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Say Hello To The Dauer 962 Le Mans, The Fastest Car In The World In 1993
Raphael Orlove
Yesterday 5:29pmFiled to: DAUER 962
The Porsche 956/962 was quite possibly the greatest sports racing car
ever built, absolutely dominating Group C competition in the 1980s. So
why is someone debuting a 962 in 1993?
Well, this isn’t a Porsche 962, it’s a Dauer 962, done up by a privateer named John Dauer as a homologation special for GT1 racing, the top class
at Le Mans after Group C blew itself up for a variety of reasons.
You see, Porsche built so many 962s for privateers to run at Le Mans
that it was basically a GT1 car already, kind of like the GT40 in the
late ‘60s.
Again, this was just a Porsche 962 with whatever it needed to be road
legal. As such it has the same twin-turbo flat six as the 962 race car,
only unrestricted up to 730 horsepower as Dauer claims. Top speed was
251 mph, or 404 km/h, per Dauer.
This was the Dauer’s debut at the 1993 Frankfurt International Motor
Show, a video I bumped into while looking up info on something else
entirely. Everyone seems to be in a quite cheery mood, with some
wonderfully huge bottles of champagne at hand.
They had every right to be happy. Dauer would run the 1994 24 Hours Of
Le Mans and won it outright, making the car a solid contender at the
greatest race in the world for a solid decade. Worthy of champagne, I’d say.
MORE FUN GROUP C STORIES
Why The Porsche 956/962 Is The Greatest Sports Racing Car Ever Made
How Group C Died
The Strange Orphan Story Of The Most Successful Le Mans Car Ever
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raphael Orlove is features editor for Jalopnik.
https://jalopnik.com/say-hello-to-the-dauer-962-le-mans-fastest-car-in-the-1825305180
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