This chair, of course, must be paired with the Porshce 917 couch, which will allow you to move from a semi-upright to a reclining position without relinquishing your fight against Ferrari.

Source: Design Spotter

Wiggle your big toe. Wiggle it with enough determination and your feet, clad in racing boots, will pop into place. All snug? All buckled up? Palms not too sweaty on the balsa wood shifter knob? Good. Your toes will now serve as figureheads on a great German ship of aluminum and titanium. Now say hello to the twelve air-cooled cylinders set to turn your cabin into a furnace and blast you down the Mulsanne Straight at 246 MPH.

When the Porsche 917 debuted at the Geneva Motor Show on this day forty years ago, nobody knew it would come to define the very spirit of Porsche. The 917 gave the company its first of 15 victories at Le Mans. In four years, it morphed into the most powerful racing car ever made. Steve McQueen turned it into a movie star in his 1971 film Le Mans. But on that March day, all Porsche had was an unsorted prototype with abysmal aerodynamics. It would have died a quick death if not for the willpower of Ferdinand Piëch, who would go through similar misery to produce a car with similar perfomance thirty years later in the Bugatti Veyron.

The difference between the two is that anybody can drive the Veyron—as proven by Top Gear’s James May—but when the 917 debuted, racing drivers would’t touch it with a stick. And just consider the titanic amounts of chutzpah one needed to get into any death trap of a 60s racing car, which killed drivers with greater precision than earlier examples of German engineering killed GI’s.

The 917 wouldn’t stay on the road. Its lightweight aluminum spaceframe was barely enough to contain the immense power of the engine, an air-cooled flat twelve which began life with 580 naturally aspirated HP. Before that could happen, an engineer by the name of John Horsmann had to figure out a new tail configuration to make the car handle. These days, we have computers and wind tunnels to help, but back then, aerodynamics was Formula 1 guys sticking random wings on tall struts and Jim Hall hacking away at his Chaparrals in Texas. Horsmann’s version increased downforce at the expense of drag and the 917 Kurzheck—German for “short tail”— was born. This was the car that won the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, the stage for McQueen’s car nerd epic.

The 917 repeated its performance the next year before it was outlawed for 1972. Derek Bell, who would claim five victories with the 917’s successors, remembers in an article he wrote for the October 2008 issue of Octane:

Testing for the 1971 Le Mans, [Porsche chief race engineer Norbert] Singer asked me what revs I was pulling in the 917 down the Mulsanne Straight. I told him 8100rpm, which he said was a good thing because the engine would blow up at 8200rpm! That equated to 246 mph and we have never been quicker since.

The car would then cross the Atlantic to race in CanAm. With the addition of turbocharging it morphed into Moon rocket lunacy and became the Turbopanzer, also known as the 917/30, which made 1100 HP in race trim and won every race but one in the 1973 CanAm season. It retired at Talladega Superspeedway in 1975 with driver Mark Donohue—who had a week to live—taking it around the tri-oval in a 225 MPH blitz.

Yet ask people about the 917 on any side of the Atlantic and nobody remembers it anymore. Racing regulations and drivers have come and gone and Porsche has been away from Le Mans for a decade now. So why it the 917 still worth remembering? It was the last in a line of sports racers which were out to kill you, which pushed the performance envelope at the expense of safety and sanity, and when you swap your eyes with those of its driver, it still gives you a queasy, insane ride around Le Mans:

And remember: your toes, vulnerable little antennae, are in front of the front axle all the time. They get stuck in the aluminum bodywork as you wiggle for the brake pedal at the end of the Mulsanne at Mach 0.32.

Happy birthday, now, you big bad savage thing.

Photo Credit: Frank van de Velde, Porsche, edvvc

It goes perhaps without saying that our favorite racing series of all time is Group B. And why not? Family hatchbacks tuned to within an inch of their steroidal jackrabbit lives was and will always be good, dirty fun. Relatively lax rules meant manufacturers were free to employ A-league trickery to make their cars faster (both turbo and supercharging with unlimited boost), lighter (exotic materials) and nimbler (AWD, baby) than the competition. And we're not the only ones with B-lust. When put to a vote this past June, you crowned the Audi quattro S1 the King of the "Killer Bees." Interestingly, the man behind that machine is the same man behind today's Fantasy Garage nominee: Dr. Ferdinand Piëch (for those keeping score, the good doctor is also responsible for the VW Phaeton and Bugatti Veyron). No surprise then that Piëch's single-mindedness turned the nearly stillborn 917 into perhaps the greatest racing car of all time. And without question the most powerful.

