A RARE Porsche that Jim Richards used in GT-Production and on Targa Tasmania is set to return to competition.
Porsche created the limited-edition 911 Carrera RS Club Sport version of the Type 993 in 1995 as a lightweight variant targeted at motorsport.
The factory stripped it of anything deemed non-essential to reduce weight: the front bucket seats were replaced with race-spec Recaro units while the rear seats were deleted entirely, as were the electric windows, radio, air-conditioning, carpets and roof lining.
One of the few additions was a roll cage, but only for the rear section of the cabin as cars couldn’t be road-registered with bar work in the front.
A total of 100 examples were built initially, with 10 imported to Australia to homologate it for the rising GT-Production category.
Richards bought one of the cars, a Speed Yellow example, directly from Porsche Australia to replace the 968 CS he’d started the 1995 GT-P season in.
The car’s first outing, however, came on Targa Tasmania, where Jim and navigator Barry Oliver claimed second place, before the car made its circuit racing debut a week later in the GT-P round at Symmons Plains.
“We didn’t really do anything to it after Targa – we just put some more petrol in it and changed the tyres,” Richards recalled for the book Gentleman Jim.
Richards swept the wins and Symmons Plains and went on to claim the 1995 title, and campaigned it again in 1996 but narrowly finished runner-up to Cameron McConville.
He stepped away from the category in 1997 due to his Volvo Super Touring program, but the car continued racing in GT-P in the hands of new owner Ed Aitken, who ended up racing it against Richards when he returned to the class in 1999 in a different 911 RSCS.
Only 227 examples of the 911 RSCS were built across 1995 and 1996 and their values have risen significantly over the following decades.
News of the ex-Richards machine’s re-emergence came this week via the Bowdens, with racer and enthusiast Duncan MacKellar the new custodian of the car.
