THE car that Peter Brock and Larry Perkins raced at the Le Mans 24 Hours has come up for sale in Europe.
Brock and Perkins tackled the 1984 edition of the iconic sportscar enduro in a highly publicised ‘Team Australia’ effort, orchestrated by Bob Jane and Australia’s then Porsche distributor Alan Hamilton, and run by Greg ‘Peewee’ Siddle.
Brock’s third and final tilt at Le Mans ended halfway through the race when Perkins crashed their orange Porsche 956 in the wee hours of the morning.
Perkins had qualified the #34 Porsche in 15th on the grid, but various troubles meant they had only completed 145 laps before the crash that took it out of the race at around 2am.
The chassis the pair drove at La Sarthe, Porsche 956-102, has recently popped up for sale on Racecarsdirect.com here.
One of the first customer chassis sold by Porsche, 956-102 went to John Fitzpatrick Racing in 1983.
The 1976 Bathurst 1000 co-winner fielded the car for various drivers during that year and drove it alongside Guy Edwards and Rupert Keegan in the Le Mans 24 Hour.
The car continued to be used in the 1984 season, including the Brock/Perkins Le Mans tilt and the world championship round at Sandown where it reportedly ran as the #55 Skoal Bandit car of Keegan and Franz Konrad.
It continued into 1985 as JFR’s #55 entry, until it was badly damaged in a crash at the Silverstone round of the world championship.
While many of its parts were salvaged and used to build up a brand-new Porsche 962C chassis, the damaged 956-102 monocoque was kept and later sold to fellow Group C privateer Siggi Brunn. Per Porsche, the chassis was eventually repaired by American engineering company Fabcar.
The car currently appears in a 1983 J.David livery with high downforce bodywork, as opposed to the sleeker low-downforce package used at Le Mans and is ready for use with an engine that has just 1.5 hours running since its last rebuild.
According to the listing, Siebold Auto + Sport in Germany has looked after the car for the past 15 years for its owner, who has only used it for track days in that time.
And the price tag?
2.2 million Euros – that’s currently about AU$3.648 million.
