IN MEMORIAM

In Memoriam

A legendary 934 returns to the track to pay tribute to two of Australia’s greatest motorsport heroes.

The 70s was the true golden age of privateer racing for Porsche. Yes there were factory led efforts that led to numerous memorable victories, but the true power of the Porsche racing brand lay in their ability to supply fully complete race cars to independent teams who would go on to dominate a far broader variety of racing events than the factory alone possibly could. It was as though each team could be a franchisee, stacking endless wins under the Porsche brand with very little input from Stuttgart.

At the time, almost every model sold as a road car had a racing equivalent available from the motorsport department. There was the 911 S/T, followed by the 2.8 RSR and the 3.0 RSR, each adapted from models originally developed for the showroom. They would even sell you a more exotic prototype racer provided you were a reputable enough team. So when the mighty 930 Turbo launched in late 1974, everyone knew that a racing variant would soon follow.

Enter the 934, which heralded the broader adoption of turbocharged engines in racing, a full year before the tech first arrived on the F1 grid. It was released in line with the FIA’s Group 4 regulations, which necessitated a very similar chassis construction to the 930 road car, so it wouldn’t stray too far from the production design. The 935 by comparison, released the same year, was more akin to a bespoke prototype racer encased in a 911 shell, which limited its eligibility into certain racing series.

This particular car was a rather special one. It was sold new to Alan Hamilton, who was responsible for bringing Porsche to Australia alongside his father Norman in 1951. Back then, Porsche didn’t maintain a dealer network internationally. Instead they relied on independent importers to sell their cars outside of Germany. Japan had Mitsuwa, the US had Max Hoffman, France had Sonauto, and Australia had Alan Hamilton. The impact he would go on to have on Australian Porsche culture is hard to overstate, but you can tell a lot of that story through this very car.

Alan Hamilton was a legend among Porsche circles in Australia. Not only did he bring Porsche road cars to the country for the first time, he also personally raced them, entering his unusual little German sports car into local touring car championships dominated by American muscle, and proving that he could win.

Hamilton cycled in and out of a few different Porsche race cars before he finally acquired this 934, which he’d correctly predicted would be the perfect car for the 1977 Australian Sports Car Championship. Throughout the season he shared the car with driver John Latham, and the pair cleanly took victory after a six race season.

When the mighty 930 Turbo launched in late 1974, everyone knew that a racing variant would soon follow.

Alan Hamilton was a legend among Porsche circles in Australia. Not only did he bring Porsche road cars to the country for the first time, he also personally raced them.

There followed an unprecedented dominance in the ASCC for Porsche cars, with a 911 of some sort winning the following four years. In 1980 Hamilton entered the same 934 again, this time enlisting national hero Allan Moffat to drive it. Despite the fact that it was a four year old race car by that point, the car walked away with the championship once again.

To this day the car has been maintained in the same spec it ran that 1980 season with. It changed hands between a few owners, but it finally came out of hiding this year at the Phillip Island circuit in Melbourne in honour of Moffat and Hamilton, both of whom passed away last year.

The impact that both of these men had on Australian car culture is impossible to quantify in a single object, but there’s something so visceral about the battle scars preserved throughout the Hamilton/Moffat 934. It’s as though it won that 1980 championship only yesterday, and all it needs is a quick refresh to come back and do it all again.