The 1:18 die-cast from Norev captures chassis 917/053 — the specific Porsche entered by Martini Racing (Porsche Konstruktionen KG) as car number 22 at the 1971 24 Heures du Mans. It is a faithful reproduction of one of the most consequential sports-car race victories on record, wearing the white, red, blue and dark-blue Martini stripe livery that would go on to define an era of factory motorsport sponsorship.
The Porsche 917K: Air-Cooled, Flat-12, Unrepeatable
The 917K — Kurzheck, meaning short tail — was Porsche's answer to the Group 4/5 endurance regulations that briefly permitted near-unlimited engine capacity. Its air-cooled flat-12 engine displaced 4.9 litres and produced approximately 580 bhp in race specification, housed in a body just 4,140 mm long. The ACO moved to a 3-litre limit for 1972, so the 917K's Le Mans eligibility lasted precisely two seasons: 1970 and 1971. No factory-built successor ever raced under the same rules.
5,335 km in 24 Hours: The Race That Defined a Career
At Le Mans on 12–13 June 1971, Helmut Marko and Gijs van Lennep brought chassis 053 home first overall, covering 5,335.313 km — 3,315.2 miles — in 24 hours. That distance record stood until the 2010 Audi victory, 39 years later. The sister Martini Racing 917K, No. 21 of Pedro Rodríguez and Jackie Oliver, retired early, leaving No. 22 to carry the result alone. For Marko, it was the apex of his driving career: a stone shattered his visor and destroyed sight in his left eye during the 1972 race, ending his frontline career. Van Lennep had already won the 1971 Spa 1000 km in a Porsche 917, making the pair one of the most formidable sports-car partnerships of the era.
Norev in Die-Cast at 1:18
Norev reproduces the No. 22 winner in 1:18 scale die-cast metal. The Martini Racing livery — white bodywork with the diagonal red, blue and dark-blue stripes, Porsche and Martini International branding on the flanks — is replicated across the short-tail bodywork. The 1971 Martini & Rossi sponsorship deal, formalised that season, is now widely regarded as the template for co-branded factory motorsport liveries, and Norev's rendering places it in a format accessible to the collector market without resin fragility.
In the Display Cabinet
The No. 22 917K pairs naturally with the 1970 Le Mans-winning Porsche 917K No. 23 driven by Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann — the first 917 victory at the Sarthe — to tell the complete story of Porsche's dominance across both seasons. It also sits coherently alongside a Ferrari 512M from the same 1971 race, the principal works rival that year, or with later Porsche Martini entries such as the 936 from 1976–1977, tracing the livery lineage through the marque's endurance history.
