Occasionally, amidst the endless parade of dreary crossovers and soulless electric appliances that dominate today's automotive landscape, something truly special emerges from the shadows of history to remind us that cars were once glorious, terrifying machines built by mad geniuses with oil in their veins. Today, that something is the very first Porsche 910 ever built – chassis number 910001 – and it's currently up for auction on Bring a Trailer. This isn't just any old classic Porsche, mind you. This is automotive royalty – the equivalent of stumbling across Excalibur at a car boot sale. The 910 represents Porsche's golden era, when the little sports car maker from Stuttgart was transforming from a quirky family-owned outfit into the racing juggernaut that would eventually crush everything in its path like a Germanic automotive Godzilla.To understand the significance of this car, we need to wind the clock back to the mid-1960s. Porsche was still the plucky underdog, building increasingly potent racing machines but still falling short against the might of Ferrari, Ford, and other big-budget factory efforts. The 904 had been a solid effort with its fiberglass body bonded to a steel ladder chassis, followed by the significantly lighter 906 (sometimes called the Carrera 6) which used a multi-tube space frame wrapped in fiberglass. Both were competitive in their classes but lacked the outright pace to challenge for overall victories in the major endurance races. Enter Ferry Porsche's talented band of engineers, led by a young Ferdinand Piëch – yes, the same megalomaniacal genius who would later create the Bugatti Veyron and build the Volkswagen Group into the behemoth it is today. Piëch and his team realized that to compete with the big boys, they needed to take a significant evolutionary step forward. The result was the 910 – a car that looked similar to the 906 but featured a host of crucial improvements. The most immediately obvious change was the switch from the 906's 15-inch wheels with five-bolt hubs to 13-inch center-lock wheels borrowed from Formula 1, allowing for much faster pit stops during endurance races. This might seem trivial now, but in the 1960s, when hours could be lost to mechanical issues and tire changes, shaving minutes off a tire swap could mean the difference between winning and finishing as an also-ran. Porsche also significantly revised the suspension geometry, replacing the 906's rather agricultural front suspension with a more sophisticated and adjustable setup. The entire chassis was both lighter and stiffer than its predecessor, and the bodywork was reworked for improved aerodynamics. All told, the 910 was about 100 kg lighter than the 906 – and in racing, weight is the enemy of everything. This particular car, 910001, started life with a 2.0-liter flat-six engine derived from the 911's powerplant. However, unlike your neighbor's noisy 911 that wakes you up every Sunday morning, this engine featured an exotic magnesium case to save weight. Allow me to emphasize just how special this is: magnesium is so flammable that once it catches fire, you can't put it out with water – in fact, water makes it burn more aggressively. That's right, Porsche built an engine case from a material that essentially contains its own oxidizer. Such was their commitment to lightness. The author of the original article mentions that these 2.0-liter magnesium-case engines have a particular sound and character that make them the greatest Porsche powerplants ever created from a sensory perspective, and I'm inclined to believe him. There's something magical about an engine that's simultaneously trying to propel you forward at enormous speed while also threatening to burn with the intensity of a thousand suns if the cooling system hiccups. It's the automotive equivalent of dating someone beautiful but slightly unhinged – the risk adds to the excitement. Later 910s would receive flat-eight engines for the longer endurance races, where the additional torque and reliability offered advantages, but many Porsche aficionados still prefer these early six-cylinder cars for their purity and spectacular sound. The flat-six in this car would have produced around 220 horsepower in period – not an earth-shattering figure by today's standards, but in a car weighing just 600 kg (about the same as a modern bathtub), it was more than enough to create a religious experience for anyone brave enough to plant their right foot. This particular car has a fascinating history that reads like a novel. After serving as the development prototype for the entire 910 program, it was raced by the factory team as a testbed before being sold to privateer Robert Buchet. He promptly took it to a class win and fourth overall at the 1000km of Monza in 1968, proving that this was no delicate flower but a proper, battle-ready race car.Interestingly, after its professional racing career, 910001 was converted for street use – a process that involved fitting headlights, turn signals, and presumably a muffler to avoid giving pedestrians heart attacks. Can you imagine seeing this thing pull up next to you at a traffic light? It would be like spotting a tiger on a leash in your local park – simultaneously magnificent and terrifying. The car then passed through a series of private owners, each of whom continued to race it in various historic events, adding to its already impressive competition record. More recently, it underwent a comprehensive restoration specifically aimed at preparing it for FIA historic racing, meaning it's not just museum-pretty but properly sorted for track use. This is crucial because cars like this were born to run, and there's something deeply sad about seeing them imprisoned behind velvet ropes, never to sing their magnificent high-RPM song again. Now, I should point out that there's some debate about the 910's lineage. In the comments of the original article, a knowledgeable pedant points out that the 910 was an evolution of the 906, not the 904 as originally stated. He also mentions that the car was initially designated as the 906/10 (indicating an evolution of the 906), but somewhere along the development process, this was shortened to 910, which is why it bizarrely sits numerically between the 906 and 907 in Porsche's model chronology. This is the kind of gloriously arcane trivia that separates casual enthusiasts from the true anoraks, and I'm here for it. What's particularly significant about the 910 in Porsche's history is that it represents the critical stepping stone between their early racing efforts and the legendary 917 – arguably the most important endurance racing prototype of all time and the car that would finally deliver Porsche their first overall victory at Le Mans. You can see the evolutionary line clearly: the 904 gave way to the 906, which evolved into the 910, which begat the 907 and 908, finally culminating in the earth-shattering 917. Each step brought more speed, more sophistication, and more success.The auction for this piece of motorsport history still has three days left at the time of writing, and bidding has already surpassed $1.3 million. That's an enormous sum of money, of course, but considering the car's historical significance, provenance, and the fact that it's race-ready, it's actually quite reasonable in the context of blue-chip collector cars. After all, you could spend more on a brand new, soulless hypercar that will depreciate the moment you drive it off the dealer's forecourt, whereas this 910 will likely continue to appreciate while simultaneously delivering an unfiltered driving experience that no modern car could ever hope to match. If you're lucky enough to be in the financial position to consider bidding on this automotive masterpiece, I have just one piece of advice: do it. Yes, $1.3 million could buy you a nice house in most parts of the world, but houses don't have magnesium-cased flat-six engines that scream to 8,000 RPM. Houses don't have racing history that includes the 1000km of Monza. Houses don't represent the golden age of motorsport when men were men, safety was an afterthought, and racing cars were beautiful, dangerous sculptures designed solely for speed. In fifty years' time, nobody will care about the anonymous modern supercars with their electronic nannies and hybrid systems. But this 910, this glorious, analog, slightly terrifying piece of motorsport history? It will still be turning heads, raising goosebumps, and inspiring automotive lust in generations to come. And if that's not worth remortgaging your house for, I don't know what is.
