1967 Porsche 910 For Sale Reminds Us Old Race Cars Sacrificed It All for Speed

Porsche very strongly hinted that a street-legal, endurance race car-inspired hypercar will make its debut in June. While official details are few and far between, the model will likely borrow cutting-edge tech from the 919 Hybrid. At the other end of the spectrum, the 910 that raced in the 1960s illustrates how race cars used to be built. It’s both basic and advanced, and the first of 28 examples built is for sale.

Listed on Bring a Trailer with a reserve, and assigned chassis number 910001, this 910 is powered by a 2.0-liter air-cooled flat-six engine with a magnesium case. It was a factory works car that raced for the first time at the Trento Bondone Hill Climb in July 1966, and it later competed in numerous events across Europe, including the 1,000 kilometers of Monza. So far, we could be talking about, say, a 919 Hybrid.

Here’s where the story takes an unexpected turn: This 910 was registered for street use in Austria in 1969. Try that with a 919 Hybrid!

The pictures tell the rest of the story, and there are 575 of them to drool over. The 910 is dauntingly experimental by 2025 standards, even for a prototype built solely to race, yet at the same time it was incredibly advanced for its era. It rides on 13-inch center-locking magnesium wheels, and it benefits from a long list of weight-saving parts such as two(!) fiberglass seats so you can terrorize a passenger, fiberglass cooling ducts for the five-speed manual transaxle, fiberglass velocity stacks, titanium connecting rods, and a magnesium cooling fan.

Fast-forward to today, and some of these features are still seen on race cars (and a handful of production cars). Carbon fiber has replaced fiberglass as the weight-saving composite of choice, both for the street and for the track, and you can order a new 911 GT3 RS with carbon fiber bucket seats. The Ferrari 12Cilindri is fitted with titanium connecting rods, and the Aston Martin Valiant rolls on magnesium wheels. Luckily, modern cars are much safer: The 910 isn’t fitted with a full roll cage, and its frame doesn’t offer much in the way of protection.

And yet, this 910 is still around in all of its glory, and it has recently participated in several events including the 2023 Amelia Werks Reunion. Restoration work performed in the 2000s and 2010s included overhauling the engine and the transaxle, repairing and aligning the tubular frame, repainting the fiberglass body, and removing modifications made by previous owners. Chassis number 910001 is now located in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the sale includes a 207-page binder loaded with documents that detail its history and the work performed to it over the years. That’s a huge deal: Paperwork helps seal a car’s provenance, and it sounds like this 910 is particularly well documented.

Will a 919 Hybrid be as well documented in 2083? I hope so. But, how would one even end up in private hands? And, if it doesn’t end up in private hands, how will it continue racing? Most of the cars entered in historic races are privately-owned rather than manufacturer-owned.

Bidding currently stands at about $1.3 million with four days left in the auction. It’s a model that’s difficult to put a value on. Only 28 units were made, no two examples were exactly alike, and each one has a different story. But, for context, Bring a Trailer sold another 910 for $2.5 million in June 2023, and Porsche prototypes regularly sell for over $1 million. The site sold a documented 1966 906 for $2 million in 2023.

As for the street-legal hypercar: Stay tuned. June is right around the corner.

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