans in 1963.

Powered by a 2-litre 155kW development of the famous boxer four-cam, four-cylinder engine fitted to the original Porsche 550 Spyder back in 1953, and weighing just 820kg, the "DKS" reached 225km/h on the Mulsanne Straight but it retired with engine failure.

However, it represents a glorious era for Porsche 356-based sports cars at Le Mans that began in 1951 when a 1.1-litre aluminium-bodied "Gmund Coupe" averaged 140km/h to win its class. Porsche scored the first of its 16 outright Le Mans victories in 1970 with the 12-cylinder 917 sports car and the most recent 28 years later in 1998.

This era is represented by two vastly different vehicles from the Porsche Museum - the legendary 340km/h Porsche 935, that won the World Constructors' Championship in 1976 and 1977, and the first - and only - road-going homologation version of the 1998 Le Mans-winning 911 GT1.

Powered by a turbocharged 2.8-litre boxer engine delivering 434kW at 7900rpm, the 935 is the actual car campaigned in 1976 by Belgian Jacky Ickx and German ace Jochen Mass, and has been restored fully to its original race condition.

Other than minimal road equipment, the GT1 is identical to the car that won Le Mans in 1998 on Porsche's 50th anniversary.

It is powered by a twin turbocharged, 3.2-litre, six-cylinder boxer engine producing 400kW at 7200 rpm and has a top speed of 350km/h.

Porsche Museum director Klaus Bischof will be behind the wheel of all three cars in Melbourne.