The 1968 Porsche 911 T/R Sport Purpose captures racing essence. Built for track domination, it boasts a lightweight frame, potent flat-six engine, and aerodynamic enhancements. With victories at iconic races, it signifies Porsche's commitment to precision engineering, solidifying its place in motorsport history and enthusiasts' hearts.

Julien's Perspective
SOME THOUGHTS ON THIS MODEL

Firstly, may I explain that the soul motivation for this second build was based upon the sale back in 2016 of one of the 4 original T/R RHD cars that was produced in 1968. This original build had been a huge labour of love, which extended over 4 years, hours of painstaking research plus many more driving the length of the country to Canford Classics who undertook the build.

I quickly managed to find a home for this super rare RHD car, thus the owner decided he hadn't endured sufficient pain and shortly embarked upon another build. Having amassed a wonderful supply of original parts, the 'cream' were used in this build.

Some back ground on the Sport Purpose programme:

The Sports Purpose programme came about because the 911R of 1967 was not built-in enough quantity to be homologated, so it was therefore put into the Sports Prototype category where it did not stand a chance against true Sports Prototypes! Whilst the 911R had a bit of success in road events such as the ‘Tour de France’, what Porsche needed to do was base their 911 competition cars on the standard cars that obviously had been built in such numbers that satisfying homologation thresholds would not bean issue.

So they developed the Sports Purpose programme which consisted of special parts and modifications that could be added to the various models to meet the requirements of specific racing categories.

This would either be done during build at the factory (which actually also added more modifications not itemised in the Sports Purpose document), but were things that were found on the RHD T/R sold 3 years ago and other ‘factory' cars and that have been incorporated into this Polo Red car, these cars being super rare (circa 30-ish)and hence high values; or a customer could order from the Sports Purpose catalogue to modify their stock car - I believe you could also return the carto the factory for this work at a price.

With the knowledge gained from examining the African RHD T/R, this car has been built as per a new factory T/R build (911T for Group 3) thus incorporating the modifications that wouldn’t have been available to a returning customer car e.g. removal or internal vent metal work at rear of roof (something that was done on the 1967 R), blanking of ‘B’ post and removal of guide tube for engine lid release, welding up of bumper trim sholes to allow tape to replace standard trim, fitting of lightweight carpet and headliner (in the case of this car the original set from a factory T/R with Targo Florio and Mugello history), together with removal of internal trim fitting brackets……all these measures were undertaken in period to reduce weight as much as possible.

Porsche used the ’911T’ as the basis for these factory cars because they were the most basic and therefore the lightest, they homologated to this weight and then fitted the car with the superior brakes, suspension and engine from the 911S which were all detailed in the FIA homologation document.

There was also an addendum (577/1/1E) effective from January 1968, which captures the change from aluminium to magnesium engine case construction (11820123 is a September 1967 car so it was correctly built it with an aluminium ’S’ engine which is also the more sort after due to being stronger) and the removal of the requirement to have rear seats in place; this explains how rare the lightweight rear seat backs are because they were only stipulated for a short period of time and are not referenced in the Sports Purpose document - the ones in 11820123 are the only pair I have ever seen in the flesh!

So, in conclusion, the overriding driver throughout this project has been to produce a superior and correctly built 911T/R that conforms and incorporates legitimate period options - only made possible by the inclusion of ultra-rare dated stamped September 1967 or earlier classic Porsche sourced parts, together with a pain staking 3-year build process.