For 1976 endurance racing featured two world championships: the FIA World Championship for Makes for Group 5 special production cars, and the World Sportscar Championship for Group 6 prototypes. Porsche fielded the 935 and the new Porsche 936 as a two-pronged effort sponsored by Martini Racing, which had previously supported Porsche 917 or 908 entries in 1970 and 1971, including the 1971 Le Mans winner.
Under Group 5 "silhouette rules" significant modifications were permitted — including bodywork changes, larger wings, and wider axles — provided the car's basic silhouette remained unchanged when viewed from the front. Porsche reduced engine displacement to 2.85 L; with the turbocharging penalty factor of 1.4 this placed the car in the 4.0 L class with a minimum weight of 970 kg. Preseason testing at Paul Ricard showed a top speed of 183 mph (295 km/h). Factory drivers were Jacky Ickx and Jochen Mass, with Rolf Stommelen as backup along with Manfred Schurti.
Kremer Racing from Cologne built a 935 K1 on a factory shell and finished second behind the Martini factory entry of Mass and Ickx at the opening six-hour race at Mugello. The 935 also won the pole, fastest lap, and race at the six-hour Vallelunga.
After the second race the CSI rule-makers insisted that the "whale tail" hood of the road-going 930 must fit the race car. Modifying the air-to-air intercooler to a more compact air-to-water layout cost Porsche several weeks of testing and half a million Deutsche marks.
Porsche engineers, notably Norbert Singer, discovered a loophole regarding fender modifications that allowed them to remove the fender-mounted headlights, reducing drag and creating more downforce. This "flat nose" — also known as the "slant nose" — with headlights integrated into the front spoiler became the 935's distinguishing feature and was later offered on the road-going 930 as the flachbau, part of Porsche's sonderwunsch ("special wish") programme. Extended "long tail" rear fenders provided space for engine periphery and cooling.
At the 1976 Nürburgring 1,000 km, Stommelen qualified on pole with a 7:37.5 lap, while at Watkins Glen the test chassis driven by Stommelen and Schurti won. At Dijon, three 935s plus two Group 5 spec 934/5s took the first five places, securing the World Championship. The 935 and 936 had each won its respective championship and Le Mans. In the 1976 24 Hours of Le Mans, which counted towards neither world championship, the 935 of Stommelen and Schurti finished fourth overall despite the weight and drag of a Group 5 silhouette; a Porsche 936 took the overall win.
Beginning with the 1977 season Porsche offered the 935/77A to privateers in Australia, Italy, France, the United States, and Germany. Among the customers, Cologne-based rivals Georg Loos and Kremer Racing entered 935s in the Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft (DRM). As naturally aspirated BMW coupés and Ford Capri had withdrawn from Division I, the customer 935s faced no serious competition until turbocharged challengers such as the BMW-powered Schnitzer, Toyota Celica, and the Zakspeed Ford Capri appeared.
The factory continued to develop the works 935/77, which featured a revised body lowering drag to give a 10 km/h higher top speed at Paul Ricard. The front fenders now protruded above the hood line and also housed mirrors. A second rear window improved airflow to the rear wing, and a single turbo was later replaced by two KKK units for better throttle response and power. The works 935/77 qualified sixth at the 1977 24 Hours of Le Mans but retired with engine trouble; a customer 935 finished third overall.
A separate 935/77 2.0 with a 1,425 cc engine reduced to 261 kW (355 PS) and a weight of 750 kg competed in the 2.0-litre Division II of the DRM to demonstrate Porsche's competitiveness in that class. Jacky Ickx won the support race for the 1977 German Grand Prix at Hockenheim by 50 seconds and set fastest lap. After that mission the car was retired to the Porsche Museum.
