Remember when Porsches were pretty?

Published Mar 29, 2011

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Porsche has been building ugly cars for so long that it's corporate ethos would never allow it to build something this pretty today. What you're looking at is a 1966 Carrera 906, the last of Porsche's beautiful street-legal sports-racing cars.

It had all-fibreglass bodywork over a tubular-steel space frame and weighed only 580kg ready to go. Most of the 50 that were built to make it legal for Group 4 racing had a mid-mounted, 164kW, two-litre, flat six and were good for about 280km/h.

This one has been restored to concours condition by Porsche specialist Patrick Motorsports of Phoenix, Arizona, which did all the chassis and body work in-house, including rebuilding all the suspension areas, replacing the suspension rod ends with stainless steel, converting the original fuel tanks to crash-proof fuel cells, designing and making the gull-wing door hinges and adding a roof-top hot air exhaust to cool the admittedly somewhat claustrophobic cockpit.

And yes, Cyril, it's street-legal, even in the United States. With marginal ventilation and rock-hard suspension, it may not be a very comfortable ride but, when you're driving something this gorgeous, who cares?

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