Porsche 911 RSRs to wear legendary liveries at Le Mans

Porsche’s famous Rothmans livery and the surprising Pink Pig livery will make a comeback at the upcoming 24 Hours of Le Mans. But not on their original cars.

This time, the Porsche 911 RSR race cars will be wearing the Rothmans and Pink Pig liveries in houor of the cars that made them famous.

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The most well-known is the blue and white Rothmans paint scheme, which appeared most famously on the Porsche 956 C and the 962 C.

The 956 marked the first use of Porsche’s PDK dual clutch (Porsche Doppelkupplung) transferring up to 460kW from a 2.6-litre turbo flat six.

It’s also the car (chassis number 007, according to Porsche) which Stefan Bellof steered around the Nürburgring in a record 6 minutes and 11.13 seconds. His record still stands decades later.

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This feat somewhat eclipses the 956’s prolific success between 1982 and 1984, when the car took out the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championships each year in the World Sportscar Championship.

The Porsche 962 C also wore the Rothmans livery, famously driven by the likes of Tiff Needell, Derek Bell, and Jacky Ickx.

It won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1986 and ’87 with Bell, Al Holbert, and Hans-Joachim Stuck driving for both, as well as having a long active life between 1985 and 1992.

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Less well-known, perhaps, is the Rothmans-liveried Porsche 959 which took victory at the 1986 Paris-Dakar.

The other classic livery which will see a return to Le Mans, the ‘Pink Pig’ scheme, was far less prolific.

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Porsche designer Anatole Lapine came up with the idea, and applied it to a Porsche 917/20, a one-off racer that “was designed to combine the aerodynamic advantages of the short and long-tail versions of the 917.”

Though it qualified 7th in the only race it participated in, the 1971 24 Hours of Le Mans, it crashed with Reinhold Jöst at the wheel.

As the above video shows, the car has been restored and is now on display at the Porsche Museum.

The 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans kicks off on June 16 at the Circuit de la Sarthe in France, though Porsche’s LMP1 team will not be competing after its disbandment in 2017.