For 1978 Porsche developed the 935/78, intended only for Le Mans. Departing from the air-cooling tradition, the engine received water-cooled cylinder heads with four valves; displacement was enlarged to 3.2 L, raising output to 559–634 kW (760–862 PS). The minimum weight for this version was 1,030 kg. The entire floor pan was cut away and the body lowered by 10 cm (3.9 in); the gearbox was mounted upside down to reduce driveshaft angles. As Le Mans is run clockwise, the driver's seat was shifted to the right side for better weight distribution and visibility at corners such as Dunlop, Tertre Rouge, and Mulsanne. Its white colour and long low-drag tail shape earned it the nickname "Moby Dick."
The Moby Dick first won the test race, the Six Hours of Silverstone, where Mass and Ickx took pole (1:22.38) and fastest lap (1:23.98 / 202.519 km/h) — only four seconds slower than James Hunt's times in the 1977 British Grand Prix over a quarter the distance. At the 1978 24 Hours of Le Mans the car qualified third, and was the fastest on the Mulsanne straight at 367 km/h (228 mph), passing the Group 6 Renault Alpine and Porsche 936 prototypes. After an engine replacement before the race and subsequent problems, it finished eighth. Renault won that edition in its third attempt before shifting focus to Formula One. The Moby Dick was later also entered at Vallelunga and the Norisring but failed to finish at the latter.
As Porsche hesitated to sell its evolution models, Kremer Racing developed its own derivatives. In 1976 they built the K1; in 1977 they modified a customer car to the K2. For 1979 they introduced the K3. Driven mainly by Klaus Ludwig, the K3 won the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans in heavy rain, beating all prototypes. Second was a factory-spec car driven by Rolf Stommelen, supported by team owner Dick Barbour and actor Paul Newman. A total of 13 complete K3 cars were built, and kits were made available to convert other 935s to K3 specification.
Facing strong competition in the 1980 DRM from the Zakspeed Ford Capri, Kremer introduced the K4 in mid-1981. The K4 used a Porsche-supplied 3.1 L twin-turbocharged flat-six with a power output of 559–596 kW (760–810 PS) at 1.5 bar boost.
The 935 was undefeated in the German DRM between 1977 and 1979. It won many races at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, including three editions of the 1,000 km Nürburgring. In 1982 Alan Jones, the 1980 Formula One World Champion, drove a 935 to an unbeaten season in the Australian GT Championship. The 1983 Australian GT Championship was won by the same car, this time driven by Rusty French. As a reward, French received a drive with Kremer Racing at the 1984 24 Hours of Le Mans, finishing ninth outright with Tiff Needell and David Sutherland in a 956. Italian driver Gianpiero Moretti, founder of Momo Wheels, finished fourth in support races for the 1983 Australian Grand Prix driving the Moby Dick version.
Through 1984 the 935 won over 150 races worldwide, including more than 20 class wins. The last major victory was at the 1984 12 Hours of Sebring in the IMSA GTP class against purpose-built prototypes. After Group 5 was discontinued by the FIA after 1982, the 935 continued in IMSA's GTP category through 1983; the Porsche 962 replaced it from 1984.
The water-cooled engine developed for the Moby Dick served as the basis for the all-water-cooled 2.65 L engine considered for the Indianapolis 500, and was ultimately used in the 1981 Le Mans-winning Porsche 936/81 and in the 956 and 962C, which dominated the mid-1980s. This engine block underpinned Porsche's motorsport GT and Turbo models until being phased out in the 991 generation 911.
The four-wheel-drive 959 and its racing counterpart the 961 are considered high-technology successors. The 1990s 911 GT2 based on the 993 is also regarded as a successor.
A second generation of the 935, based on the 991 GT2 RS with bodywork resembling the 935/78, was unveiled at the 6th Rennsport Reunion at Laguna Seca in 2018. Limited to 77 units, it is powered by the same 515 kW (700 PS) engine as the GT2 RS mated to a seven-speed PDK transmission, and shares LED taillights with the Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 racer. Customer deliveries began in June 2019. The car also raced at the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2019.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
Gallery · 4 related images
