This is a Porsche 917K, one of the most successful endurance racing car designs of all time, and it’s been recreated to near perfection in miniature by Flickr’s K MP. Wearing the 1970 Le Mans winning livery K MP’s 917 captures the real car brilliantly and there’s more to see at his photostream via the link above.
Is there a cooler racing livery than Gulf? Probably not, and thanks to the fact that LEGO’s colour palette is ever expanding (just like your Mom), it’s one that is now buildable from our favourite Danish bricks.
Previous bloggee Greg998 has done just that, with this gorgeous 1970 Gulf-Racing Porsche 917K, resplendent in the oil company’s famous blue and orange livery (with a few custom decals too), under which is a wonderfully detailed flat-12 engine.
The Gulf Racing Porsche 917Ks didn’t actually win Le Mans in 1970 (that honour went to the sister Porsche-Salzburg team), but we know which car looked the coolest…
See more of Greg’s brilliant Porsche 917K on Flickr via the link above.
The year is 1970, and Porsche need to win some races. Their new 917 endurance racer proved hugely unstable in 1969, with downforce still a relatively new phenomenon harnessing it was still largely experimental.
Cue chief engineer John Horsman, and an unlikely revelation caused by the splattering of bugs on the Porsche’s bodywork. John noticed that the 917’s tail was clean from insects, meaning that air wasn’t reaching it. A hasty modification with some aluminium sheets was made to the cars, and the 917 was transformed.
The newly modified 917K won all but one race in the 1970 endurance championship, taking first and second at Le Mans and, along with the Porcshe 908, relegating Ferrari to fourth place.
The 917 was run by serval works and part-works teams in the early 1970s, and it dominated sports car racing. The most famous of these are perhaps the Gulf Racing cars, thanks largely to Steve McQueen and his 1971 film ‘Le Mans’.
It’s this car that Technic building legend Sariel has chosen to recreate in Lego form, and he’s done so brilliantly.
Underneath the incredible bodywork (which includes wonderful period-correct decals) are no less than four LEGO RC Buggy Motors, with two third-party BuWizz 2.0 bricks controlling a pair each. This gives Sariel’s Porsche 917K both amazing speed and the ability to be controlled remotely via a bluetooth device.
Sariel’s 917 also features fully-independent double-wishbone suspension both front and rear, dihedral opening doors, and remote control steering that turns the steering wheel in the authentically detailed cockpit too.
It’s one of the finest Technic supercars of 2018 and one that is definitely worth a closer look. An extensive gallery of images is available to view at Sariel’s Porsche 917K Flickr album and you watch a video of the model in action and join the discussion courtesy of the Eurobricks forum.
See more of Sariel’s astonishing Technic recreation of the greatest endurance racer of the 1970s via the links above, and you can watch the original trailer for the 1971 movie ‘Le Mans’ by clicking here.
