“I think it all started when my brother and I were at school, around 1950, when the Jaguar XK120 had arrived and a school pal said: ‘My dad’s got one of those’. We got rides in it and we both said: ‘When I grow up, I’m going to have one of those’. We did; we’ve had four of them, and still have two left. One’s in storage and the other needs a little attention after my brother headed off into the countryside at the Nürburgring…”
When Club member Mark Finburgh says “the rest is history”, he is somewhat underplaying an extraordinary legacy of car ownership over 70 years and counting that now stretches across his extended family. There was the C-Type Jaguar his brother found in a field in Holland, or the AC Ace Bristol Mark found which became his favourite and is a car much-raced by him. There’s the Ferrari 250 Europa discovered in a French farmyard, which the brothers have competed in and which retains its original engine, body and interior. Mark contested the Mille Miglia in it just a couple of years ago, by then in his early eighties. Or the genuine original Ford GT40 bought from a simple ad in a Sunday paper, or the BMW M1, or the 911 Carrera RS2.7, or the original Fiat 500…
But as spectacular as some of these purchases are now, especially viewed through a modern lens, they’re not the main reason you’re reading this story. No. It’s what the brothers bought next that really boggles the mind and which they have become inextricably linked with over the subsequent 50 years. As Mark says, “We said after the GT40, ‘What do you get after that if you’re going to keep going upwards?’”.
I’m talking, of course, about nothing less than a Porsche 917 – the car sometimes referred to as ‘the greatest racing car ever built’. It’s the car that really put Porsche on the map as a manufacturer of premium sports cars after it finally delivered that elusive first outright win in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This lethal, beautiful, 240mph projectile shattered records and attracted the world’s best drivers.
TWO OF A KIND
When Mark talks about cars, it’s always with the word ‘we’ because, from that very early age, it’s always been a family thing in conjunction with his brother Aubrey, who’s known for the classic car restoration and race preparation business in London called Classic Autos Finburgh that’s now run by his son Nick. “The first sports-type car we acquired was an Alvis 12/60 from 1937 and we’ve still got it,” Mark recounts, with obvious glee. “It hasn’t been running for years, though. We got the XK120s in about 1966-1968. By the time we got our hands on them, we were in our late twenties.”
Perhaps unusually, neither Mark nor his brother were interested in contemporary road cars, even back then. When he says he’s never wanted something ‘exotic’ as a daily driver, he’s not joking. His current transport is “some sort of Ford people carrier thing” and his wife drives a Ford Focus. That disinterest applies to Porsche’s current range, although it’s the best of a bad lot to his mind. Still, even the latest 911 has “middle age spread” in his opinion. “Some even have four doors,” he notes sanguinely, although I sense it’s perhaps with tongue firmly in cheek…
When it came to finding a GT40, Mark passed over the opportunity to buy a Ferrari 250 LM for the same money (which was, if nothing else, a missed investment) and eventually rang no less than John Wyer at JW Automotive. Wyer’s team had run the Gulf-sponsored Fords – indeed, Wyer himself had been involved since the earliest days of the GT40 project – that won Le Mans outright in 1968 and 1969 at the direct expense of Porsche before he switched to the Stuttgart marque in 1970 and ran the 917s in the famous Gulf colours. “It’s a pity you didn’t ring up yesterday,” Wyer said, “because I had the GT40 that came third in 1969, but I’ve just sold it...”
Having seen a two-line advert for it in the Sunday Express, Mark bought a GT40 from outside the owner’s flat in Holland Park. The brothers have raced it over the years but, like all their cars, it remains exceedingly original and the car is no longer competitive against the new-build, powerful ‘hot rods’ that now dominate historic racing. Mark refuses to countenance turning their car into something similar.
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START AT THE TOP
All of which brings us to Porsche. The 917 was the brothers’ first Porsche, in fact.
“I suppose you’ve got to start somewhere,” Mark says. “What sold it to me to a large extent was seeing the Steve McQueen film [Le Mans] and I thought ‘I’ve got to have one of those’. My brother said ‘You must be mad’, so I looked around and found two in America with Vasek Polak, but they weren’t what they said they were.”
Then someone suggested ringing the factory, which is where the story gets slightly surreal. In 1972/3, just a year after the 917s had been forcibly retired from international competition, Mark found himself on the phone with Porsche stalwart, ace driver and sometime manager/salesman Jürgen Barth on the other end of the line. “Have you got a 917?” Mark asked. “Yes”, came the reply. “Is it for sale?” “Yes, of course it is”.
Mark and his brother headed for Germany. Having passed through the original small factory museum in Stuttgart and through the factory itself, the brothers followed Barth into a snow-covered yard out the back. “It’s probably under one of those piles of snow somewhere,” Barth said, nonchalantly.
“So we walked around scraping the snow off things. Eventually, I saw a bit of orange and blue, and I said ‘We’ll have this one’. I didn’t know what it was [which chassis number], but it was a 917 in Gulf colours. I would have had any 917, I think.”
