Bio: David Thieme, Porsche & the Essex affair
David Thieme - Biographies - Oil Men - Rogues
David Thieme was the enigmatic American owner of Essex Overseas Petroleum Corporation, an oil spot trading company that, for a short time in the late 1970s, was rumoured to be making profits of $70m per year.
Having originally run his own successful industrial design firm, Thieme was already a wealthy man by the time he ventured into oil trading in the mid 1970s.
By 1977, he had secured additional funding from Credit Suisse that enabled him to leverage some enormous deals from his trading room at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.
For a while, Thieme was spectacularly successful and, to impress his big oil industry customers, Essex began sponsoring top level motor racing in 1979.
With his trademark black fedora, square sunglasses and goatee beard, Thieme was a real showman. He threw legendary launch parties with elaborate unveilings and spared no expense on his innovative circuit hospitality.
The first season of Thieme’s largesse saw unmissable Essex logos plastered down the sidepods of that year’s Lotus F1 car. A title sponsorship agreement with Porsche was also organised for the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Porsche were actually focused on developing an Indy car engine at the time and hadn’t actually planned to race at Le Mans in 1979. However, when Thieme came knocking in April with an offer that was too good to refuse, 936/78 chassis numbers 001 and 003 were dusted off for a two-car return to la Sarthe.
The Essex-Porsche sportscar partnership was launched with a lavish presentation at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on May 3rd where just getting the car into the building required a herculean feat of engineering.
Repainted white, red and blue, the 936 was favourite to secure a third outright win at Le Mans after chief rivals Renault had defected to Formula 1.
Although there was no time for Porsche to engineer any new parts, in preparation for Le Mans, one 936 was taken to England where it contested the Silverstone 6 Hour race on May 6th. Previously, 001 had won the 1976 and 1977 Le Mans race outright and placed second in 1978.
Silverstone was considered an ideal proving ground for Le Mans owing to its fast and flat nature. 001 was driven by Jochen Mass and Brian Redman who qualified on pole by an extraordinary five seconds. However, a problem with the tyres turning on the rims saw Mass crash spectacularly after the front end began to lift at over 170mph.
001 was hastily rebuilt for Le Mans (June 9th and 10th) where it was driven by Bob Wollek and Hurley Haywood who qualified on pole. The second 936 (chassis 003, previously used once at Le Mans in 1978) was entered for Jacky Ickx and Brian Redman who started second.
Despite having been the quickest cars in the race, neither of the Essex-backed Porsches finished. Redman suffered the same problem that had affected Mass at Silverstone; a tyre failure at Dunlop Curve caused massive damage to the rear bodywork that took over an hour to repair.
Ickx then tried to stage a comeback but was disqualified for receiving outside assistance after an injection belt broke. Within two hours, the Haywood / Wollek entry was also gone after it experienced engine problems when lying third.
Even though the Essex-backed Prototype entries had retired, Porsche still got a great result at Le Mans in 1979: a factory-supported Kremer 935 K3 driven by Klaus Ludwig and the Whittington brothers (Don and Bill) took outright victory. It was followed home by more 935s in second and third while a GT class winning 934 placed fourth.
After the dalliance with Porsche, Essex became title sponsor for the Lotus Formula 1 team in 1980 and the arrangement was expected to continue throughout 1981. Even Margaret Thatcher turned up at the Royal Albert Hall in February 1981 for the grand unveiling of the latest Lotus F1 car but, before the enormous bill for this remarkable event had been paid, things began to unravel for Thieme.
In April 1981, he was arrested when his private plane landed at Kloten airport in Zurich.
Thieme was accused by Credit Suisse of committing a $7.6m fraud.
After two weeks incarceration he was released on $150,000 bail which was reputedly paid by Mansour Ojjeh’s father, Akram.
Thieme’s problems meant the Monaco Grand Prix at the end of May was the last time Lotus ran the full Essex livery. John Player Special took over the title sponsorship role three weeks later at the Spanish Grand Prix when Essex logos were relegated to the sidepods. They were only sporadically seen thereafter.
Following his release from jail, Thieme popped up at a few more races in 1981 but thereafter disappeared completely from view.
He is today rumoured to reside in Paris.
Text copyright: Supercar Nostalgia
Photo copyright: Porsche - https://www.porsche.com
