Erwin Kremer founded the team and the brothers built it into one of the most successful private Porsche racing operations in the world. In the 1970s the team initially tuned 911s, 914-6 GTs, and 934s. Their greatest achievements came through a succession of bespoke race car developments based on the Porsche 935 platform, which the team designated with the letter K followed by a sequential number.
Kremer's most celebrated result came at the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans, where their 935 K3 took overall victory driven by Klaus Ludwig and American brothers Don and Bill Whittington. The K3 was engineered to replicate the aerodynamic bodywork of the factory Porsche 935/78 Evolution cars, but crucially ran an air-to-air intercooler rather than the air-to-water units used by the factory — a technical advantage that contributed significantly to the car's competitiveness.
Later success came at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1995, where Kremer won with a K8 Spyder in the International Sports Racing Series, driven by Jurgen Lassig, Christophe Bouchut, Giovanni Lavaggi, and Marco Werner.
Erwin Kremer suffered a heart attack but survived, passing away in 2006. Managing director Uwe Sauer held the team together, while younger brother Manfred Kremer bought the team back in 2008 before selling it to Eberhard Baunach in 2010.
Kremer's custom-built race cars formed a distinct lineage:
The 935 K1 was their first privately built 935, constructed in 1976. The 935 K2 followed in 1977 as an improvement on the K1. The 935 K3, built for 1979, was the most successful variant of the 935 in private hands, combining mimicked factory Evolution bodywork with the air-to-air intercooler advantage; it won Le Mans outright that year.
The 935 K4 was an all-new 935 variant for the early 1980s, featuring a space frame construction. The CK5 was a custom Group C prototype based on the 936, built as a temporary replacement until the Porsche 956 became available to customers in 1983. The 962CK6 emerged after two fatal crashes involving Porsche 956 and 962C cars at Mosport and Le Mans; Kremer constructed stiffer chassis to improve safety. Further derivative models were built from this base.
The CK7 Spyder was an open-cockpit prototype using 962 mechanicals, intended for Interserie competition. The K8 Spyder was an improved version of the K7 developed for the International Sports Racing Series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which it won at Daytona in 1995.
Beyond the numbered series, Kremer also built a 917 for use in the 1981 24 Hours of Le Mans and made significant improvements to the 911 GT1 and GT2 in the 1990s.
Kremer Racing occupies a unique position in Porsche's racing history as the private team whose engineering resourcefulness produced cars capable of beating the factory effort outright. The 1979 Le Mans victory with the K3 remains the benchmark achievement — a privately prepared and substantially redesigned car defeating the works entries and all other major opposition. The team's practice of selling their custom race cars to other customer teams spread Kremer technology across the international GT racing scene of the 1970s and 1980s, making the K-series cars among the most widely raced privateer Porsches of the era.
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