Little confusion on my part surrounding "M-471", Paging Dr. 914 Options

[Lavanaut]

I've been wondering about this for a long time and was reminded about it last night as I was flipping through the AA catalog and came across pics of George's blue M-471 GT. It's my understanding that the true factory GT race cars did not have the "M-471" designation, that it was technically the designation for the "GT-look" package that one could order from the factory on a /6...?

I guess at the center of my uncertainty is this: when I see "M-471" I immediately think "not a factory GT", but a factory GT look-a-like...just like the wide body "turbo look" 911s.

Can someone help clear this up for me?

Thanks

edit: forgot to say that adding to the confusion is the verbiage in the AA catalog about the "M-471 GT" and its racing history.

[carr914]

So the Factory made 25 917s and lined them up for the Officials to see. Most of them were just shells and were made into real racecars later.

Not true, every one was complete, tested and drivable. From the date of the first inspection on March 20, 1969 when the C.S.I. inspector saw only 3 complete cars, and nixed the approval for April 1st, until April 19th when the 25th was completed, all stops were pulled to build the cars in the experimental assembly hall in Werk 1. The photo was taken April 21 at the time of the second inspection.

Questionable - According to Denis Jenkinson book Porsche Past & Present, Yes they had 25 cars with 4.5 litre engines in them lined up for inspection. "Whether they were all complete and ready to run was academic, as was the question of whether they were all sold or intended to be sold."

After the Homologation process, most of the 25 cars were dismantled and put in storage as back-up material. They would race a batch of 917s and then build and replace them with another batch. Bodywork changed as did engine displacement up to 5 litres. In all more than 60 917s and variants were made.

T.C.

[davep]

[Questionable - According to Denis Jenkinson book Porsche Past & Present, Yes they had 25 cars with 4.5 litre engines in them lined up for inspection. "Whether they were all complete and ready to run was academic, as was the question of whether they were all sold or intended to be sold."

My source was Excellence Was Expected. Deceptive practices by other manufacturers caused C.S.I. to accept nothing less than 25 complete, ready to race, 917's. That was done, the photos were taken, and the homologation was accepted for May 1. The problem was that little testing had been done, so the cars were still in a developmental process. The whole design & build process had been completed in an amazingly short period. However the cars needed a lot of development yet, which meant a lot of revisions, thus the cars were dismantled to make the revisions. The long and short of it was, any car in the line could have been raced that day.