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Celebrations dedicated to the Porsche 935 at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance earlier this year are the reason Max Girardo believes we were able to find a great new home for this 1978 Porsche 935 K3…

Events are so important. Not only as platforms on which to share our passion, but also as catalysts for the market. Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of being the master of ceremonies at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. And among the exquisite classes curated by Bill Warner and his brilliant team was one dedicated to the Porsche 935.A turbocharged tour de force which held an impressively long reign as the car to beat in top-flight international endurance racing, the 935 garnered outright victories in the Daytona 24 Hours, the 12 Hours of Sebring and, most importantly, the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979. Crucially, it further cemented Porsche as sports cars’ top dog.

A staggering 12 Porsche 935s graced the lawn in Amelia Island, including the Le Mans winner itself, owned by Bruce Meyer in Los Angeles, the hallowed Andial 935L in which Bob Wollek, Preston Henn, Claude Ballot-Lena and AJ Foyt won the 1983 Daytona 24 Hours, and Charles Nearburg’s Kremer K3, which John Fitzpatrick took to victory at Road Atlanta and Portland in 1980.

“Events are so important. Not only as platforms on which to share our passion, but also as catalysts for the market.”

A special mention must also go to David MacNeil’s Kremer K3, chassis 0027. Interscope was always my favourite livery for the 935, and the judges were clearly taken with the car – it was awarded the ‘Best In Class’ award. In what I thought was a great touch, a seminar was held alongside the concours class to share the inside story of the 935. And the guest speakers were the very people who forged its legend: Hurley Haywood, Brian Redman and David Hobbs, to name but a few. 

Having been surrounded by these fantastic cars and thoroughly entertaining personalities who raced, ran, built and now collect them all weekend, I left Florida with a renewed lust for the Porsche 935. Suffice to say, I wasn’t alone. Within a few days of touching back down in the UK, I received a call from a client who, having seen the 935 celebrations at Amelia Island and the roster of top-tier collectors who own these special cars, had decided he’d like to acquire one – more specifically a car with a great period racing history.

Enter chassis number 0021, the car you’re looking at in these stunning photos captured here at Belchers Farm. We’ve had this car on our radar for a while and we reckoned it fitted the bill perfectly for our client. A 1978 model which began life as a factory Porsche 935 and was subsequently converted by Kremer to full K3 specification, this car finished second overall at the 1980 Daytona 24 Hours under Preston Henn’s famous Thunderbird Swap Shop banner. You can find out more about chassis 0021’s fantastic history by clicking here.

My hunch was right – we’d found a great new home for this most special of Porsches. Which brings me back to Amelia Island and, more generally, why in this post-Covid period, events are so important to bolster interest in certain cars and, in some cases, revitalise the markets for them. That’s why we’re going to attend as many as we can in the tail end of 2020! We don’t need asking twice. You’ll be able to catch us in Monterey for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, Salon Privé, both the Goodwood Revival and the Members’ Meeting, and the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este.Who knows what cars we’ll be hunting for on the back of those events? Bring it on…Photos: Robert Cooper for Girardo & Co. Click Here to find out more about this sensational 1978 Porsche 935 K3.