Happy birthday to the car that saved Porsche

Wandering around the big hangar at the last Sunday Scramble at Bicester Motion, my eyes were drawn to the squat but somehow still beautiful red racing car parked in the middle of a display curated by Bring a Trailer, which has recently set up shop in the UK.

It was a Lancia D50 or, more specifically, one of four D50 recreations commissioned by Anthony Maclean about 30 years ago as toolroom copies of the originals, including many original bits. Although I read that there are a couple of ‘real’ cars in existence, I don’t think they’ve been seen out in public for years.

The D50 is one of those fascinating motor racing what-ifs. If Lancia had been in better financial shape, if Alberto Ascari had not been killed in testing after just two rounds of the 1955 championship, then Lancia would not have been forced to sell its race team, cars and other assets to Ferrari and maybe, just maybe, the Mercedes W196s of Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss would have had a real fight on their hands for the rest of the season.

It was certainly the more advanced car. Yes, the Mercedes had fuel-injection and desmodromic valve gear, but the Lancia was the first racing car to have a semi-stressed engine (over a decade before the Lotus 43 and BRM P83). It was angled to allow the propshaft to run beside rather than underneath the driver to lower his height while its pannier fuel tanks eliminated the huge changes in weight distribution usually experienced in conventional grand prix cars carrying up to 40 gallons of the good stuff.

Of course, Fangio did win the title in a ‘Lancia-Ferrari D50’ in 1956, the car utterly dominant and winning five out of seven rounds, but by then the Mercs had disappeared, leaving Stirling’s Maserati 250F as the sole serious opposition in F1.

Also, however good it looks, you need to hear it. Vittorio Jano’s engine was not only one of the first V8s to compete in Formula 1, but it came with an unconventional firing order, creating a unique rasping exhaust note. There’s not much I wouldn’t give to have a go on one. Even if it was only 30, and not 70 years old.

“We forget that in the mid-1990s, Porsche was in desperate trouble”

There was another sporting mid-engined red two-seater in the hangar, built around the same time but for utterly different reasons. This one was an early Porsche Boxster and the reason behind its existence was simple: to save Porsche.

We forget that in the mid-1990s, Porsche was in desperate trouble. Two of its model lines, the 928 and 968, were based on 1970s designs, the third, the 911, dating from the 1960s. Porsche didn’t even know how much it was costing to build each car. So it asked some Japanese consultants to look at the business, and after they’d recovered their jaws from the floor, they made some recommendations.

The result was a transformed production process and a range of three distinct models, but essentially sharing the same platform. And the Boxster, 30 years old this year would you believe, was the first of them.

I was asked at the weekend what I thought of the car when it came out. With a 2.5-litre engine producing just 204bhp, it was clearly underpowered, but what I saw was a thoroughly modern, attractive, open, two-seat, mid-engined Porsche with a flat-six motor and price tag within reach of mere mortals. I thought it a really credible, if not especially adorable, car that would appeal to people who’d never have considered buying a Porsche before and that it would fly out of showrooms. And, for once, I was right. So, as we wait to see what form and shape the all-new electric Boxster might take, I’d just like to say happy birthday to the car that saved Porsche.