In the world of motorsport, few cars can claim to have not only dominated a racing series but also forced rule changes, that effectively ended an entire era. The Porsche 917/30 Can Am did just that. It wasn’t just fast—it was a brutal, turbocharged monster that reshaped racing history forever.
To better understand the Porsche 917-30, we need to go back to 1969, where the Porsche 917 made it’s first race debut at the 1969 Spa 1000km race where both cars would DNF. One from mechanical failure and the other via a race accident.
Subsequently, the outgoing Porsche 908 Longtail would finish first and third.
It would be a similar story for the 917 at Le Mans that same year with all three entered 917’s resulting in DNF.
Tragically, privateer John Woolfe in the number 10 Porsche 917 would lose his life after crashing his 917 on the first lap of the 1969 24 Hours of Le Mans race, an event which caused the traditional "Le Mans start" to be abolished the following year.
The two factory Porsche 917’s would also DNF in that race, but this time from mechanical issues after 15 and 22 hours respectively. However the public at the time had been very impressed with the design of the 917 and knew more was to come.
The following year, the Porsche 917 K (short chassis) would break through to take Porsche’s first ever overall win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and would also go back to back again in 1971, making the 917 one of the most meaningful and important cars Porsche ever built.
But while the endurance racing world feared the 917, Porsche had its sights set on another challenge: the Canadian-American Challenge Cup, better known as Can-Am.
Can-Am was a different beast from Le Mans. It was a no-holds-barred series with almost no restrictions on engine displacement or power. That meant Porsche could unleash the full fury of its engineering prowess—and that’s exactly what they did.
Porsche initially entered Can-Am with the 917PA, an open-top version of the endurance racer, but it lacked the power to compete with the dominant McLarens.
The next step was the 917/10, a turbocharged version that won the 1972 championship. But Porsche wasn’t done yet. For 1973, they unveiled the Porsche 917/30, a machine so powerful and advanced that it made everything else on the grid look obsolete.
Featuring a 5.4L twin-turbocharged flat-12 engine, the 917/30 produced an astonishing 1,100 horsepower in race trim, with power levels capable of exceeding 1,500 hp in qualifying. Weighing just 820 kg (1,800 lbs) and capable of reaching 0-60 mph in a mind-blowing 2.1 seconds, this was a car that redefined speed.
Driven by Mark Donohue for Penske Racing, the 917/30 utterly dominated the 1973 Can-Am season, winning six out of eight races. It was the most powerful and fastest car Can-Am had ever seen, and no competitor could come close.
But success came at a cost. The sheer dominance of the 917/30 led to fears that it would make the series uncompetitive. For 1974, rule changes imposed fuel consumption limits, effectively banning the 917/30 and ending Porsche’s reign in Can-Am.
Though its time in Can-Am was short, the Porsche 917/30 left an indelible mark on motorsport history. In 1975, Mark Donohue set a closed-course speed record of 221.16 mph (356.44 km/h) at Talladega, a testament to the car’s blistering performance. The technology and innovation behind the 917/30 also influenced future Porsche race cars, including the legendary 956 and 962.
Today, the 917/30 is remembered as one of the most powerful racing cars ever built—a car so fast it had to be stopped by the rulebook. It remains a symbol of an era when horsepower knew no limits and Can-Am was the wild west of motorsport.
See this incredible beast and over 350 other historic racing cars at the 2025 Phillip Island Classic Festival of Motorsport on March 7th – 9th as we celebrate the machines that shaped history, and few did so as profoundly as the Porsche 917/30.
Author: Trent Collett
Resources:
wikipedia