A Porsche 917 prowls the roads of Kansas

WINFIELD – Brian Pettey builds robots for a living.

“I grew up taking things apart and building things,” he says. He began his business, Robot Zone, while he was still a student at Southwestern College and it has grown steadily since he incorporated the business in 2002.

Its client list ranges from the big three auto companies to major aircraft manufacturers, NASA and the U.S. Army. The company’s success has allowed him to pursue his other key passion: cars.

“If I wasn’t building robots, it would be something to do with cars,” the lanky, 41-year-old entrepreneur says. “I love the mechanical aspect of cars. I’m a tinkerer.”

He has amassed an impressive collection of high-end automobiles, but these aren’t cars kept in pristine, sterile, museum quality condition. These cars get driven.

“I work on all of ’em. They’re not all really clean, but they run and I drive one to work every day. On weekends, I will get four or five of them out and just drive ’em,” he said.

They virtually all turn heads when he’s on the road, but probably none as much as the Porsche 917 race car turned out in classic Gulf blue and orange livery, complete with white “meatballs” where the competition numbers would go.

The Porsche 917 is actually a recreation of the cars that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970 and 1971, built to exacting standards by Kraftwerks, an Australian company that had access to original drawings and blueprints of the legendary race cars.

“They don’t build these any more,” said Pettey, who noted that the factory only turned out 24 copies of the race car and those that survive are now valued in the $20- to $30-million range.

The replica cars are actually better built in some ways, he said, explaining that the fiberglass bodies of the replicas were built to endure more than a race season or two.

“Growing up, the 917 and the GT40 (Ford) were my favorite cars. I wanted one of these so bad,” said Pettey. A few years ago, he got his chance when he learned one of the replica 917s might be for sale in Texas.

“This car was built for Jack Farr, who owns Texas MotorSport Ranch near Dallas. My dad and I went down that night to look at it. I bought it that night,” Pettey recalled. It sold for a fraction of what one of the originals would have brought. Like the original race cars, it’s believed only 24 of the precise replicas were ever built.

“I think there are four or five of these in the United States, a couple in Australia, one in Mexico and the rest are in Europe,” Pettey said.

The replica 917s use modern chrome moly steel tubing for their chassis and suspension parts. They are accurate right down to the racing wheels, which were cast from molds taken from original 917 wheels.

The key difference in the replica versions is that they were not offered with the big flat-12 cylinder, 630 horsepower racing engines. They could be equipped with any of several potent Porsche flat-6 cylinder engines, as this one was, putting out an estimated 320 horsepower.

“But the car only weighs 1,700 pounds. It’s all about the power-to-weight ratio,” said Pettey. His 917 is set up as a right-hand drive, with a 5-speed manual transaxle shifted by means of a right-hand lever.

The car stands a scant three feet tall at the top of its bubble-style cockpit, riding on a 90.6-inch wheelbase and fat Dunlop racing rubber. Getting inside the cramped cockpit requires a bit of instruction: open the gull wing door, take off the steering wheel, stand on the wide chassis bulkhead, step down into the seat, swing your rear inside and slither your legs down into the footwell.

The original 917s were clocked at more than 240 mph down the long Mulsanne straightaway at Le Mans, said Pettey, a jump of more than 20 mph in top speed from previous cars.

“Aerodynamics change a lot between 200 mph and 240 mph,” he said. He said famed 917 driver Derek Bell told him that he discovered the fiberglass bodywork of his car had deflected so much at speed that he couldn’t get his foot off the accelerator as he approached a curve. He had to turn his foot sideways and yank it back to slow the car down, literally drifting through the curve.

When asked what was the best thing about driving a 917 in competition, racer Brian Redman reportedly replied, “Getting out of it.”

Pettey hasn’t tried to set any speed records in his 917 replica. His top speed at a track day event was somewhere in the 170 mph-plus range and that was plenty exciting for him.

“I like cars that are kind of quirky, kind of temperamental,” he said. Like all of his cars, the Porsche 917 is titled and tagged as a street-legal car.

Pettey says his wife of 15 years, Kristen, loves cars, too.

“When we got married, she knew I had a car problem,” he said. And apparently it may be a genetic thing.

“Our little boy, Hayes, is 5 and he loves cars even more than I did at that age,” Pettey said.

This story was originally published May 13, 2015 at 2:46 PM with the headline "A Porsche 917 prowls the roads of Kansas."