I wanted to build an R Gruppe car that my son and I could enjoy on the track, so I started looking for an early 911 to start. I’ve always been attracted to the early wide-body 911s, and have been a member of the R Gruppe for a while now too. So I decided to get rid of the 914 and do it. As a result we started breaking parts and soon realized we would have been better off starting with a mutt to build a race car out of.
It was an original car, and we treated it a bit rudely by taking it to the track-it was a complete street car and really too nice to be doing what we did to it. Nick Psyllos: Several years back my son Matthew and I had been auto-crossing a 914 I owned. Patrick Stevenson: Can you tell us how you acquired this 911 and why you decided to build an ST out of it? Only 24 known examples were built all told, and they were sold in a few different batches: a few made from thinner lightweight steel, a few based on standard 911 chassis and tubs, and a few more as a sort of kit package intended for motorsports undertaken by privateer racing teams-each ST is slightly different. Fitted with extra wide 15”x8” and 15”x9” lightweight wheels, the ST had a ton of mechanical grip going for it. These STs also wore special widened front and rear fender flares that were significantly more aggressive than the rear flares of the 2.7 RS. At the time Porsche was using a 2.2-liter engine which could only be bored out to 2,380cc, and this was not providing the power to win, so when in 1972 the capacity of the engine was increased to 2.4 liters in the 911S street cars, this meant the racing engines could be punched out to 2,490cc capable of producing around 270 horsepower. Porsche’s competition in Group 2 was getting stronger in the early ‘70s, and Alfa Romeo, BMW, and Ford’s Capris were starting to beat Porsche in the 2,500cc categories. In 1972 Porsche built a race car that was more aggressive, and much rarer, than the 2.7 Carrera: the 911 ST.