This large wall-mounted display is a 1:1 scale tribute to the Porsche 953, the car that was built by Porsche specifically for the grueling 1984 Paris-Dakar Rally.
It consists of a 911 hood panel, a replica composite engine lid with its distinctive upswept spoiler, and two Fuchs-style alloy wheels fitted with off-road tires. All the parts are mounted to a powder-coated steel square frame measuring 220 cm high and 220 cm wide (86.6 inches).
This is the 1984 Paris-Dakar Rally-winning Porsche 953, with the three Man support trucks in the background and the famously daring Dakar camera helicopter above. Image courtesy of the Corporate Archives Porsche AG.
The Porsche 953 is one of those cars that became a legend in its own lifetime. The project to build it as a Paris-Dakar entry is said to have come not from within Porsche, but from Jacky Ickx, six-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner.
The last four of those Le Mans victories were taken when Ickx (pronounced “Icks”) was driving Porsches, he had also raced extensively for Porsche in the World Sportscar Championship, so his relationship with the marque was strong.
As the story goes, Ickx had seen a 930 Turbo Cabriolet 4×4 concept car being tested in the early 1980s at Weissach and realized the car could be a contender for outright victory in a relatively new endurance race called the Paris-Dakar Rally.
This race had only run for the first time in 1979 and it hadn’t yet attracted widespread interest from major manufacturers, it was more of a privateer event in its formative few years.
Porsche liked the idea of competing with the car and so they created a new version of it based on the then-new Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2. They gave these cars significantly uprated suspension, strengthened body shells, tuned 300 bhp flat-sixes, and perhaps most importantly, they received a version of the four wheel drive system from the upcoming Porsche 959.
Three specially built Porsche 953s entered the 1984 Paris-Dakar Rally, the one driven by René Metge and Dominique Lemoyne won the event outright ahead of a Range Rover V8 and a Mitsubishi Pajero – both vastly different vehicle types.
This display is a 1:1 scale sculpture that includes a replica hood, trunk lid, and two Fuchs-style wheels on a powder-coated steel frame.
As a result of this the Porsche 953 became a sensation overnight, and it lent great credibility to the Porsche 959s abilities when it debuted a year later at the 1985 Frankfurt Motor Show.
The Porsche 953 sculpture you see here is an unusual artistic piece, the significance of which will be immediately recognizable to anyone with a grasp of Porsche or Paris-Dakar Rally history. It’s now being offered for sale on the Collecting Cars platform out of South Wales in the United Kingdom and you can visit the listing here if you’d like to read more about it or register to bid.
Images courtesy of Collecting Cars + Corporate Archives Porsche AG
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