9. Porsche 917 (77MM)
At the 77th Members’ Meeting, the first of two demos to appear on this list was the celebration of the legendary Porsche 917, a sports prototype that was raced to huge success all around the globe. In our demo, we saw a stunning line up of five iterations of the 917, from the original car that was first introduced in 1969, through to the eventual leviathans that raced in Can-Am up until 1973.
Not only did we have a list of cars that included a 917, 917K, 917/10 and two 917/30s, but one of the men who drove these cars in period, Richard Attwood, was once again out on the Motor Circuit to showcase the wonder of these scarcely believable cars. It’s the variety of shape and size that is most remarkable, that Porsche was able to morph and mould its prototype into seemingly any form it wanted, and was still able to make it fiercely competitive. The car that Mark Webber drove is case in point. It’s barely recognisable as a 917, and yet, powered by a monstrous version of the flat-12, beefed up to 5.4-litres and producing more than 1,100PS (820kW), it was one of the more dominant Can-Am racers in history.
Of all the cars we’ve seen during the past decade at the Members’ Meeting, to have these five very special cars in one place was truly magical.