1961 Porsche718

This was one of the cars in the Donington Park Museum when I went there in March 1996.

It's a Porsche 718 that formerly belonged to Dutch privateer Carel Godin de Beaufort, and this is what the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection' said about it:

'The Porsche 718

Germany’s challenger 

French driver Jean Behra began Porsche’s single-seater venture into Formula 2 in 1958. He had a central-seat version of the RSK sports car built up and it proved very successful. For 1959 the Stuttgart works produced ‘proper’ single-seater cars, with similar air-cooled flat-four engines and trailing-link torsion bar front suspension, and when the 1½-litre Formula 1 came into operation in 1961 they were well prepared to enter Grand Prix racing for the first time.

Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier drove the cars, which proved quite competitive. And when the new eight-cylinder was introduced for 1962 the old cars were sold. Two of them went to the giant Dutchman, Count Carel Godin de Beaufort, and he enjoyed himself hugely as one of that rare breed of private owners in Formula 1. He suffered a fatal accident in one of the obsolete old Porsches during practice for the 1964 German Grand Prix at Nürburgring. He was, as ever, trying as hard as he could to reach a qualifying time, and the loss of this jovial, larger than life character took some much-needed colour from the Grand Prix scene.'