This is tempered glass-topped coffee table made from an aftermarket fiberglass Porsche ducktail-style decklid. It’s finished in the famous Gulf Oil racing livery of blue and orange, with both “Porsche” and “RSR” on the back.
The Porsche Ducktail is a small rear spoiler developed by German aerodynamicist Hermann Burst for the 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7. The name Ducktail was applied by the Porsche marketing department, and not initially in a complimentary fashion, but it’s now become a key part of the 911’s history.
This is an original 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7, you can see the Ducktail spoiler on the rear end. It’s now become one of the most distinctive 911 design features of all time, and Porsche has even brought it back on newer limited edition production cars. Image courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.The development of the Ducktail spoiler was undertaken because Porsche needed to find a way of countering the lift produced by the 911 body at high speeds – without actually changing the shape of the car in any significant way.
Hermann Burst had been critical to the development of the Porsche 917, and the many variations the car had over the years to fine tune it for different circuits and different events. As a result of this, he was the perfect person to be tapped by Porsche for the 911 Carrera RS 2.7 project.
Working with a small team, Burst developed the Ducktail and a series of front aerodynamic upgrades for the Carrera RS 2.7. The goal was to reduce drag and improve downforce over the rear wheels at speed, and the project succeeded at both.
Porsche had initially planned (or hoped) to sell 500 examples of the Carrera RS 2.7 for homologation purposes. By the end of the brief production run they had sold well over 1,500 of them, and today they’re among the most sought after 911s ever made.
The Porsche Ducktail Coffee Table
The coffee table you see here has been built using a 1:1 scale fiberglass Ducktail made to the same design as the Porsche original. As noted in the introduction higher up, it’s also finished in the classic Gulf livery which adorned many historically significant racing Porsches in the past.
This table sits on four stainless steel legs with adjustable tips to help level the table when required. It has a tempered glass top which rises 17″ above the ground, and the table measures in at 26″ deep by 42″ wide and it weighs 48 lbs.
This table sits on four stainless steel legs with adjustable tips to help level the table when required. It has a tempered glass top which rises 17″ above the ground, and the table measures in at 26″ deep by 42″ wide.The Ducktail table, or Ducktailble if you’ll allow me the awful pun, is now being offered for sale out of North Salem, New York on Bring a Trailer.
It comes in a wooden shipping crate, and it’s wrapped in bubblewrap. If you’d like to read more about it or place a bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Bring a Trailer + Jack Passey ©2017 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
