1973 2,7RS Viper green

[Phroen911]

Dear All

Working on my old RS - restoring to original factory options.

The car was painted white with red Carreradecals.

Knowing the car is born green with black decals - can anyone for sure say the Fuchs where black center og black/alu centered?

My knowledge is that the RSR where 2-coloured - but not sure?

Anyone who can help?

Thanks

René

[bob joyce]

you best chance to get an answer is to post a picture of your car

[911MRP]

Generally in the case of a model year 73 RS the cars had black with silver Fuchs except those that were ordered in the reserved for limited edition RS colour of Grand Prix white. Those could be optioned with blue, red or green wheels — or left black /silver. A lot of information is available about each RS chassis if the vin number is known.

Steve

[72targa]

Second the motion for the VIN. Welcome!!

[Jay Laifman]

As long as someone started this thread, I just noticed pictures of a couple cars that are labelled as RSs. But they had features I'm not accustomed to.

The green one is also labeled from Hong Kong. As I understand it, in 1973, if you wanted two mirrors, your only option was the larger Durant (and the passenger side was convex). This car being RHD, that presumably explains the two Durants, right? But what about the chrome grilles and turn signals?

I also note that I've never seen a 1973 RS with US 1973 rear rubber bumper guards. As I understand it, the non-US 1973 cars still had the chrome/rubber bumper guards. Is it possible that some RS's had chrome turn signals and grilles to match the chrome bumper guards?

Finally, note the other picture with the anodized black rear PORSCHE lettering. Usually I see a decal on the RS. Were some with the lettering?

[911MRP]

RHD cars typically had just one round Durant — flat surface . Drivers side. Some LHD got two Durant. In some case position sometimes further back on door. Thee were some local market nuances: Sweden for example had one convex durant — one of the two iirc— fitted as a regulator’s requirement in that country.

Not many HK RS but some appeared to piggyback spec on the larger volume c16 RHD British market spec for example ones I’ve seen have the seatbelt mounting BS AU and associated plate. Probably logical that Hong Kong a British colony from 1841 to 1941 and again from 1945 to 1997 made it sensible to adopt the British spec rather than overhead if unique regulations

Not aware of any RS with silver rear light edges, but haven’t seen them all. Later m471 sport got steel rear bumper and chrome bumper horns after homologation was achieved when achieving weight didn’t matter. The only concession to weight on that was the rubber overriders on rear bumper was omitted in m471 configuration. Some early RS and 73 got silver grilles at front if ttg opton was specified but even then sidelights were black edge; when silver ttg ran out black plastic grilles cut were used .

My understanding is the RS “emblem” rather than vinyl RS lid decal on rear was just for when customer or a local regulation required duck tail lid not to be fitted — in which case the emblem model identifier was mounted in central position on lid positioned like the TES production models. Customers who specified this ducktail delete were probably ignorant of the aerodynamic benefits of the RS front and rear spoilers as a matching balanced aero set. Possibly those “emblems” got fitted to some cars outside this “rule” — particularly early black RS would be tempting to affix the “emblem” as initially only black vinyl rear model identification decal was permitted on all non-GP white RS. This black on black gave poor contrast. Someting they realised after setting the role apparently. That restriction was relaxed around end calendar 72 ( November 72 I think) to allow red vinyl model identifier for rear of black RS as the only exception to resolve this lack of contrast. Don’t think PORSCHE letters rather than vinyl was correct for RS model but again not seen them all.

Done from memory so open to be corrected if I’ve misremembered this minutiae.

[Jay Laifman]

Thanks for such great info. So then were none of these sold to the US as road cars? Maybe this is something people already know. I mean, those bigger rubber bumper horns for US regulations. I would think that even an RS bound for the US would have had to have those.

[HughH]

there were half a dozen or so sold in the USA as new: 4 officially: 3 M472's (one Swiss spec) and 1 M471 but a lot of M491's - 16 I think
all meant for the race track so non conforming to the road rules
however that is not to say that at least a couple of the new cars ended up on the road - especially on trade plates

[jaudette3]

I've been hanging out here for over 20 years now and one great pleasure is when the vast knowledge possessed by members of this forum percolates to the surface, such as this thread.

[911MRP]

Buyers of RS (911744) USA (and possibly a few other countries where model not approved ?) were required to sign a notorised document saying the car was “not for road use” as a condition of sale. There was even a pro forma for that purpose among the RS ordering procedures. It used a fill the blanks approach for certain parts of text including space to add “country” so in theory wording usable for other countries where RS wasn’t approved to be sold. Copy of that pro forma is among my RS original papers. A few details rather betrays the document is really about USA market however.

As Hugh says some buyers might’ve been tempted to use a new RS — Germany’s fastest car— on the road but Porsche had covered off the eventuality that if anyone did so it wouldn’t rebound on them — presumably important to demonstrate that they were being responsible in a big sales market. Not sure if they did that pro-forma for other non Road pure race cars but the pro-forma was certainly an addendum to the RS unique ordering procedure pack sent to dealers. I suspect maybe unique to RS as it’s d’etre as a imited edition homologation special was to reposition the 911, their main road car, front and centre as the factory racer in response to the FiA rule changes decided ina meeting in london that had sidelined the specialist machines such as 917. The factory racing efforts had been more specialist racers and the 911 racing had hitherto generally been more in support of their customer racers.

I suppose they could’ve messed with the last 500 series after homologation was completed since weight and conforming to the limited edition homolgation spec didn’t matter for those. If so minded could’ve added all the USA “stuff” and gone through approvals as all but a very few of that last 500 series were essentially productionized to
Make money built much like the mainstream TES by that stage of the 911.744 model’s lifecycle. Evidently didn’t bother maybe because they’d do quickly sold many more than they planned or needed to make for the models sole intended purpose to RoW countries and had delivered examples to the racers and a few friends of factory in the USA using the pro-forma tactic. As mentioned, later RS in M471 Sport configuration got steel bumpers and chrome plain bumperettes, sans rubber of s and RS, but (mercifully) never got the got the evolving USA rear end afaik.

Not entirely sure what aspects of RS made Porsche choose not to sell it to USA but could have been many things. Being tactically designated as SC to be a derivative of S helped speed to market by piggybacking things already approved for F series S — maybe the weight reduction requiring thinner gauge steel in a dozen places around chassis, the thin door skin and less internal bracing, thinner glass raised concerns especially as they needed to sell an unprecedented 500 lighter-weight (price meet homologation target 900kg) chassis quickly to achieve homologation for intended group racing? Perhaps it was the 2.7 motor with a few revisions over 2.4 S, the RS novel rear ducktail made of glassfibre that the German regulators initially baulked at the then groundbreaking for road-car usage of different size rims front Vs rear with then daringly low 60 profile wider rear tyres? Any one innovation or all together might’ve given the hard m-pressed engineers pause about bothering to get it through USA approval hurdles at time when safety and emissions were under scrutiny there. Logical for those tasked with developing what was thought to be just 500 road-going racing homologation limited edition special examples to give that market a wide-berth in view of the aggressive target date to achieve homologation for the coming racing season. Time pressure not helped by fact the model had an unusual gestation so was already out of step with the typical factory model lineup refresh cycle; a October launch and engineering /motorsport led development project being later than the more typical post summer. shutdown cadence.
Steve