Piëch's Porsche 917 came to life only because the FIA changed the rules to prevent cars like it from existing. Ford's GT40 (and the Lola T70) proved to be so totally dominant at events like Le Mans that in 1968 the homologation numbers for Group 4 (5.0-liter sports car class) were lowered from 50 to 25, opening the door to other manufacturers. Porsche's racing arm had already been building close to 25 prototype cars a year under Piëch's stewardship, dating back to 1965. This seemed like a no brainer. Furthermore, they could sell the surplus cars to privateers, recouping some of the development costs. With only 10 months to go before the start of the season, Piëch set out to develop a car that could take on and defeat the world's best. Hey, why not?

Piëch and company started with the already worthy Porsche 908 racer. The tubular steel frame was scrapped in favor of a slightly weaker but much lighter aluminum job that weighed only 101 pounds. Like the 908, four independent wishbones suspended the 917, only the coils were honed from titanium. Low weight was the top priority — the shift knob was made from balsa wood. The still air-cooled engine (rumor has it that VW put up two-thirds of the development cash simply to promote air-cooling) was essentially the 908's straight-eight with four more cylinders slapped on, creating a very slick 4.5-liter flat-12 that was good for 580 horsepower. Unlike the 908's boxer crankshaft, the 917's engine used a shorter crank similar to those used in "V" engines in order to reduce the motor's footprint. The 917's were finished with a detachable tail, allowing teams to choose between high downforce or low drag.

Things got off to a rocky start when the FIA visited the Porsche factory to find only three completed 917s, 18 assembled, and seven literally in pieces. No chance, said the inspectors; the rules mandated 25 completed cars. Three weeks later, in a feat of automotive heroism that should make your spine tingle, Piëch presented the inspectors with 25 working 917s all parked in a row in front of the Porsche factory. He even offered them a test drive, which was politely (and wisely) turned down. Regardless, these new über Porches would be allowed to compete. Funny side note: Ferrari was able to bring its 512 to the races a year later with only 17 cars built. C'est la Enzo.

Much rockier however, was the car itself. It's a running joke among car cognoscenti to refer to the 996 GT2 as the widowmaker. Oops, wrong Porsche. In the 917, wheel spin at over 200 mph was commonplace. Drivers would not only pray for their cars to break down, but openly celebrate when one did. So bad was the 917's handling that several top pros simply refused to climb inside. Porsche asked BMW to supply two drivers for the 1969 1000 km Nürburgring. The drivers found the Porsches to be both insanely fast and dangerous, and BMW ultimately refused to take the risk. The Bavarians were sadly proved right a few weeks later when driver John Woolfe was killed in a 917 during the first lap of Le Mans. Two 917s did lead the pack for a while, but much to the delight of their drivers, broke down during the night, allowing Jacky Ickx to win the big race in a GT40, beating a Porsche 908 by a football field.

The 917/20 "Pink Pig" aka "The Truffelhunter of Zuffenhausen"

Something had to be done; the most powerful Porsche racecar ever built succeeded in winning just a single race (Zeltweg) in its first season. Partnering with John Wyer and the Gulf team, Porsche's engineers were free to concentrate on refining the 917 while others had the chore of actually racing it. A breakthrough came when a Wyer engineer named John Horsmann decided downforce was more important than low drag. Taping aluminum sheets together to form a short dual set of tails, the 917 almost instantly went from being an undrivable monster to a fairly well sorted racer. Later that year a 917K (the short-tailed 917s were referred to as "Kurzheck") won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, as well as Daytona, Brands Hatch, Spa, Monza, Watkins Glenn, and the Austria Ring — bringing home the much coveted "World Championship for Makes" title. A 917K with a bigger 4.9-liter mill and a highly flammable magnesium frame would win Le Mans again in 1971. Not bad for a car once feared and loathed by its drivers.

Then the FIA banned it. Normally the story would stop here. Porsche built a can of whoop ass on wheels, won some races and then their class got canned. Happens every year, and we can't just keep filling the Fantasy Garage with Le Mans winners now can we? (Wait, can we?) Lucky for those of us for the whom the appellation "hoon" might be apropos, somebody hipped Porsche to the Can-Am series taking place in North America. Specifically, Group 7. Why Group 7? Because it didn't have any fricking rules, that's why! Seriously, there were no restrictions on engine size, induction or power. There was no minimum or maximum vehicle weight. You could do whatever you wanted in terms of aerodynamics. Cars had only to have two seats, enclosed wheels and meet 1972 safety requirements. Group 7 was essentially Smokey Yunick turned loose in Australia, metaphorically speaking of course. When you dangle meat like that in front of a man like Piëch, the results are usually both predictable and astonishing.

