Porsche 908: Seriensieger, Spezialist und Dauerläufer [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Ein wirklich sehr umfangreiches Werk zum Porsche 908. Einmal mehr ist es dem Autorenteam gelungen ein (fast) lückenloses Buch zu diesem Rennwagen zu liefern. Viele Fotos und informativen Texte liefern eine guten Gesamteindruck zu dieser Rennsportepoche. Bei meinen beiden Ausgaben waren leider jeweils 3-4 Seiten zerissen... vielleicht das Resultat, des sparsamen Drucks im Ostblock?

The book tells the story of the design and development of all versions and details the 20-year racing history in the hand of first factory and later private hands. A full set of 1968-1988 race statistics for the 10 major series is so thorough that it even lists the reasons for DNFs. The race history takes up five of the 10 chapters with the three primary years, 1968-1971, getting a chapter each and the years 1972-1984 bundled into one. The special Bergspyder hill-climb version gets its own chapter, as do the two 914 road cars that carried a 908 engine. The chapter of driver profiles lists 19 men, apparently in order of season they drove/won for Porsche during the core 1968-1971 years (not easy to tell because there is quite a bit of overlap here). Most of the profiles are accompanied by period photos of the drivers. There are no lists of specs or modifications nor is there an index.

The main text is augmented by eyewitness reports, anecdotes, quotes and the like. The writing is concise, maintains a brisk pace, and conveys an enormous amount of fact'--not an easy thing to do without disrupting the flow of the narrative. If there is anything to say about the writing it is that, stylistically, it is uneven inasmuch as the main text strikes a distinctly different tone from the chattier style of the photo captions. The reason for that is that the book was written by a group of authors, each with a particular specialty. Födisch had the contacts to racers, manufacturers, teams, and photographers of that period; he and Neßhöver did many of the interviews. Rainer Roßbach handled layout, photo selection and preparation, print preproduction, most of the subtitles and some parts of the main text. His brother Dieter wrote a large part of the main text. And Schwarz provided the statistics. As a team they have collaborated in varying configurations on several projects.

The photos deserve special mention. Many of them are from the Porsche archives, and many of them have not been previously published. Most of them show the cars at work, and the paddock/pit photos give a nice flavor of the very different conditions then. There are not a lot of photos of the running gear or frame, not even in the Technology chapter (slim pickings for the model builders among the readers). Racing photos can never be too large and none of the ones in this book are unseemly small. There are also quite a few racing posters.

The book is also available in an English version by Veloce (UK). Readers who have a choice between it and the German version are urged to consider the German edition. It is larger, shows all the photos the authors selected, has a more sophisticated design and layout as well as better paper and print quality.

Full review at <speedreaders.info>. Copyright 2010, Sabu Advani

15 Jahre lang war der Porsche 908 in Le Mans, am Berg und in der Can-Am Serie erfolgreich, aber zumindest literarisch stand er bisher im Schatten seines "großen Bruders" 917. 240 großformatige Seiten schaffen endlich Abhilfe.
Umfassend werden die Entwicklung, die verschiedenen Modelle und natürlich die Rennerfolge in zahlreichen Bildern und Text dargestellt. Eine Statistik der Rennerfolge bildet einen nützlichen Anhang. Eine Übersicht über alle Fahrzeuge fehlt leider. Mühsam sind die verkrampft originellen Bildtexte a la "Umzugskarton: Pfeile in den Gulf-Farben zeigen, wo oben respektive vorne ist. Leo Kinnunen und Pedro Rodriguez wissen das auch ohne Hinweis." Solchen "Humor" hätte dieses ausgezeichnete Buch nicht nötig...