Star Letter

Ascent of K3

Sir,

My remembrance of the Porsche 935 K3 (November ’04 issue) is from during its heyday in the Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschoft (DRM): John Fitzpatrick, Bob Wollek and Klaus Ludwig all drove these fire-belchers.

You will notice from the photos you took of the Charles Ivey Kremer car that it doesn’t have the Porsche crest on the nose. This is because (as I remember it) it was not a factory-built Porsche but rather a silhouette car based on the 911 body and constructed by the Kremer brothers.

A couple of the Group 5 rules that I am aware of were the requirement that the car continue the production car’s roof line, which is why there are two rear windows on the Kremer. The other requirement was that the width of the aerodynamic wing at the rear should not extend past the bodywork.

The twin-turbo Zakspeed Capri that Ludwig drove at the Nürburgring at the very beginning of the 1980 DRM season had a rear wing that exceeded this limit, and Herr Zakowski and company had to revert to their more familiar Capri wing design.

Also during the 1979 and 1980 racing seasons, works-supported Porsche 935s were entered by Georg Loos and Reinhold Joest. Their bodywork was not as sexy as that of the Kremer K3’s.

One of the stories I remember from that time was that after the more aerodynamically-bodied works car ‘Baby’ won at the Hockenheimring, the transporter broke down on the way back to Stuttgart and the Kremer brothers offered to haul the car in their transporter. The story goes that ‘Baby’ provided the mould that the Kremers used for the 935 K3. At least, that’s what I heard around the DRM paddocks.

This is also why you cannot find a plastic model kit of the Kremer Porsche 935 K3 in the model shops. You can find a Porsche 935 in Martini Rossi livery, however.

Regardless, the Kremer K3 is still the baddest Porsche on the block!

Gil Bouffard,

Manteca, California