The Porsche 909 "Bergspyder" was a
spyder
The SPYDER ("Surface-to-air Python and Derby") is an Israeli short and medium range mobile air defence system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with assistance from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Rafael is the prime contractor an ...
sports car
A sports car is a car designed with an emphasis on dynamic performance, such as handling, acceleration, top speed, the thrill of driving and racing capability. Sports cars originated in Europe in the early 1900s and are currently produced by ...
designed and built by
Porsche
Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, usually shortened to Porsche (; see #Pronunciation, below), is a German automobile manufacturer specializing in high-performance sports cars, SUVs and sedans, headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany ...
in 1968. Its purpose was to compete in
hillclimbing
Hillclimbing, also known as hill climbing, speed hillclimbing, or speed hill climbing, is a branch of motorsport in which drivers compete against the clock to complete an uphill course. It is one of the oldest forms of motorsport, since the fir ...
competitions, specifically the EHCC Sports Car (Gr. P) class of the
European Hillclimb Championship
The FIA European Hill Climb Championship (FIA EHC) is an FIA-run motorsport competition held across Europe on closed public road courses.
Unlike circuit racing, each driver competes alone, starting from a point at the base of a mountain and reac ...
. It was a short-lived model, but its basic structure, technical innovations, and overall design became the basis for the successful
908/3.
History
Porsche had reigned champion with earlier models, the
910
Year 910 ( CMX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
__NOTOC__ Events By place Europe
* June 12 – Battle of Augsburg: The Hungarians defeat the East Frankish army under ...
,
907
__NOTOC__
Year 907 ( CMVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Rus'–Byzantine War: Varangian prince Oleg of Novgorod leads the ...
, and
908
__NOTOC__
Year 908 ( CMVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* May 15 – The three-year-old Constantine VII, the son of Emperor L ...
, winning nine European Hillclimb Championship titles out of eleven years of participation. After being defeated two years in a row,
Ferrari
Ferrari S.p.A. (; ) is an Italian luxury sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari (1898–1988) in 1939 from the Alfa Romeo racing division as ''Auto Avio Costruzioni'', the company built its first car in ...
set out to develop a dedicated hillclimb car to challenge Porsche in 1967. This car was the
212 E Montagna, and was announced to compete for the 1968 European Hillclimb Championship. Despite this initial claim, Ferrari postponed its development, with the car being unveiled in 1969. Still, given the shocking news at the time of the 212's announcement,
Ferdinand Piëch
Ferdinand Karl Piëch (; 17 April 1937 – 25 August 2019) was an Austrian business magnate, engineer and executive who was the chairman of the executive board (''Vorstandsvorsitzender'') of Volkswagen Group in 1993–2002 and the chairman of th ...
and his team of engineers at Porsche urgently developed a car to battle Ferrari.
Luckily for Porsche, the car was finished in time for the 1968 EHCC season, with Porsche driver
Rolf Stommelen
Rolf Johann Stommelen (11 July 1943 – 24 April 1983) was a racing driver from Siegen, Germany. He participated in 63 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, achieving one podium, and scored a total of 14 championship points. He also partici ...
driving the 909 Bergspyder in two races in the European Hillclimb Championship. Proving the car's rapid pace and technological advancement, he placed 2nd and 3rd despite recently recovering from an arm injury. Porsche driver
Gerhard Mitter
Gerhard Karl Mitter (30 August 1935 – 1 August 1969) was a German Formula One and sportscar driver.
Early life and career
Mitter was born in Schönlinde (Krásná Lípa) in Czechoslovakia, but his family was expelled from there, to Leonberg ...
preferred the Porsche 910/8, an older model was still competitive, because the Porsche 909 Bergspyder was said to be a handful to drive and had reliability issues. Regardless of the 909's mediocre success and the 910/8's age, the pair of cars dominated the 1968 European Hillclimb Championship. Porsche came out on top, with Mitter and his Porsche 910/8 placing first in the EHCC Sports Car (Gr. P) class.
Although Porsche was achieving lots of success in hillclimb racing, the development of the 917—used in the pursuit of winning Le Mans, the World Sportscar Championship, and eventually Can-Am—took precedent over participating in the European Hillclimb Championship. This allowed the
Ferrari 212 E, a heavier but more powerful car than the 909, to completely outmatch its peers in the 1969 European Hill Climb Championship. Impressively, the car didn't just win overall, but it won every race it entered and set multiple course records.
[Jonathan Thomson (November–December 1978), "212 E Montagna", Cavallino, vol. 1 no. 2, pp. 28–31]
In all, the 909 Bergspyder performed well despite its drawbacks. Above all else, it was a radical and invaluable piece of engineering that played a crucial role in furthering Porsche's future racing projects, particularly with developing the
908/3.
Construction and performance
The Porsche 909 Bergspyder was equipped with the 2.0 L,
Type 771 flat-eight engine A flat-eight engine, also called a horizontally-opposed eight, is an eight-cylinder piston engine with two banks of four inline cylinders, one on each side of a central crankshaft, 180° apart.
In a flat-eight engine, the connecting rods for corres ...
, derived from Porsche's earlier efforts in
Formula 1
Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...
.
The power unit was coupled to an extremely lightweight
spaceframe
In architecture and structural engineering, a space frame or space structure ( 3D truss) is a rigid, lightweight, truss-like structure constructed from interlocking struts in a geometric pattern. Space frames can be used to span large areas with ...
chassis made of aluminum. The car also featured non-magnetic, exotic, and dangerous metals like
beryllium
Beryllium is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form mi ...
,
titanium
Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...
,
silver
Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...
, and
magnesium
Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 of the periodic ta ...
in the pursuit of shaving weight. Steel was not used in the 909. To give an idea of what lengths the engineers went to with the 909, the fiberglass body weighed just , and instead of a fuel pump, the car utilized a pressurized titanium ball that delivered fuel to the engine in order to save weight.
Remarkably, this is only a summary of the long list of innovations that Piëch and his team of engineers made for the 909. The car weighed an astonishing and was capable of an incredible 0-60 mph time of 2.4 seconds.
Interestingly, Porsche experimented with a body featuring front canards and two symmetric air ducts, in addition to the smooth front-end seen on the car in the Porsche museum today.
References
External links
International Model Car Association: Porsche 908Porsche: Porsche 909 BergspyderPorsche 909 Bergspyder
Sports prototypes
908 Bergspyder
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sv:Porsche 907#Porsche 909 Bergspyder