1987 Porsche 962-110 Kremer CK6-10

Information provided by Jim Graham

Purchased/built by the Kremer racing team in 1985 (Thomson tub).

Finished second at Mugello driven by Marc Surer/Manfred Winkelhock and first at Monza. Had a ninth place at Le Mans with Jean-Pierre Jarrier/Mike Thackwell/Franz Konrad.

Winkelhock had a very bad accident at Mosport in August and the car did not race again in 1985. When talking to Erwin Kremer at Zolder, he said that they did not rebuild the car, for ‘obvious’ reasons, but I have no doubt that parts were salvaged and used.

I questioned Erwin Kremer about the mix of chassis numbers and he was very cagey UNTIL I said that all I wanted to know was that the car was genuine, not how he had handled the Chassis re-numbering for pure racing purposes!

In practice, Kremer possibly ‘replaced’ Chassis 110 with Chassis 114 and in 1986 chassis plate 118 but, in fact, he built two new cars over the winter of 1986. One was driven by Volker Weidler, in which he reportedly won the German championship in 1987, and one that subsequently went to the Almeras Brothers. Interestingly the Yokohama and Almeras cars have retained the chassis plate 110 to this day.

Both carried the 110 plate, and still, do but are believed to be the genuine article, both having come directly from the Kremer race garage.

We owned both these cars a few years back, the Yokohama car came direct from Kremer and the other car was bought in the States but had all the original Almeras paperwork (Kremer invoices etc).

When questioning Kremer at Zolder, he said that he had taken TWO ‘identical’ cars to Le Mans in 1987 but that the Yokohama car had only practiced. I think this practice of taking visually identical cars to Le Mans and then choosing which one to race was not uncommon and was certainly ‘practised’ in the early 1990’s races with the Kenwood cars, again as we discussed in his motorhome at Zolder.

Kremer entered the car in various WSPC events in 1987, with Volker Weidler/ Kris Nissen, resulting in a 4th place at Jarama and 2nd at Jerez, 6th at Brands hatch and 14th at Nurburging.

When we bought that car from Kremer in August 2002, it was fitted with 3.2 litre air/water cooled engine but this showed signs of wear and after changing the oil, a main bearing failed at Donington in September, wrecking the block!
Incidentally, Tony O’Neill, who had a very stormy relationship with Erwin Kremer, had bought most of the cars and spares stored in the underground basement at Kremer’s race shop.

He told me that he never liked the Yokohama livery (strange as everyone else loves the dramatic and clean looks!) and it was the only ‘genuine’ race car left at Kremer’s when he bought all the other cars there at that time.
Kremer had rebuilt a three litre engine and this had been tested by Porsche in February 2002 and, subsequently, sold to Tony O’Neill.

As we were due to race at Monza in October, we bought this engine, which we discovered was the original engine out of the car! This engine was super and we ran the car at Monza, Spa and Silverstone until, at Zolder, one of the cross drilled plugs failed and we started racing the TakeFuji 962.

Following the Donington failure, we made checking of the oil filter plates mandatory after every run and this ensured that we avoided any serious damage to the engine at Zolder. Significantly, Kremer had to park their Kenwood car (driven by Ralph Kelleners) with the same problem!

The engine was then rebuilt by Xtec Engineering who we helped to specialise in these engines (successfully re-building many 962 power-plants and holding all our spares and spare engines) and this was installed and run at Spa in 2004, Brands Hatch in 2005 and Spa again October 2007.

It has never missed a beat and is run up every 4 to 6 weeks to protect the valve springs and to keep all the bearings lubricated. The car had a new fuel tank fitted in 2004 and this could be re-tested and re-installed for a further two years, if required. Incidentally, I have the Porsche test sheets (somewhere) for the original engine and I do not know what boost they were running, or for how long, (a minute or two I would think!), but I seem to remember that it produced just over 800bhp on the test bed!! I think a more conservative output at ‘normal’ boost levels would be between 620 &720.

Erwin Kremer was a wiley old fox but lived for racing and one had to take that on board in any dealings we had with him. Knowing his ‘need’ to race, I was always very direct with him and having sold him spares on our terms (a shock to him, I can assure you), Penny and I became firm friends and were very sad when he died; another genuine ‘character’ gone for good.

Since we have had 1951 to 1989 Le Mans cars in the garage for more years than we care to think about, we would be very sad to see this great car go.  It is a super car (visually and driver wise) and as it was bought from Kremer at Nurburging (when racing the Cosworth ‘Pink Panther’ Tiga), it cemented our very happy relationship with Porsche 962s and the privilege of racing these fabulous cars at some of the World’s top racing circuits, including the 2004 ‘Legends’ Le Mans.
Strangely enough we also took the Yokohama car to Le Mans in 2004 as our spare, a repeat of the car’s Le Mans history 17 years earlier!!