One to Buy: ex-works / John Fitzpatrick 1981 Kremer K4
/
Having created single and then twin turbocharged 935s for use by the works team in 1976 and ‘77 respectively, Porsche stunned the motor racing community with the radical Moby Dick for 1978 (the 935 / 78).
However, while Porsche’s customer teams were offered single and twin turbo 935s a year after the factory squad had access to them, the rule-bending 935 / 78 was deemed too complex for outside teams.
As a consequence, several top firms built their own evolutions of the 935 theme with varying assistance from Porsche. Of these, by far the most famous (and successful) were the Kremer brothers from Cologne.
The first examples of Kremer’s K3 started to appear in 1979 when Porsche were still offering customer versions of the 935. That year, a K3 most famously won the Le Mans 24 Hours outright which led to an influx of orders for the 1981 season. In total, 13 new K3s were built in addition to ten conversion kits for customers who already had a donor car.
For 1981, Kremer created the even more extreme tubular spaceframed K4, but with the K3 still proving so effective, and with just one year before Group C took over from Group 5, only two examples were built.
The first and most successful of these was chassis K4-01 in which Bob Wollek finished as the runner up to Klaus Ludwig in the 1981 Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft (DRM). Ludwig was crowned ‘81 DRM champion on account of his Division 2 Zakspeed Capri’s greater consistency compared to Division 1 runner Wollek.
For 1982 and beyond, K4-01 was sold to John Fitzpatrick who successfully campaigned the car in the IMSA championship (where the new Porsche 956 was outlawed on safety grounds).
Today, K4-01 is being offered in superb restored condition at the Canepa showroom in Scotts Valley, California.
For more information, visit the Canepa website at: https://canepa.com/
