Dirt cheap Porsche racing posters

A great selection of historic Porsche art

You’ve probably seen many of the following Porsche racing posters which were seen at Porsche dealerships and on the garage walls of Porsche collectors. The posters celebrated the latest Porsche wins at race tracks around the world. They are prized by Porsche fans and were previously found only at online auction sites or swap meets. The original posters have been quite expensive but we’ve found a treasure trove of reproductions on good paper that present the same images for far less money.

The poster on the left is typical of those that were created for Porsche dealers. Most contained a photo of the latest Porsche race winner with results that reflected Porsche participation and lauded another domination of the results. This particular poster celebrates Porsche’s first win at LeMans with the iconic 917.

Artful Porsche racing posters

The Porsche 917 poster at right was originally printed as a series of 4 posters painted by Dexter Brown to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Porsche. They evoke a sense of speed and the beauty of the cars. The other cars in the grouping are the 904, 550A and the early F1 car as driven by Dan Gurney. They’re all great images and worthy of framed display. 

If you are a Porschephile, you no doubt loved the Can-Am 917/10 as raced by Penske racing in 1972. The cars had huge horsepower coupled to a decent chassis with massive amounts of aero downforce. This particular Porsche was seen as the beginning of the end for the unrestricted Can-Am series because by the next year Penske had obtained the evolutionary 917/30. The 917/30 had yet more horsepower, handling and downforce. Even though several other teams had acquired the 917/10, they weren’t anywhere close to being on the same level as the newer 917/30 because of the advancements contained in the later chassis. Rumor has it that for 1974, Porsche had an even more powerful 16 cylinder turbo motor with which to do battle.

By 1974 the series was forced to introduce fuel saving rules because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. This totally took the bite out of Porsche Can-Am power because the engine was never meant to save fuel. Thus the new 16 cylinder motor never appeared. Save for a single appearance by the 917/30 at Mid-Ohio in 1974 driven by Brian Redman, Porsches disappeared from the Can-Am grid. By the end of the 1974 season, the Can-Am series was dead in its initial form.

More Porsche poster greats

Over the years, Porsche has become the most successful car manufacturer at LeMans, among other tracks. Porsche continued to issue celebratory posters that became instant collector items.

Steve McQueen also helped in this regard with the release of the classic movie LeMans which was hailed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest racing movie of all time. Porsche no doubt loved the attention that star power brings. Posters ensued, right.

Other artists took the hint and released wonderful art as well. Way before CAD drawings existed, hand-drawn cutaways provided a peek at racing car innards. A series of posters were released featuring factory entered cars. Among those were the original 935 (left), 935 “Moby Dick” (top) and the 936 prototype. They provide a highly detailed look inside of those iconic cars.

Where to find them

You can find the above posters (and many others) on ebay here.

More great racing art can be found here.