Broad Arrow Auctions, in partnership with Air|Water and Luftgekühlt, is worked up to host their second all-Porsche Public sale on the 2025 version of Air|Water, the globally acknowledged Porsche fanatic occasion, on 26 April in Costa Mesa, California. This must-attend public sale will function an elite number of uncommon and standout examples from the famend marque together with, this 1966 Porsche 906 estimated at $1,600,000 – $1,900,000.
The Carrera 6, higher recognized right this moment because the 906, was first introduced as a collection of fifty within the February 1966 difficulty of Porsche’s manufacturing facility journal Christophorus. The preliminary debut was gentle on element; nonetheless, the 2 black and white photographs of the automotive revealed the unconventional nature of the design, heralding a brand new path for Porsche’s motorsport division. The earlier top-line GT sports activities racer from Porsche System Engineering was the 904 Carrera GTS. The twin use highway/race 904 was one of many ultimate automotive designs (together with the 911) from the pen of Ferdinand Alexander (FA) Porsche earlier than his cousin, the 28-year-old Ferdinand Piëch, took the reins at Porsche System Engineering.
Whereas nonetheless highway authorized, Piëch’s streamlined Sort 906 featured gullwing doorways, a really low, stretched nostril, an extended Kamm tail with fundamental form remaining constant by way of the epic collection of “plastic Porsches” effectively into the record-breaking 917 period. Whereas radical in form, the Carrera 6 was powered by the pretty new, however race-tested 2.0-liter flat six that not solely made its avenue debut within the 901 and 911 however six-cylinder-powered 904s as effectively. The engine, mounted amidships within the tube body chassis, produced 210 horsepower (a powerful 100+ horsepower per liter) at 8,000 rpm, with a ten.3:1 compression ratio, titanium connecting rods, and triple Weber IDA 46 3C carburetors. The 906 was each modern and race-proven on the identical time, one thing of a specialty at Porsche.
As hoped, the automotive was an instantaneous success initially of the 1966 worldwide race season, successful its class on the Daytona 24 Hours, the Sebring 12 Hours, and Monza 1000 Kms. Maybe most famously, on the way in which to successful the FIA underneath 2.0-liter class championship that season, a 906 received the Targa Florio with Willy Mairesse and Herbert Müller on the wheel of the Scuderia Filipinetti entered automotive. The win proved, as soon as once more, that Porsche might construct a automotive able to general wins in huge races whereas within the palms of each manufacturing facility pilots and privateers. Maybe this was within the forefront of Earle M. Chiles’ thoughts when he ordered his 906 to contest Pacific Northwest SCCA and USRRC occasions.
Chassis quantity 906-140’s manufacturing facility Kardex guarantee card reveals the automotive was delivered to Chiles, a inheritor to the Fred Meyer grocery store chain, instantly by way of Porsche Vehicles Northwest primarily based in Beaverton, Oregon merely completed Weiss. Racing underneath his Rapido Inc. banner, Chiles enlisted achieved drivers equivalent to Gary Wright, Mike Fisher, and Pete Beautiful to marketing campaign the automotive within the 1966 and 1967 seasons. Rapido retained the manufacturing facility’s white end whereas becoming magnesium American Racing wheels, competing in West Coast occasions at tracks like Portland Worldwide Raceway and Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington, and fields afar as effectively. Their first yr introduced chassis quantity 140 a number of top-ten finishes in regional occasions. A serious spotlight got here on the 1966 Highway America 500, the place Fisher and Beautiful secured a powerful seventh general and third in school podium. In early 1967, Fisher crashed the automotive right into a police automobile at PIR with the shunt inflicting front-end harm. Relatively than undertake repairs, Chiles opted to half methods together with his 906.
