1971 FIA Rear Seat Bolsters

[cegerer]

This car's been for sale for a while at $44K. It's a beauty. Anybody ever hear of these special FIA homogation rear seat bolsters before? The guy's even got a letter from Jurgen Barth verifying them!

1971 911S Coupe

[jluetjen]

And Porsche homologated these with the FIA why????

The only reason that I could think of would be to make the 911"T" eligible in the 4-seater touring classes back in the late 60's and early 70's. But if that was the case, why bother at all, just use the stock units unless these are a lot lighter. Are you sure that they are not some sort of aftermarket pieces created for some long forgotton reason? Given the limited headroom (and leg room) in the back, I don't know why anyone would buy these over the standard units.

A mystery wrapped in a riddle....

[Randy W]

John, you are right. According to pg. 620 in Ludvigsen's "Excellence was Expected", in 1970 touring car competition was growing while GT racing was not, so Porsche's racing manager, Rico Steinemann, requested homologation of the C series 911 into Group 2 (touring car). When the first application was rejected because of limited rear seat room, they made these special thinner cushions to improve it, along with making sport seats standard. In the meantime, Porsche realized they could not get 1,000 cars equipped with these pieces in time, so they withdrew the homologation papers, the rear seats returned to their previous style and the sport seats were made optional again. So, we ended up with a GT car and the focus was shifted to Group 4 and the lightweight 911ST. I'm glad their was no SUV racing class back then or the Cayenne would have been made alot earlier - Sorry, couldn't resist.

[jluetjen]

Yikes! What that a lucky guess!