“The Le Mans Race Cars”
There’s a very famous photo of Dauer’s three cars at Le Mans on pit row with the Dauer homologation car sitting in the middle in-between the two race cars, one dressed in Shell livery, and the other in FATurbo livery. In order to prepare for Le Mans, Dauer had to completely redesign the body work to adapt the road cars for racing. In addition, some last-minute rule changes were implemented as an unsuccessful attempt by the rule-making body to disqualify the cars – Porsche and Dauer simply redesigned the body to accommodate those changes.
Some books and webpages state that there were two race cars and one road car at Le Mans. This is both incorrect and correct at the same time. To the best of our knowledge, the car in the center, the road car present at scrutineering, was brought to Le Mans separately from the “Porsche” race cars. This was confirmed in an email received from a person very knowledgeable with the Porsche Motorsports program in 1994. This person confirmed that Dauer / Porsche had three 962 GT race cars – one used as a test car and the other two that were entered as race cars at Le Mans 94. This person also confirmed that Dauer brought the road car and that Porsche was never involved in converting a road car to a race car. Thus, it would appear that there were actually three race cars at Le Mans and one road car. Only two actually raced, and the third one was held in reserve as a backup, or T-Car (test car).
All three of these cars were built out of three original spare chassis that Porsche made available to Dauer. For Le Mans, they were renamed. Our best records seem to indicate the following:
GT003 – built on spare
Porsche chassis 962-176 – FATurbo car – winner 1994 Le Mans. This car was given to Joest from Porsche after the race, and has been displayed in the Le Mans museum. Red banner across the top. The car supposedly exists now in Florida under the care of
Kevin Jeannette and Gunnar Racing.
Dauer Le Mans winner, car GT003
GT002 – built on spare
Porsche chassis 962-173 – Shell livery, and perhaps also the unpainted car shown in photos being tested at the track (carbon fiber brown/grey #35). 3
rd at Le Mans in the GT1 class, supposedly retained by Porsche. Blue banner across the top.
Dauer Le Mans 3rd Place Finisher, car GT002
GT001 – built on spare
Porsche chassis 962-169 – Test car at Le Mans. Was painted white, similar to the Shell car, and had a yellow banner across the top. Following the race, Porsche retained possession of the car and repainted to look like the FATurbo (Le Mans winner) car and is now currently on display in the Porsche museum.
Dauer Le Mans Test Car, car GT001
It is interesting to note that the three Le Mans chassis appear to be extra / spare chassis that Porsche had on hand at the time. All three of these chassis appear to have been manufactured for Porsche by Fabcar, who was an official supplier to Porsche for these chassis for many years.
The bodywork used on these GT cars is very different from the “regular” road cars. If you look closely, one can see that the rear tail has a notch in it on the GT body work, and the “regular” cars are straight like on a more traditional 962. The reason the rear tail section on the race cars is longer is due to the dual element rear spoiler having to be used to give better downforce due to the removal of the ground effect floor to the flat floor. The notch which one can see from the side profile of the tail section, and the difference between the road LM car and the race GT car, was because one had to be able to see the rear tail lights from the side of the car to pass road car approval.
In addition, the front nose on the GT cars is flatter and more angled. The differences are subtle and may be unnoticeable to the untrained eye, but once you know what to look for, it’s completely obvious to see the differences.
Interesting tidbit: If you look on eBay for models of the Dauer 962 Le Mans – they only show cars that have the “GT-style” bodywork – not the original and road-car body work. Some of these models are painted red and black – no cars were ever produced in those colors with that body work. In fact, the bodywork is unique to the Le Mans cars and is technically incorrect for the road cars. The models are still very cool, but every one is unfortunately incorrect. I suppose that the model car companies just made a mold for the race car models and then painted it in solid colors and called it a “road car”. Still cool, but technically incorrect.
These photos compare the two types of bodywork – the early-style body shown on our car, and the later-style GT bodywork that was used for Le Mans
“The GT road car from Le Mans”
As mentioned in the previous section, the now famous Le Mans photo of all three cars showed a yellow prototype road car with the newer-style GT bodywork in the center. This body was removed and replaced with “race ready” bodywork in preparation for it’s possible use at Le Mans.
Shown here is the GT-style Le Mans bodywork car on the street in presumably Germany.
This particular body was also included as part of the bankruptcy sale of Dauer Racing GmbH, and now currently exists on the East Coast of the United States where it is being resurrected back into the Dauer 962 Le Mans road car that was shown in the Le Mans pits. Mike Sapena (Pelican forums username
mikesk3), from New Jersey, first purchased this Dauer project and is now near completion on his LM GT car. The complete story of the restoration will be posted soon!
Update Feb 26, 2021 – With the additional focus that this topic has received with the publication of this article, there is some new information that has come to light regarding the GT road car that was seen driving on the roads at Le Mans. A clip from a newspaper/magazine article mentioned the following:
June 1994, and the yellow Dauer Racing 962LM road car prototype caused a stir as it cruised around the Sarthe to the delight of car enthusiasts from all over the world. The very next day, the race version of this car won the 1994 24 Hours of Le Mans for Porsche.
Assuming that this statement is true, then it is not possible that the GT Road car and any of the GT race cars are the same. Although there are no photos of four cars together, there must have been the
four total cars (three race cars and one road car) at Le Mans. This was also somewhat confirmed by one of our knowledgeable sources, who stated that Porsche brought three race cars to Le Mans and was not involved with any road cars – that was left to Dauer.
With this new information in hand, it begs the question, which car was the one that was driven around Sarthe the day before the race? With a shortage of running cars in 1994, it would seem possible or even probable that the car seen driving around Sarthe was the same prototype car seen at the 1993 IAA show, but fitted with the newer-style GT nose and GT tail (along with an updated floor and forward sidepods). More info is probably coming soon on this as we investigate further.