From 1982 until 1987 is the Porsche 956 and the 962 unbeatable in the 24 hour race of Le Mans. The German ex-racing driver and team founder Jochen Dauer had already achieved success in WSC (World Sportscar Championship) and IMSA with his 962s. He had a soft spot for this type of Porsche. He was involved in the Andretti and the Unser family 962 Porsche for the Daytona 1991 race.
When turbocharging was banned in 1991, Dauer began developing a road-going version of the 962 in his workshop. As Porsche had built about 150 chassis, there were enough chassis and spare parts available on the market. He bought five 962 chassis ( the 169, 172,173,175 and 176). His street-version chassis was nearly unchanged from the Porsche Group C racer - steel tubular space frame covered with Kevlar body, very professional for its time. The engine was the Le Mans spec 2994cc watercooled flat-six with twin-cam per bank operating 4 valves per cylinder. Twin KKK turbochargers with individual intercoolers. Bosch Motronic 1.7 engine management system controlled the ignition and injection.
And two years later during the Frankfurt Motor Show, the Dauer Sportwagen GmBh presented the 962 LM for road use. The car costed at that time 1.725.000 D-Mark.
What is not very well known at that time was that Jochen Dauer got a lot of help from Porsche. And why ? Because Porsche was involved in the 911 turbo Special for the Le Mans race in 1993, driven by Stuck, Röhrl and Haywood. And because Porsche engineer Norbert Singer had found a loophole in the 24 h Le Mans regulations. Because of the LMP1 racing class, there was no place anymore for a regular 962, but you could enter the car as a GT1 class car. In this class, you could race with a 100 pk stronger engine and a larger fuel cell than a LMP1 car. And he knew that the 911 would encounter a stronger opposition and that McLaren was already busy with the F1 GTR project. He had contacted Dauer, because nobody would give that amount of money to buy his car and the regulation said thet a GT1 car had to be available to the public.
The 1993 Porsche: 
Two Dauer 962 LM, built using chassis 169, 173 and 176, were constructed as a racing car. There were only large adaptations necessary for the cockpit dimensions and the front windscreen. They got chassis number GT002 and GT003. They appeared on the entry list for the 24 hours race in June 1994. GT002 was the Shell #35 for H. Stuck/ D. Sullivan/ T. Boutsen; the GT003 the F.A.T sponsored #36 for M. Baldi/Y. Dalmas/H. Haywood. Chassis GT001 ( original 169 chassis) is the street version, necessary for the homologation.
The official ACO organisation saw immediately the plans from Porsche and changed the rules in a hurry. Every GT1 car had to have a smooth floor between the front and rear axle. Dauer and Porsche got to work and changed the floor ! They also had to change the rear wing ( only one plane was allowed) and the car needed a rear bumper. When the ACO send controller Alain Bertaut to Weissach, the homologation was a fact.
The panels for the carrosserie were constructed by Lola Composites in Huntington, England. Singer and Dauer flew to there every week to follow the progress. The aerodynamics were also tested there in a wind tunnel, with the help of engineer Wiet Huidekoper.
The cars were ready in March.
Next problem. Porsche had lost his licence to enter cars for Le Mans; last entry was 1988. They found Joest Racing the team that would enter the cars. Paperwork done.
Then came the training and qualifying sessions. They were as quick as a LMP1 car. Compared to the rest of the GT-1 class, their speed was enormous. Their next best competitor in the class was 12 seconds a lap slower and just made it into 12th position on the grid. Official statements from Porsche at that time still said that their target was a class victory in GT-1, not an overall victory. No-one believed this. During these sessions, these Porsche did not show their full potential. In the race, they were even quicker !
On 19th June 1994, a warm and sunny Saturday, about 140,000 spectators saw a 48 car field starting their engines. Not surprisingly the prototypes took the lead from the start, but the first round of pit stops revealed the 962 LM for what they were: wolves in sheep’s clothing!
The Toyotas and the other prototypes raced with a weight of 950 kg and an 80-litre fuel tank, whereas the Porsches’ weight was 1,000 kg but they carried a 120-litre fuel tank. While the prototypes had to stop about every 11-12 laps to refuel, Hans Stuck and his teammates could easily squeeze 14 laps, sometimes even 15 laps per stint out the fuel tanks.
