Works Porsche 956 - The Definitive History

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Unleashed in 1982, the Porsche 956 became the most successful purpose-built race car in history. Over the following decade, the 956 and its later long-wheelbase version, the 962, would win five consecutive world championships, as well as every single classic sportscar race in the world a record number of times: the Le Mans 24 Hours seven times, the Daytona 24 Hours six times and the Sebring 12 Hours four times, plus 39 world championship events and 55 IMSA races, to name but a few of its remarkable achievements. Many of the successes were achieved by works-entered cars, almost always in the iconic white-and-blue colours of sponsor Rothmans, and they form the focus of an extraordinary body of work researched and written by author Serge Vanbockryck over the past 30 years. This is the first part of his project, a two-volume production about the Works 956s, with a second such title on the Works 962s also available to purchase.

Key content

Limited Edition

Two specially bound volumes limited to just 956 copies.

The Author

Serge Vanbockryck started his career as a journalist and photographer in the late 1980s, covering sportscar and endurance racing for newspapers and magazines across Europe and the UK, while also working for radio and television in Belgium, France and the UK. He was also a photographic contributor to many of the ACO Le Mans yearbooks, to Dr. János Wimpffen’s sportscar tetralogy that accompanied his epic Time And Two Seats, and to Jean-Marc Teissèdre’s biography of Bob Wollek. He is a regular contributor to British monthly Racecar Engineering and to Germany’s leading automotive monthly, Sport Auto, as well as being the co-author of the official Porsche Rennsport Reunion programmes. He is also a member of The Society of Automotive Historians in Britain.

Since the late 1980s he has been studying, documenting and gathering all possible racing and test data on the 200-plus Porsches 956 and 962 that raced in period competition from 1982 until 1999, with the clear purpose of one day writing the ultimate book of reference on this most iconic of race cars. His dozens of interviews with key decision makers at Porsche, and also with engineers, managers and drivers from the works team as well as the many privateer teams, and his several hundreds of hours spent researching every conceivable period document at Porsche’s historical archives in Stuttgart, have over time made him one of the world’s foremost historians on the subject.

Professionally, he left journalism for public relations and marketing in the mid-1990s, working in F1 and the World Rally Championship with Marlboro and Lucky Strike, and Le Mans and the WRC when Toyota returned to international motorsport with the Corolla WRC and the GT-One. Since 2000 he has been involved with General Motors’ international motorsport activities as European PR coordinator for the Cadillac LMP, Corvette GT and Chevrolet WTCC programmes. In 2019 he received the international ACO/UJSF Communications Award for his work with Corvette Racing.

Title Information

Author: Serge Vanbockryck
Publication: September 2019
Specifications: 340mm x 245mm portrait hardback, page extent 800pp. Grey slipcase.
Illustrations: 850 images
Language: English
Publisher: Porter Press International
ISBN: 978-1-907085-90-1