Porsche raised the price of poker in 1972 when the 917 came to play. It was an important chapter in Roger Penske’s 50-year legacy. It started when Penske got a call while he was at Le Mans racing a Ferrari. He was invited to a meeting with Ferdinand Piech, Porsche Chairman Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann and others in Stuttgart, Germany. They asked him if he would be interested in a Can-Am program.
“Obviously, I was excited about having the discussion, but even more having the opportunity to represent Porsche in the United States,” Penske said.
After they inked the deal, Penske and Mark Donohue were invited to Weissach to test the turbocharged 917-10.
“Mark drove the car and we came in and there was just no throttle response at all,” Penske recalled. “That was before waste gates. …It was a soft test … we went to dinner and I told (Dr.) Furhmann we’ve got to make a major move here. We’ll never beat McLaren and the big V-8s if we can’t put our foot on the gas and get throttle response.”
Porsche fixed the problem and Penske responded with the series championship in 1972, breaking McLaren’s stranglehold.
Penske and the Porsche engineers raised the bet a year later.
“We had a lot of success with the 917-10 with two cars,” Penske said. “The next was the 917-30 with 1,200 horsepower and refined aerodynamics … that was a vehicle that was so hard to beat. In fact, we had so much success, SCCA or someone outlawed the cars. That was a pretty exciting time period.”
The Can-Am’s star began to fade at the end of the ’73 season. An oil crisis made auto racing politically incorrect before the term was coined, Porsche left as quickly as it entered after two consecutive crowns and Johnson’s Wax pulled its sponsorship. The series limped along two more years with privateer competitors racing in the void without McLaren or Porsche drawing fans. George Follmer drove Don Nichols’ Shadow DN4 to the 1974 championship and the end of what many call the “real” Can-Am.
The series lay fallow for two years when the SCCA aimed to give it another go. Instead of ordering new cars, they opted to put bodies on Formula 5000 cars that remained after that series ended. There were some teething problems in the beginning, but the lads at Chaparral rolled up their sleeves and mended the Lola’s evil ways en route to three consecutive championships.
Several more designs emerged, including full, sliding-skirt ground effects like Formula One. Ascendant drivers such as Bobby Rahal and Al Unser Jr. mixed it up with Frenchman Patrick Tambay, Geoff Brabham, Jacques-Joseph Villeneueve and Michael Roe. Unser Jr. won the 1982 championship in a Trevor Harris-designed Frisbee GR 2. The Frisbee design rivaled Lola, winning the title in 1982, ’83, ’85 and ’86. In fact, Harris’ fingerprints are all over many of the fastest race cars ever built, not to mention Geoff Brabham’s VDS 001, which captured the 1981 Can-Am championship.
SCCA added an under two-liter class in 1979, hoping to shore up sagging interest. It worked for a couple years, but the magic that drew the big fans was missing. All this took place while the IMSA GTP cars became American road racing’s big dogs. Bill Tempero was the last Can-Am champion in 1987.
Bruce McLaren may have spun out in his grave when the SCCA introduced the Shelby Can-Am. The “spec” series sported uninspired bodywork with partially exposed front wheels. No hulking V-8s here, just mildly tweaked Dodge V-6s under the cowlings.
The series never took off, struggled for six years and died with a whimper instead of the rolling thunder that was the Can-Am’s clarion call.
The original, unbridled Can-Am still has a loyal following to this day. Fans showed up in the tens of thousands in July at Wisconsin’s Road America to hear that bi-block thunder one more time. Noted Can-Am historian and photographer Pete Lyons put it in perspective: “Those of us who consider ourselves Can-Am purists regarded it as starting in ’66 and ending in ’74. That was the unlimited era with the big-block, big-horsepower engines, wild and free and unchained. I personally feel that to tie that great name to increasingly limited piddling little cars is a travesty. And you can quote me on that.”
OK Pete, we just did.