Few race cars have looked as out of place on a grid as Porsche‘s 917-043, the porsche 917 hippie car, did at Le Mans in 1970. Painted by hand in indigo-blue, with sweeping green fields outlined in white, it started the 24-hour race at four o’clock on Saturday 13 June.
The car was chassis 917-043, a long-tail 917 built to help Porsche chase its first outright win at the 24-hour race. Spectators quickly gave it a nickname: the Hippie Car. Porsche’s 2019 press information marking 50 years of the 917, published on Porsche.com, traces the model’s racing story from the late 1960s.
Today the porsche 917 hippie car sits on the lawns of the Château de Chantilly, a 17th-century estate north of Paris. Organisers of the Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille concours publish event information at ChantillyArtsetElegance.com.
The concours is a showcase of period correctness. Pre-war cabriolets and coachbuilt Delahayes line the château’s clipped grass, and the surroundings are formal and quiet. The porsche 917 hippie car breaks that calm. Its paint draws visitors from across the lawn.
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The porsche 917 hippie car’s colours and Le Mans result
Accounts of the livery differ. The 1970 livery was described as deep indigo-blue, with sweeping psychedelic green fields outlined in white. Today, the car’s current appearance is described as a deep indigo-blue ground with green fields and white outlines.
Gérard Larrousse and Willi Kauhsen drove the car with race number 3.
The car finished second overall, behind the short-tail 917K of Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood. It was a Porsche one-two. The race ran through heavy rain and thunderstorms.
Frank Sytner has owned the car since 2024, as part of a collection based in Europe. He founded the Sytner dealership group. He also won the 1988 British Touring Car Championship, and Robb Report describes him as a seasoned historic racer.
Sponsorship, art and Tony Lapine’s paint
In 1970, sponsor liveries were a new idea in motorsport, and many enthusiasts disliked them. Sytner was in his twenties that summer. “To a lot of us, it wasn’t awfully attractive,” he says. “A car in sponsor’s colours were designed by someone not as art, but purely as an advertising hoarding.”
The Martini-backed porsche 917 hippie car broke that pattern. “They put their symbol on the back and sacrificed the rest of the car to let a form of art be played out,” Sytner says. “The sponsor stayed in the background.”
Sytner ties the design to its era. “It was the Woodstock era,” he says. “The hippie movement and the psychedelic era introduced so many new ideas. It was a changing attitude to life, and designs like this came from imagination that may well have been influenced by, well, certain chemicals.”
Anatole “Tony” Lapine, a Latvian-born designer, led Porsche’s design studio. He painted the car at Le Mans using roughly 1,500 spray cans, according to 917-043.com and Robb Report. Lapine joined Porsche design in 1969.
Lapine trained at General Motors under Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell before joining Porsche design. Sytner remembers the way he worked. “He was an artist who drew cars,” Sytner says. “None of 917-043’s livery was designed on a computer.”
An art car before BMW
Robb Report calls 917-043 the first Art Car to compete in a major race. Its livery predated BMW’s celebrated art car programme by five years. Sytner sees the car as a starting point for the genre.
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“The Hippie Car was the precursor to art cars in motorsport,” Sytner says. “The radical shape of the long-tail 917-043, paired with its podium place and psychedelic paint, makes it unrepeatable.”
The car also reached cinema.
Larrousse recalls the conditions. “It wasn’t hard to manage,” he told Robb Report. “It was extraordinary and extremely fast in the straights. We had no electronic system to look after the wheelspin.”
The car made its debut up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2026, driven by Larrousse, who is now in his eighties. The event takes place on the Goodwood estate in West Sussex.
The 1971 return and the record
For 1971, the car returned to Le Mans with the Gulf-Wyer team, wearing Gulf colours and a revised aerodynamic body. Jackie Oliver and Pedro Rodríguez drove it, and Oliver took pole position.
Oliver set the outright porsche 917 le mans lap record of 3:13.6, and he reached 386 km/h, roughly 240 mph, down the Mulsanne Straight. Oliver describes the car as the best he has driven. “I’ve driven a lot of cars,” he says. “Pedro and I won a lot of races in that car.”
Sytner has owned the car since 2024. It drew on Porsche factory archives, Le Mans race records and the testimony of mechanic Klaus Bischof.
Sytner is looking for the car’s next custodian. “The time has come to find another custodian,” he says. “One who can ensure it appears regularly and one who can preserve what this car represents, historically and culturally, for future generations.”
Classic-car followers who track events from Paris’s Retromobile show, listed at Retromobile.us, will recognise the rarity. The 917-043 has a podium finish, a lap record that stood for decades and a livery that still stops visitors on a lawn. Few cars combine all three.
Sources & Links
Source: wallpaper.com
Frequently asked questions
Who drove the Porsche 917 Hippie Car at Le Mans in 1970?
Gérard Larrousse and Willi Kauhsen drove the car with race number 3. It finished second overall, behind the short-tail 917K of Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood, in a Porsche one-two.
Who painted the Porsche 917 Hippie Car’s psychedelic livery?
Anatole “Tony” Lapine, a Latvian-born designer who led Porsche’s design studio, painted the car at Le Mans. He used roughly 1,500 spray cans, according to 917-043.com and Robb Report.
Why is the Porsche 917 Hippie Car considered an early art car?
Robb Report calls it the first Art Car to compete in a major race. Its livery predated BMW’s celebrated art car programme by five years.
Who owns the Porsche 917 Hippie Car today?
Frank Sytner has owned the car since 2024, as part of a collection based in Europe. He founded the Sytner dealership group and won the 1988 British Touring Car Championship.
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