- 51
- The Tri-State Area
Have you ever looked at a Group C race car and thought "Yeah, I'd daily the crap out of that"? Well, it turns out that you're not alone. Insane, but not alone.
Willy Koenig is the man sitting right alongside you. Koenig was a publishing magnate who turned his attention to racing in his life early 20s, becoming a professional racing driver for a little under a decade before entering the world of car tuning and hobbyist racing. Which included Procar and Group 5, so that gives you an idea of the level.
He founded Koenig Specials as a tuning firm in 1974, with a particular focus on exotic cars and especially Ferrari - which he considered to have significant room for improvement. The products were often highly divisive due to some rather extreme looks, with all manner of body adornments, and it resulted in Ferrari (often humourless about such things) taking action to have the Prancing Horse removed from Koenig Specials vehicles. Considering Koenig himself was once personally invited to Maranello by Enzo Ferrari (after winning a hillclimb championship in a 250 SWB), that's quite the fuss.
However Koenig's cars backed up the looks with power, and lots of it. If you wanted a 700hp 512BB, Koenig Specials was where it was at. The company's 800hp Testarossa hit 200mph before Ferrari managed it with the F40, and you could buy one with 1000hp+.
That wasn't quite the end of Koenig's madness, as the Porsche enthusiast took one look at the Porsche 962C - having raced one in Interserie - and decided it would make a great roadgoing supercar. Particularly as there were several now kicking about due to the 3.5-litre formula regulation changes in sports car racing.
Surprisingly little required changing to make the 962 road legal, but Koenig went the extra mile. As well as adding TUV-approved lighting and raising (and softening) the suspension for road use, the company created an entirely new kevlar composite body - similar in looks but not compatible with the race car itself - to keep the box-tickers happy.
It even had a proper engine cover rather than the enormous clamshell of the original, and that led to one of the other major changes. Rather than any of the various, 2.8- to 3.2-litre turbo and twin-turbo flat sixes used by the 962C, the C62 employs an updated, air-cooled 3.4-litre, purportedly originating from a 911 Turbo of the same era but enlarged and garnished with another blower. 800hp was claimed at 1.4 bar, though an example came to auction recently with close to 550whp (equating to north of 630hp at the crank) proven at a conservative 1.0 bar boost setting.
While Koenig Specials planned to make a few examples, it was ultimately limited to reportedly three cars (yellow, red, and black). At $1m a pop and with one of the most revolting, toytown interiors ever fitted, that's not much of a surprise - even if it was capable of performance that could beat all-comers until the McLaren F1 arrived.