The subsequent proprietor was Monte Shelton, a soon-to-be-famous Portland-based racer and sports activities automotive seller. Seeing the potential within the broken 906, he acquired it with the experience and assets to correctly restore the automotive. He repaired the entrance bodywork, repainted it in a putting blue livery because it seems right this moment, and registered it on Oregon license plates “ACE 906.” Between 1967 and 1969, Shelton campaigned 906-140 extensively in occasions throughout the West Coast. The automotive, usually seen with begin quantity 57, claimed quite a few class wins in nationwide and regional SCCA occasions and even entered a Can-Am occasion at Laguna Seca. By 1969, nonetheless, Shelton determined to half methods with the automotive. In March 1970, he positioned a full-page commercial within the Porsche Membership of America’s Panorama journal, emphasizing the automotive’s race-winning pedigree and providing it on the market. Ever the seller, his itemizing underscored the meticulous upkeep, current engine and gearbox rebuilds, and its dominance in competitors.
Later that yr, 906-140 discovered a brand new dwelling with Robert Harmon of Marin County, California. Harmon continued racing the automotive often at Laguna Seca and Vaca Valley Raceway earlier than promoting it in 1975 to legendary Ohio-based Porsche racer and collector Chuck Stoddard, the proprietor of Stoddard Imported Vehicles. Over the following decade, Stoddard bought after which reacquired the automotive, with it passing by way of the palms of Bob White, Jeff Hayes, and Nick Soprano. Regardless of being actively utilized in competitors, the 906 remained comparatively unmodified in comparison with a lot of its contemporaries.
By 1988, the automotive returned to Europe for the primary time since leaving Zuffenhausen, becoming a member of the Maranello Rosso Assortment of Italian Ferrari and Abarth fanatic Fabrizio Violati. Throughout this era, 906-140 was preserved alongside different important racing machines, together with Violati’s Ferrari 250 GTO, and remained in largely unrestored situation. The automotive remained a part of the gathering till 2001, when it was bought to a different Italian fanatic, Alfredo Spinetti. Below Spinetti’s 21-year stewardship, 906-140 continued to be pushed, taking part in a number of editions of the Vernasca Silver Flag Hill Climb. In contrast to many classic race vehicles that endure in depth restoration, chassis 140 retained a lot of its authentic fiberglass bodywork. Spinetti valued its patina and historical past, believing that preserving its minor imperfections honored the automotive’s racing spirit. In 2022, Excellence journal featured the automotive in an article titled “Northwest Authenticity,” which celebrated its historical past and situation. Within the piece, Spinetti defined, “It was, and nonetheless is, a racing automotive… We didn’t need to change something about it, even the minor imperfections, as a result of these present its spirit.”
Maybe due to the well-publicized Excellence article, 906-140 returned to the USA in 2022 as a survivor within the truest sense of the time period. In contrast to different privateer front-line competitors vehicles, 906-140 duked it out within the warmth of the battle and lived to inform the story. Whereas a lot of its compatriots have been modified with new bodywork, revised suspensions, and altered drivetrain elements in a useless try to remain on the entrance for a further season and even just some races—the identical can’t be stated for 906-140. It stays an impressively authentic and well-documented Carrera 6 that is still true to how the collection was designed and inbuilt Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen through the winter of 1966. It’s famous to retain its manufacturing facility body quantity, aluminum chassis tag, and serialized magnesium-cased racing gearbox.
Any Sort 906 is a crucial a part of Porsche’s storied competitors historical past and a must have in any Porsche assortment that appreciates the model’s unrivalled motorsport heritage. It was the automotive that not solely commonly punched above its weight like so many earlier than it, however the first that charted the corporate’s new path towards attaining its purpose to win Le Mans outright and turn out to be a World Sportscar Champion constructor. Chassis quantity 906-140 performed no small half in that story. With documented provenance and no scarcity of visible attraction completed in Monte Shelton’s easy but engaging blue livery from the late Nineteen Sixties, it have to be one of many extra important examples, preserved very a lot because it competed within the mid-to-late Nineteen Sixties through the daybreak of a brand new golden age of sports activities racing prototypes.
To view extra thrilling vehicles on provide at Broad Arrow’s Porsche Air|Water Public sale, please go to their web site at broadarrowauctions.com and be sure you register to bid for this thrilling must-attend occasion.
