Low-Key Legend

Just a place-holder between the 917 and 956? That’s harsh on a car that took three Le Mans wins and forged Jacky Ickx’s legend. It’s time to reappraise the Porsche 936...

The 936 is Porsche’s forgotten hero of Le Mans. That’s perhaps understandable for a car sandwiched between the legends that were the 917 and the 956/962 in the timeline of the German marque’s prototypes. Yet it’s a machine that won the 24 Hours on three occasions, allowed Jacky Ickx to drive his greatest ever race at Le Mans, set Derek Bell on the road to sports car stardom, and provided victorious proof of concept for the 956 Group C car’s motive power.

That’s not bad for a prototype that was designed and built in double-quick time and more than once dusted off and brought out of the museum to take its place on the starting grid at the Circuit de la Sarthe. And in comparison to cars that came before and after, it was made in tiny numbers. There were just three true factory-built 936s, and they shared out the three Le Mans victories for the car in 1976, ’77 and ’81.

Yet who was actually responsible for the decision to return to the prototype ranks at a time when Porsche was already a long way down the road with its 935 silhouette GT racer appears to have been lost in the mists of time. Norbert Singer, project leader on the 935 program, insists it was Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann, head of the Porsche board. Manfred Jantke, then racing boss for the Stuttgart marque, believes it was Prof. Helmut Bott, under whose remit motorsports fell in his role as research and development chief.

Singer remembers the decision being taken at what he describes as a “remarkable meeting” late in 1975, the year before a new structure of FIA classes came into force. The World Championship for Makes would be fought out by Group 5 GT machinery, but there would also be a separate World Sportscar Championship for Group 6 prototypes. The two categories would, of course, come together at the non-championship 24 Hours of Le Mans.

“Out of the blue, Dr Fuhrmann asked us about the new Group 6 rules for 1976,” recalls Singer. “He said, ‘You’re always saying that you have a lot of 917 parts in stock – suspension and gearboxes. We have the engine [from the 935], so all we have to build is a new chassis frame and bodywork.’”

Jantke argues that the 936 was “definitely not a Fuhrmann project.” He claims that the car was Bott’s baby.

“If you had to pick one person as the architect of the 936 program, it was Bott,” says Jantke. “It was quite an emotional thing for him. He loved prototypes and he considered only a mid-engined machine to be a real racecar.”

The debate over whose idea the car was will probably never reach a conclusion, given that Fuhrmann and Bott have passed away, but what is clear is that there was resistance within Porsche Motorsport to a prototype program at a time when it was at full stretch developing the 935...

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