If one were to make a list of the greatest race cars of all time, the Porsche 917 would easily be at the top. Its wins at Le Mans in the late 1960s and early '70s, stunning Gulf Oil livery, and move star status all cement it as an icon. Now a fantastic 917K is for sale, and I might rob banks to buy it.
The 917K in question is a 1969 model being sold by race car driver turned restorer and car dealer Bruce Canepa, and you can read all about it on his website. Canepa doesn't list a sale price, but Yahoo! Autos reports it should go well over the last 917 Gulf car he sold, which sold for $20 million.
I'm probably going to have to rob several banks to buy it. I mean, realistically, how much cash are you gonna walk out with if you hold up your neighborhood Wells Fargo? Not enough to buy a 917K, that's for damn sure.
This particular example, chassis 004/017, is said to have been the first 917 to finish a race in its entirety. It has been restored to the state it would have been in when it entered the Nurburgring 1000 Kilometers in 1969.
Yahoo's writeup on the car is something you should read in full, but here's a little more backstory on it:
After this car's Nurburgring experience, where it finished eighth with drivers Frank Gardner and David Piper, the car received full 917K bodywork and was delivered to Wyer's shop in anticipation of a March 1970 showing at Brands Hatch. The car didn't finish and was returned to Porsche for repair, when it received chassis number 017.
I think my best bet would be to do one huge Ocean's Eleven or Goldfinger style heist. I pull it off, buy the 917K, and then disappear with it into some country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S. That could work.
This car has bounced between collectors and racers for decades but saw a full restoration beginning in late 2011. "917s are truly rare beasts, and it is even rarer for one to come up for sale, especially one that can irrefutably wear the soul-stirring Gulf colors of blue and orange," Canepa's site says.
Then again, it's 2014. Who robs banks anymore? I'm better off doing some kind of cyber heist, where I hack a bank account and appropriate the funds that way. I'd have to do it to some company that really deserved it. Monsanto, maybe, or any larger oil company, or one of the financial firms whose executives skated prison during the recession. I'd be like Robin Hood, except instead of giving to the poor, I'd be buying a Porsche 917K for myself.
It's a truly, truly amazing machine, and one of the few examples that has been returned to its former glory. I hope the wealthy collector who ends up with it (me) will do it the service of driving it hard on occasion, because that's what it was built to do.