They also had speed. On Sunday morning it was Thierry Boutsen in the #35 car who did the fastest lap of the race with a time of 3:52.54 ( 210.544 km/h), more than a second faster than in practice, revealing the qualifying times for what they were – sandbagging!
But it was not all plain sailing. At the end of the second hour, the Dauer cars were first and second, but then the German team hit unexpected trouble. First of all leading American driver Danny Sullivan in the #35 car had a puncture, unfortunately right after the entrance of the pit lane. He had to do a full lap at very slow speed to make it back into the pits and lost almost two laps to the leading cars.
The next incident happened when Thierry Boutsen ran out of fuel some 50 metres short of his pit, so the marshals had to push him. Shortly after that, the #36 Dauer needed a lengthy repair: a driveshaft had to be replaced. Later in the night, it was again Boutsen who ran into trouble: Somewhere on the track he lost the front bodywork, and this meant that his headlights were gone too. “I had to wait for another car to arrive to see where I was. But he was going too fast, so I had to wait for another!”
After midnight everything was looking favourable for the Japanese, but in the early morning hours, the leading NISSO TRUST Toyota driven by Steven Andskär, George Fouché and Bob Wollek ate its gearbox, resulting in an almost one-hour long repair stop. Meanwhile, the drivers of Dauer #35 had retrieved one of the two laps lost in the puncture incident, but a broken wishbone before breakfast meant another 15-minute repair stop for them. And probably the win.
From Sunday sunrise until lunchtime it was the SARD Toyota driven by Eddie Irvine, Mauro Martini and Jeff Krosnoff which was leading and it looked like the Japanese team could finally take the holy grail – the first overall win for Toyota at Le Mans.
Life is sometimes cruel, and Le Mans is often even more so! Irvine, Martini and Krosnoff lost the race because of poor welding by a Japanese mechanic; a gear linkage broke with just 98 minutes to go. The linkage broke immediately after a regular pit stop, just past the end of the pit lane.
American driver Jeff Krosnoff got out of the car, took off the rear deck and tried to fix it. After a while, he managed to jam in 3rd gear at the gearbox casing, completed a slow lap and brought the car back into the pits. The gear linkage was quickly replaced in 58 minutes, but when the #1 Toyota got back out on track it had fallen to third position behind the two Dauer 962 LMs. A couple of very quick laps with Eddie Irvine at the wheel brought the SARD Toyota into second place on the penultimate lap, but the overall victory was lost.
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More than 12 years after its initial construction and 7 years after its last win as a Group C prototype in 1987, it was a Dauer 962 LM # 35 which took the chequered flag as the winner, having completed 345 laps. This was the 13th overall victory for Porsche at La Sarthe. One lap down were the SARD Toyota and the second Dauer #36. The 4th place car, the NISSO TRUST Toyota, was 15 laps behind. Reliability issues were a key factor in 1994. All of the leading cars had at least some technical issues and just 18 out of the 48 starters were classified.
After the race the opinion among the organizers, fans and competitors was unanimous – most people felt that Porsche had cheated. But they were wrong, the Dauer 962 LM was within the letter of the regulations, although admittedly not within the spirit of the rule book. Some of the competitors started to blame Stuttgart for a lack of fair play, but most likely they were just jealous that they didn’t have the same neat idea. The A.C.O. let Porsche and Jochen Dauer know that this car would not be accepted again and started work on the rule book immediately after the race. Not surprisingly the conversion of Group-C prototypes into GT-1 cars was outlawed for the future.
A year later a ‘proper’ GT1 car won the race, a McLaren F1 GTR.
So, what happened to the Dauer 962 LM project? The Le Mans winning car never raced again but the production of the road car version continued. Until 2002 altogether 13 road cars were built by Jochen Dauer’s company, all of them based on original 962 race car chassis. Six cars were bought by the Sultan of Brunei, the list price at that time was $853,000.
The winning car can still be found in the Le Mans museum, together with the second-placed Toyota!
