The 1979 Le Mans 24hr race was won by the Kremer racing team's Porsche 935 K3 driven by Klaus Ludwig and American brothers Bill and Don Whittington. The K3 version of the highly competitive Porsche 935 had been developed by the German Kremer team to further improve the 935 (which at the time was the dominant car in Group 5 racing) after Porsche decided not to develop the 935 further after the Porsche 935/78 "Moby Dick". Porsche also declined to sell copies of the Moby Dick 935 to private racing teams which was a further incentive for Kremer to develop an updated version of the 935 for themselves. The win at Le Mans in 1979 was the only win in the famous 24hr race for the 935, which was very impressive considering the car had it's roots in the original 911 introduced way back in 1963. The faster Group 6 Porsche 936s failed to finish the race (which was held in heavy rain) and 935s finished 1-2-3, with a 934 finishing in 4th place.
The big news from the 1979 Le Mans 24hrs was not however the victory by the Kremer 935 K3, but the second place finish by the car represented by this model. Entered and driven by Dick Barbour (of the American Dick Barbour racing team), this car was notable that one of Barbour's co-drivers was a Hollywood star. Paul Newman had developed an interest in auto racing following his role in the 1968 movie "Winning" in which he played a racing driver. Naturally having a movie star as a driver generated huge publicity for the Barbour team, and for them to finish second overall was a huge story at the time. The third driver for the number 70 Porsche 935 was the German driver Rolf Stommelen who was the fastest of the trio and one of the best sportscar racers of the 1970s.
The winning 935 was delayed out on the course due to mechanical problems on the Sunday morning of the race (it threw off the belt driving the mechanical fuel injection), which left it sitting stationary for around an hour while driver Don Whittington worked on the car in order to get it going. This allowed the second place Barbour 935 to close the large gap between it and the 1st placed car to the point where it was in a position to challenge for the lead. Barbour elected to put the fastest driver, Stommelen, into the car on fresh tires, which proved to be an error as a stuck wheel nut (thanks to a broken wheel bearing) cost them 23 minutes in the pits. The Kremer K3 held on to win, completing 307 laps in total compared to the 2nd place cars 299 laps.
Dick Barbour and his team-mates did not go away empty handed as they won the IMSA category in which they were racing (the winning 935 was entered in the Group 5 category). The Andy Warhol painted BMW M1 Art Car finished 2nd in the IMSA category and 6th overall in the 1979 race. IMSA (which stands for International Motorsports Association) was started in 1969 by a former employee of the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) and is an American sanctioning body for motorsport.
The 2nd place car was built to the latest Porsche factory specification for customer 935s, and technically was a 935/79. It differed from the original 1976 versions of the car primarily in having smaller twin turbochargers instead of just one large one, which greatly improved the responsiveness of the engine and reduced turbo lag, which was a major problem for early turbocharged racing engines.
Carousel 1 I feel did a better job in modelling the Barbour/Newman/Stommelen 1979 935 than the other company who have made it in 1:18th, Exoto. Exoto have released many versions of the Porsche 935 since the first unliveried cars were released in 2001. The first models released were the 1976 specification 935s which were and are great models. But the later cars are quite different in appearance to the '76 versions and I don't think Exoto have done a great job in altering the original molds to make the later cars. Hence the Exoto version of this particular car has headlights which do not look at all accurate (compared to contemporary photographs of the car I have seen) and for me it ruined the look of the model. Another factor which made me choose the Carousel 1 version was that it was available before the Exoto was and at a considerably lower price. In fact I bought this model while it was on sale for about half what the Exoto version cost.
As I'm in the middle of a house move (as of August/September 2006) all my models are in storage hence I'm not able to accurately rate this model for this review. To do so properly I like to have the model to hand so I can inspect it properly in order to give it a fair rating. Once our house move is complete I aim to get my models out of storage ASAP and add a full rating of this model to this review.
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