It was like walking back to 1967, to the time when a young hard charger named Ferdinand Piech was running Porsche's research and development (a.k.a. racing) department. Only this doorway didn't open to a warp in time but a brightly lit workshop adjoining a nondescript old factory building discretely tucked away in a Long Beach industrial zone. A neatly arranged row of engine stands, seven in all, each held a brand-new 2.2-liter eight-cylinder 907 racing engine in various states of undress.
The cigarette-puffing proprietor of this Porsche racing "twilight zone" is Carl Thompson, who for many years was the parts manager for Vasek Polak in Hermosa Beach, Calif. In 1959, Vasek Polak became the first person in this country to open a Porsche-only dealership, but he earned his respected place in Porsche history for his winning race teams that competed in various forms of SCCA racing ,including the Trans-Am and CanAm. A roll call of cars owned and raced by Polak through the years reads like the index of "Excellence Was Expected," including the rare 910. The roster of Polak team drivers is a who's who list of champions from the 1950s through the '80s-Hurley Haywood, George Follmer, Brian Redman, Jody Scheckter, Milt Minter, Danny Ongais, John Morton and Jack MacAfee, to name a few.
Thompson, now 53, started working for Polak in 1971. At the time, he would punch out from his "day job" in the parts department and hang around Polak's racing mechanics, guys such as Alwin Springer, Gustav Nietsche and Kurt Lanschutzer.
"I'd go there after work and ask them, 'How can I help you?'" he said. "I started out polishing frames and doing fiberglass work on 908s. Then working on the valves and heads when they were building engines. Doing more and more while learning on my own time."
Thompson would also accompany the team to West Coast races. In 1975, when Springer and two other Polak mechanics, Dieter Inzenhofer and Arnold Wagner, left to form ANDIAL, Thompson took over the racing parts department.
"It was a good business," Thompson said of the days when people such as Bruce Leven or the Whittington brothers would call him for racing parts. "We weren't a distributor, there was no distributor. Anybody could buy from Weissach, but Polak was willing to spend the money to have parts on the shelf. When you need a race part, you can't wait for it to come from Europe."
Vasek Polak switched to vintage racing in 1980 with Thompson managing the preparation of a stable of cars that included BMWs and Chevrons, as well as Porsches. He lost his job in 1997 when Vasek Polak lost his life following a high-speed crash on the autobahn while testing a new Turbo S. After a month-long stay in the hospital, Polak succumbed to a heart attack as he was being transported back to California in a private jet. The trust handling Polak's estate set about dismantling his collection of vintage cars and racing parts.
"I didn't know what to do," Thompson recalled. "I didn't want to work for a car dealership as a parts manager. And I'm not too hot on being a car broker. I just wanted to do what I was doing."
Like the historic Porsches and other race cars he services, Thompson is a survivor. He made a deal with the trust to buy the inventory of racing parts. Then, Thompson spent eight months searching up and down the California coast for a suitable location to store them. An old factory building in Long Beach met his criteria.
"It was large enough and I could afford it," Thompson said with a grin. It was also very dirty and rundown. It took him a year to sweep out 40 years of debris, knock down some walls and replaster others, install a new roof and build on the 1,000-sq-ft machine shop. He now has a total of 4,000 sq ft stuffed with neatly arranged racks of parts for 907s, 908s, 917s, 934s and 935s, and room to rebuild and prepare vintage racers.