The Pirelli slicks, sized 245/645-18 front and 285/645-18 rear, were wrapped around 18-in. lightweight three-piece modular competition wheels from BBS. Tested under the most rigorous conditions, BBS wheels have carried Porsches to victory from the early 1970s to the factory's last victory at Le Mans in 1998. In fact, BBS wheels and their distinctive webbing are as synonymous to Porsche race cars as the five-spoke Fuchs are to the street 911.
Computer engineered and manufactured to extremely high standards, the wheels feature widths and offset dimensions which can be tailored to the specific needs of the car by changing either inner or outer rim halves. For the project car, the BBSs were sized at 8.5 in. up front and 9.5 in. at the rear. This adjustability of the modular wheels will be an added plus when it's time to slice off the RS fenders and go for bold RSR shoulders. It also permits repairs when rim halves are bent from the inevitable off-track excursion.
Finally, the Martini & Rossi livery. I will admit that as a kid it was thrilling to see my family name draped across the hood of Porsche's most famous racing machines. Unfortunately, pretend as I may, I cannot boast ancestral ties to Luigi Rossi ,who helped establish the Turin-based vermouth company. The "Rossi" name, in fact, is as common in Italy as Smith is here in the States. Still, for a 10-year-old already enamored with the German marque, Luigi's sponsorship added an extra thrill.
Although there were a number of schemes using the distinctive colors and striping of the Martini & Rossi teams, I choose a design similar to that of the Carrera RSR winner of the 1973 Targa Florio road race. In the early 1970s, before the age of custom-designed and computer-cut vinyl sheets, the livery was handpainted. Peruse the photo archives, and you'll find that no two race cars were striped exactly the same, with some changing their attire from race to race.
To decorate the project car as accurately as possible, I returned to Chris Hukill of Hukill Motorsports Paint and Graphics. Hukill painted the project car, and with his company residing inside the Porsche race shop of Vision Motorsports in Laguna Hills, he is continually creating racing graphics for a large number of competition vehicles.
Unlike designing original art for a customer's car, however, matching the signature sponsorship of a well-known race car is a daunting task. Everyone expects the graphics to be identical to the actual car, but, as mentioned earlier, the livery was changed as often as tires.
Armed with only historical photographs and posters, Hukill spent innumerable hours recreating the Martini stripes on a two-dimensional CAD program. This allowed his computer-controlled cutting machine to trim the vinyl precisely, which minimized overlap and wasted material.
When applied in large, multiple-layer sheets over a three-dimensional surface, vinyl does have its limitations. The actual application to the car required 3 days of painstaking work. Yet, when finished, Hukill had managed to produce an impressive rendering of the famed Targa Florio winner.