Forty years of Group C? It’s the anniversary that just keeps on giving. If the heavyweight triplevolume celebration of works Porsche 962s reviewed in this space last month, Ultimate Works 962 by Serge Vanbockryck, was the Le Mans 24 Hours of books on this everpopular subject, this trim single slipcased limited edition publication is a Norisring sprint. Which is apt, given that the celebrated Nuremberg street event was one of only two races that 956 chassis 001 took part in.
The premise of focusing purely on a single chassis of a special model has caught on in recent years and justification for this one is all too obvious: 956 001 was, as the book describes it, the “father of all Group C Porsches and starting point of the most successful sports car of the 20th century”. It charts a timeframe beginning on June 22, 1981 when Porsche pressed the big green button for a car built to the new Group C regulations, and ends with 001’s final testing miles dedicated to work on Motronic fuel injection, at the make’s Weissach proving ground on March 1, 1983.