BEHNKE RACING CARS
Peter Behnke senior was an official Lotus importer for Germany in the 1960’s. He even had his own racing department in Munchen. From 1966 to 1978, he built his own frames for a total of 17 sports prototypes. The Lotus 23 racing car was the inspiration for this. Not all of the vehicles were completely finished by Peter Benke. Rather, customer vehicles with their individual solutions ensured an enormous variety of vehicles. The engines used were DKW two-stroke engines, NSU engines, BMW M 10/12 units, Ford four- and six-cylinder engines and V8 engines. Hewland and Porsche gearboxes were mainly used for power transmission.
The Behnke car dealership, Brienner Straße 44/54 in Munich was the official Lotus importer for Germany in the 1960s, which is why the chassis is very reminiscent of the structure of the frame of a Lotus 23. A wide variety of engine and transmission combinations were used, from Alfa, BMW 2002 Ti DKW 2-stroke engine, to a wide variety of Ford 4 and 6 cylinder units with/without turbo, Glas, Martin V8, NSU and even Porsche Carrera 6. Hewland or Porsche transmissions were often used for power transmission, but there were also exotic models such as the Colotti Formula 1 transmission. Since not all chassis were delivered completely race-ready with a body, the former owners often completed their sports equipment themselves or modified it according to their ideas, which meant that a large number of different vehicles under the Behnke name enriched the racing scene of the time. In total 17 Behnke Condors were built in Munich between 1966 and 1978.
Peter Behnke built chassis number 8 as a reference vehicle for his own racing activities. It was ultimately the only car with the two-liter Carrera 6 engine from Porsche. Accordingly, the body (MK III) was also larger than that of the previous models. The car had an unparalleled career over decades and is the true "grandmother" of all racing cars. This nickname was originally given to the Porsche 718 W-R from 1963, given that it had a remarkably long racing history.
On June 8, 1969, Peter Behnke competed for the first time in the ADAC Schwenningen airfield race with FIN number 8 - and won. At the end of the year, the Munich-based driver sold it to the ambitious driver Georg Moritz from Schornbach in Swabia. He drove the Condor on race tracks, at airfield races and on the mountain until the end of the 1975 season, in a total of 40 races. In 1973, the Porsche Condor with its then owner and driver Georg Moritz competed for the first time in an Interseries race, at the Hockenheim Ring.
