Porsche may have brought back its legendary 935 as an extremely limited-run 700-horsepower turbocharged track toy, but it still feels like the original 935 doesn’t get enough credit for looking fabulous. We Porsche nerds are out here re-hashing the same 917 liveries for the trillionth time while the 935’s bright, angular 1970s and 1980s looks largely remain ignored.
Finally, Porsche righted this historic wrong by reimagining some of the 935’s original liveries on its new throwback model. Porsche unveiled a series of classic liveries for the 935 including two of the 917 looks you’d expect, but five others that call back to the original 935 race car.
This isn’t a mere photoshop job, either—Porsche’s design team worked with the new 935’s designer Grant Larson to reimagine how these old-school looks could work on the car, as Larson explains in Thursday’s release:
We have reinterpreted the various racing eras of the 935 using computer design programs, initially orientating ourselves geometrically on the design of the Martini racing version. However, we had to recreate all graphical data using virtual reality and finally apply it to the outer skin of the 935. That was very exciting in itself.
The goal was to make every possible livery for the new 935 look as spectacular as the Martini stripes it debuted in at Rennsport Reunion last year. Here’s what they came up with and why we love these looks so much.
One of the most famous 935s wore neat blue stripes over a white body and was sponsored by Sachs. Dick Barbour got their 935 K3 from Team Kremer Racing shortly before the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans, and then proceeded to claw up to the lead of the race with teammates Brian Redman and John Fitzpatrick. Their lead ended with heavy rain, but it was still an impressive showing for the outfit.
Porsche may be famous for the Pink Pig 917, but the sleek 935 was better suited for its black Interscope livery’s bacon strip. The original 935 in this livery won the 1981 24 Hours of Daytona with Brian Redman and Bob Garretson behind the wheel.
Momo founder Gianpiero Moretti drove a bright red and yellow 935 around the world back in the day, claiming his first victory in 1979.
Easily my favorite livery of the 935 era was the Vaillant-sponsored Team Kremer variant, and only in part because Vaillant added a bunny to the cars. The simplified version of its livery for the new 935 may be strictly BYO-Bunny graphics, but it’s as bright as ever, with the same purple, red, and yellow stripes as the original. This livery originally appeared on the Kremer K2 version of the 935, which took an incredible second place at its debut race, the grueling Nürburgring 1000 km. It only lost by one lap to another 935.
Lotus wasn’t the only famous team in history to wear the mean black and gold John Player Special colors. If the Vaillant car was the 935 at its most playful, the JPS livery is the 935 at its most wicked. This originally appeared on yet another dominant 935 from Kremer Racing, whose K1, K2, K3, and K4 versions were developed alongside the works 935s when Porsche was hesitant to sell their own version. Yet today, it’s all but impossible to think of the 935 at all without bringing up the crazy tuners at Kremer.
This Salzburg livery is from the 917, but as the first Porsche to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it’s all but obligatory to include it in any gallery of Porsche’s looks from the past. Porsche’s first overall win at Le Mans came in 1970, setting the stage for the marque’s later crazy sports cars like the 935.
The other cars that truly confirmed Porsche’s place in the racing world were the Gulf Oil-liveried 917s campaigned by team manager John Wyer. Wyer’s team went on to claim the 1970 and 1971 World Sportscar Championship, and we haven’t been able to leave the Gulf livery alone ever since. Congratulations, lucky 935 buyers—you can get a Gulf car, too.
