The designer of the KMW-Porsche is Jo Karasek. He began constructing a CanAm prototype in a coal cellar in Vienna, later worked for McNamara, then for Lola, designed an Indy racing car for Mario Andretti. In 1971 he created a car that is still impressive today: the KMW Porsche SP20.
The three initials stand for Karasek- Hans Müller- Perschl (driver)- Manfred Weiss and in 1971 they began to build a racing car in Rosenheim for customers who found a Porsche 908 or 917 too expensive. They wanted to build a light and cheap car and got all spare parts from McNamara. Probably Müller-Perschl was the driving force behind the project. They began to race with athe 2.0L flat 6 Porsche engine and later put the turbocharged four-cam 2.5L flat 6 engines in the car.
Karasek constructed a monocoque from aluminum sheet metal at a time when racing Porsches still had a tubular frame. The selling price without engine and gearbox was 26,800 DM at the time. Helmuth Bott, then head of the Porsche development center in Weissach, was so enthusiastic about the modern monocoque chassis that the small racing car manufacturer was allowed to call itself KMW-Porsche.
1973: Nurburgring 1972: Kurt Hild - interserie
Karasek: "You could earn good money in the Interseries; for fourth place in Finland we got 28,000 DM in prize money, and we also got our travel expenses reimbursed. The six-cylinder engines came from the Porsche 911, because the private drivers wanted a problem-free engine. When McNamara ran out of sheet metal, we stopped the series. How many KMW did we build? I don't remember exactly, between 20 and 30..."
At the end of 1972, there were about 8 chassis constructed. The cars raced the interserie, but also th Nurburgring 1000 km.
In 1973, there were even two cars in the CanAm series.
Both the blue KMW racing transporter, the KMW turbo sports prototype with the designation SP 31, and the entire engines were considered lost for decades. Valentin Schäffer from Porsche was in regular contact with Hans Müller-Perschl even after his active time at Porsche, until the latter died on July 29, 2019 at the age of 78. Schäffer's notebook provided information about the racing car manufacturer's numerous telephone numbers. But none of the numbers worked anymore and mail remained unanswered.
Even an occasional turn from the Munich-Salzburg motorway to the town of Rosenheimer did not provide any information. All you could see was a completely overgrown area and the question arose: Was there anything left in the basement of the villa, where the racing cars were last worked on?
The question remained unanswered, especially since Müller-Perschel did not allow visitors to his motorsport area for decades during his lifetime out of mistrust.
Behind three-meter-high hedges, a team led by Tobias Aichele (Solitude GmbH) found something incredible in a half-ruined villa in the middle of Rosenheim: the KMW racing transporter, the KMW SP 31 Turbo and all seven 916 engines from the Porsche racing department. For 40 years, all of this was thought to be lost.
KMW SP20
KMW SP30