1500 HP Porsche 917/30, The Most Powerful Racecar Ever

Porsche's first inclination was to develop a 750 hp straight-16. However, they decided to go with a bored out 5.4-liter twin-turbo 12-cylinder that was good for 1,100 horsepower — in engine-saving racing trim. For the qualifiers, boost was cranked up to 39 psi and the 917/30s were developing 1500 horses, making them the most powerful racecars ever. Performance was double stupid, with 0-60 happening in 1.9 seconds, 0-200 in 10.9 seconds and top speeds in the 250 mph neighborhood. In 1973, with Mark Donahue behind the wheel, the 917/30 lost exactly one race. It won all the rest. Forced to act, Can-Am implemented the only rule it could to slow down the ultimate 917: for 1974 Group 7 cars had to achieve better than three miles per gallon, which effectively killed both the 917 and Cam-Am. Also, didn't Steve McQueen make a movie about the 917? Happy voting.

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[The Jalopnik Fantasy Garage appears every Tuesday. Though, because of Monday Night Football, this will be switching shortly to every Wednesday. Readers vote the cars in or out. The idea is that we'll have 50 cars in our Fantasy Garage, the world's greatest mechanic and endless wads of cash. Would you like to nominate a car for the Fantasy Garage? Write tips@jalopnik.com with the subject line "Fantasy."]

The Jalopnik Fantasy Garage, So Far:
RUF RT12 | 1978 Aston Martin V8 Vantage | Honda 1300 Coupe 9 | 1931 Daimler Double Six 50 Corsica Drophead Coupe | Ferrari 288 GTO | Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 | 1970 Buick GSX 455 | First Generation BMW M Coupe | Bugatti Veyron 16.4 | Ford GT | Citroen SM | Porsche 928 | Jensen FF | DeTomaso Vallelunga | Audi Quattro S1 | Buick GNX | Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R | Honorary Fantasy Garager: The LS1 Powered Rotus | Lamborghini LM002 | Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe | Ferrari 250 GTO | Bentley Speed Six | Talbot-Lago T150C SS Figoni et Falaschi Raindrop/Teardrop Coupe

With 750+ horsepower cracking from a flat-six thanks to creative use of turbocharging and Bosch mechanical injection, the Porsche 935 represents the apex of crazed eighties IMSA Group 5 twin-turbo gas huffing mayhem. The Porsche brain trust produced many variants of the 935 six-banger in answer to the ever changing race series rules regarding use of hair dryers. Some of these engines overtook the output of the twelve-cylinder 917 engine with more than 800 horsepower. This particular 935 is going up on the block at the Amelia Island RM Auction March 10, and is expected to fetch the princely sum 950 thousand clams or so. Our morning trip to Coinstar netted $7.53, an arcade token, and a stripped bolt, so we're unfortunately out of the running. – Mike Bumbeck

1981 Porsche 935 IMSA Group 5 Race Car [RMauctions.com]

Related:
Downforce in the Den: Porsche 917 Couch; Call Dr. Evil, Go to Florida; Car Porn of the Day: Porsche 997 RSR; Used Car We Can't Afford of the Day: The Porsche 956 Works Rothmans [Internal]

Loveseat, indeed. It's one thing to watch your DVDs of LeMans or CanAm race footage while sitting in a Barcalounger or some other glorified tree stump. It's entrely another to curl up in your own Porsche 917. Sure this model is lacking around 1,100 horsepower or so (from CanAm setup), but the company that makes it will paint it in your choice of livery. We'd of course stick with the Gulf-Wyer trimming. Just 3995.00 (~$7500) takes one home. Click through to see (and hear) a less living-room-friendly version. – Mike Spinelli

Le Mans Lounger? UK Firm Builds Porsche 917 Sofa [Winding Road]

Related:
Vasek Polak's Porsche Engines Recovered, Auctioned For Charity [internal]

How did we not know about this? Famed motor-racing driver, car collector and Porsche dealer Vasek Polak died in a wreck on the autobahn in 1997, leaving his estate to the Vasek and Anna Maria Polak Foundation. In 2000, a team of crack thieves absconded with a stock of NOS and rebuilt Porsche racing motors: four naturally-aspirated Porsche 917K race engines, a NOS 3.0L Porsche 908 mill, one 2.2L Porsche 907 Hillclimb engine, and one 3.4L Porsche 911 race engine. This seems rather dumb to us, as the market for these engines is necessarily a small one. And wha' happen'? They were finally nabbed and the collection returned to the Polak foundation.

On March 25th, just under our Pedro-based noses in El Segundo, the whole kit 'n' kaboodle was auctioned for a mil to Dale Miller of Miller Historic Motorcars. And we didn't know about it! Nobody told us! The money went to cancer research, and we have to say, despite the fact that we didn't make it up the 405 to Segundo, we can't think of a happier ending to a theft. [Thanks to Bret for the tip.] [UPDATE: Here's a story on the theft, recovery and auction from the Daily Breeze.]

Vasek Polak Historic Porsche Racing Engine Auction: $1 Millon Raised for Charity!!! [Pelican Parts]

Related:
Inside Porsche's New Le Mans Prototype [Internal]