Last weekend the 24 Hours of Le Mans was organized to celebrate its 100th birthday with the most popular first class in recent years, which was particularly important for Porsche, which represented itself in the hypercar category with three cars, due to the 75th anniversary of the brand, even If she didn’t manage to leave the Circuit de la Tour, she went with stronger results.
However, it cannot be said that Porsche ended the extreme reliability competition with a complete fiasco, because during the jubilee, the Stuttgart brand also found its roots. A 72-year-old American man played a big part in this: Cameron Healy fulfilled his cherished dream 13 years ago by restoring the first Le Mans winning car, the 356, which was thought to have vanished. For the sake of the ranking, let’s note: the car “only” took first place in the S class 1.1, otherwise it took 19th.
“It all started in 1993 at the historic Monterey race,” Healy recalls. “This little red car caught my eye. However, I had never seen anything like it and had no knowledge of its background.”
Photo: Porsche
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He really began to indulge his decades-old passion when the 356’s long-term owner, Chuck Forge, passed away in 2009, but the businessman, who collected Porsches in his spare time, didn’t even know what the story of this car was really. Healy therefore acquired an unusual-looking 356 from the inheritance, already rumored to be one of the Porsches he entered in the 1951 race, but physical evidence of this has long been lost.
Identification was made even more difficult by the fact that the following year, California importer John von Neumann cut off the top of the car in order to reduce weight, after which it was repaired and repainted, so there was practically nothing left of it. It would remind of Le Mans’ past.
Healy began the restoration with the help of his close friend, Rod Emory, a well-known specialist of the genre. Two of them conducted a forensic bodywork examination and, at the cost of about five years of research, confirmed that the former Le Mans winning Porsche had indeed been acquired. From there, the goal was to restore the racing version of the “SL” to its former glory and bring the car back to Le Mans.
Photo: Porsche
The enterprising man was quoted in a Porsche advertisement as saying: “We were just taking the paint off when we dreamed of one day bringing this car back to Le Mans.” “The car was delivered to the US in November 1951 and has lived in California ever since. Our goal was to get it back on the track and take a lap of honor with it, although that seemed a long way off as it wasn’t proven to be a Le Mans car at that.” time,” Healy explained, adding that until 2023 they wanted to finish the project, the coincidence of the anniversary itself gave a lot.
Before returning to Le Mans, the Porsche 356 set off on a long European adventure, it was even displayed at the Porsche Museum for three weeks, and then covered the route the car completed in 1951 between Stuttgart and Le Mans. After arriving with the old classic Healy, who was able to spin the legendary 13.6 kilometer strip of asphalt. The old Porsche could also take part in the Le Mans Classic at the end of June, after which it will play a role in the Le Mans Museum exhibition, but only after a long run from the past, which You can continue here.
Photo: Porsche