Barth refused to let Mark take the car back to the UK for recommissioning, insisting that it was done at the factory first before being released. “I said ‘I’m not paying for that as well’,” Mark recalls, to which Barth replied: “Just give us a bit more and we’ll do it”.
TRIPPING OVER TREASURE
Mark collected the car in early 1973. It’s clear from talking to him that Porsche’s attitude towards the 917 at this point was of ‘just another racing car’, now past its useful service life. There seems to have been almost no romanticism around the car, with it being treated with the same care one might extend to a broken lawnmower.
“When I carted it home, we didn’t really know much about this one and I didn’t care. It was only when I went down to see John Horsman at JW Automotive [that we learnt more]”.
At the time, JWA were still fighting the good fight in the World Championship, now with their own Mirage chassis powered by Cosworth DFVs. Although success eluded them, they did win Le Mans outright in 1975, incidentally giving Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell their first win as a partnership. Horsman immediately told Mark he knew what the car was and gave him all the race sheets. It was not just any old 917; it was chassis number 013/034.
Used as a spare car in practice for the season-opening 24 Hours of Daytona in 1970, it then came fourth at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1970 with Gulf’s lead driver Pedro Rodríguez and Leo Kinnunen at the wheel, whereupon its race career came to a premature end that season and it was taken on by Solar Productions for use by McQueen and his cabal of leading racing drivers for movie production. It’s this car that crashed with David Piper at the wheel, the Englishman losing a leg as a result of the crash. Rebuilt with the second chassis number, it returned to the care of Rodríguez in 1971, winning at Daytona, Monza, Spa (although Mark isn’t completely convinced about the Belgian triumph) and Austria, with the latter sometimes cited as the Mexican driver’s finest victory, before his tragic death at the wheel of a Ferrari in a non-championship race that year. It really was ‘Pedro’s car’.
LIGHT ON ITS FEET
Recently, Mark found out from Porsche that this chassis is one of three ‘lightweight’ cars built by Porsche, although no 917 was ever ‘heavy’. “I’ve noticed that their bodywork is a lot thicker and heavier; ours is much thinner. I keep on saying, if you’re pushing the thing, do not push it on the body!”
Far from putting it away in a dehumidified collection, Mark actually raced the car in Club events a couple of times, but fell afoul of a particular 917 Achilles heel: over-revving the engine, with expensive results. As it happens, Porsche’s lead works driver Jo Siffert did this at Le Mans in 1970, blowing the engine of his 917K right in front of the pitlane and costing Wyer’s Gulf team the race.
“It goes to 8,200rpm but, at 8,300rpm, the valves touch the pistons and that’s not good,” Mark says. The engine was rebuilt back at Porsche, although that wasn’t without its difficulties. “Dealing with the factory wasn’t the well-oiled machine you might expect. It was more like an Italian company than a German one; a slightly more eccentric operation.” Mark believes things are different now but, back then, knowledge of them wasn’t widespread.
That was the end of the car’s racing career. It has been a regular at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, including with 1970 Le Mans winner Richard Attwood, no less, taking it up sideways in the rain to fastest time.
LIVING HISTORY
What really resonates is that while Mark clearly loves the car and is proud of it, he’s not precious about it. “It’s just like all the others,” he says, before telling me about his old 911 2.7 Carrera RS. “I’m still very upset we sold the 2.7 RS [in around 1978]. We sold it to pay for fixing the Ford GT40, but I didn’t need to. It was Gulf blue [without the graphics] and matched the 917. But we do have another one in the family.” It’s one of five Porsches overall.
As for maintaining the 917, over the years he’s renewed some of the oil pipes and some of the wiring because it was getting a bit tired. It needs a new set of spark plugs every now and again, although Mark runs softer plugs that are less prone to fouling. But one upgrade is the fitment of electronic ignition, which means the big 12-cylinder air-cooled engine fires up every time and runs on 12 without fail. “Apart from changing the oil, the plugs, some new brake discs [they eventually found some that would fit and had them machined], a new clutch, a new starter motor and keeping it warm and dry, we haven’t had to do a lot to it since the engine rebuild.”
Many years later, Mark bumped into Jürgen Barth and casually asked him what would have become of the 917 if the brothers hadn’t bought it. “Oh, we would have scrapped it,” was the incredible reply. “That attitude doesn’t exist any more,” Mark admits. “It’s a moment in time that’s passed and we got lucky, didn’t we, because we got in during the mid-’60s when [the classic car scene] was just taking off and these goodies could be found.”
But 013/034 wasn’t the only Porsche Barth offered, then or later. The brothers could have bought a 908/03 (the tiny, flat-eight-powered Targa Florio winner), a 917/30 Can Am turbo monster and Moby Dick, the ultimate 935.
Mark has never had any inclination to sell the cars and particularly the 917, even if today it could be worth £20m, £25m, £30m… who knows? There’s only really one problem: “I must admit it is getting rather more difficult to get into it and much more difficult to get out of it”.
This feature was written by Adam Towler and first appeared in the May 2025 issue of our monthly Club magazine, Porsche Post. to receive your copy, as well as enjoying a host of exclusive member benefits and savings.