Ron Goodman’s Porsche 906 custom
In Porsche’s 70th Anniversary year, the passion for the marque has been apparent around the globe, from the Goodwood Festival of Speed to the Rennsport Reunion in the US that was wrapping up just as this issue went to press. The passion that’s been expressed en masse at these events is made up of the collective enthusiasm of individual Porsche owners and enthusiasts. People like Ron Goodman.
Ron’s love for Porsche, and particularly the 356, goes back to his childhood and while he admits he’s many miles from that phase of his life now, the passion for Porsche hasn’t dimmed.
Body Panels and Movie Frames Based in Sydney, Ron’s the owner/operator of Exclusive Body Werks, an authorised Porsche repair centre, based in Clyde (near Parramatta) that’s been in business for the past two decades. And while Exclusive Body Werks focuses primarily on the repair of newer Porsches, the occasional classic comes through the doors, so Ron’s been able to channel that passion into his business, too.
Recently achieving global certification as an official Porsche-authorised collision centre (a standard that’s only awarded to premier repair centres), Exclusive Body Werks is also a factory-authorised repair centre for Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, McLaren and Tesla.
Away from the workshop, Ron devotes a lot of his time to his collection of early Porsches that he races here and overseas. That collection includes a trio of 356s and the recently-unveiled 906 featured here. A 914/6 road car is also in the family, while a stretched VW Type 2 pickup is a suitably vintage race car transporter.
If you were at this year’s NSW Hot Rod and Custom Auto Expo, you may have seen Ron’s collection on display – plenty of showgoers did and it was arguably the highlight of the event. Ron’s also something of a “movie star”, being the subject of a documentary – The Road to Monterey.
Directed by Paolo Febbo and produced by Ben Cissell, the documentary covered Ron’s racing campaigns in the US, on tracks like Road Atlanta and Indianapolis, leading up to competing on the famous Laguna Seca circuit during Monterey Speed Week.
The crashes (fortunately none serious), mechanical breakdowns, hassles with shipping a car overseas and trying to meet crazy deadlines just to go racing are all captured in a documentary that won a German auto film gold award against big-budget corporate efforts from VW, Audi and Porsche. You can watch the extended video on the dedicated website – roadtomonterey.com
A new doco is in the works, too, footage for which will be filmed at the Geelong Revival in November, where Ron will be a special guest. Ron will also use the Geelong Revival to officially campaign his freshly-built 906 for the first time.
Rare Racer Everyone knows a 911, and almost as many are familiar with the 356. Thanks to its Le Mans-winning ways, the 917, 956 and 962 are relatively well-known, too, but in the broad Porsche canon, the 906 is somewhat overlooked. Also known as the Carrera 6, the 906 debuted in 1966 as a development of the track-focussed 904 sports car, and while it did use some carryover parts from that model, like wheels and suspension, it was significantly different in most other areas.
Where the 904 used a mid-rear-mounted 1.6 flat four engine and backbone chassis, the 906 used the then-new 2.0-litre flat six (that had debuted in the 911 a few years earlier), but mid-mounted it within a full space-frame chassis. The 906’s fibreglass body was also the first in Porsche history to be developed using a wind tunnel.
Designed for the FIA Group 4 Sports Car category, the 906 won the 1966 Targa Florio and filled the four places behind the trio of Ford GT40s that finished 1-2-3 at that year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Class wins in numerous circuit endurance races and outright wins at national-level were also achieved by drivers in a 906, but it never claimed a major scalp at international level, hence the model’s relative obscurity today. Nevertheless, the 906 was an important step on the road to the 917 and Porsche’s dominance in sports car endurance competition since the 1970s.
Part of that obscurity is also down to the model’s rarity. Only around 50 were built (figures vary, depending on source), and survivors are uncommon enough that they’re rarely raced. There is, however, a small market for replicas and restored examples using replacement parts. Five years in the making, Ron’s 906 is a bit of a hybrid insofar as it uses a reproduction chassis (which was actually produced here in Australia from original Porsche blueprints), fitted with an abundance of genuine Porsche parts.
The wheels are modern reproductions and the engine’s been tricked up, too, using skills and techniques Ron’s learned from years of extracting more grunt from his 356s. Ahead of his journey down to Victoria to take part in the waterfront sprints at the Geelong Revival, Ron spent some time with JUST CARS and talked about his 906 in a little more detail.
INTERVIEW – Ron Goodman
JUST CARS: How long had you been looking for a 906 before you found out about the unit that Tim and Andrew Keiller at Werkzcars had in Melbourne?
RON GOODMAN: A while. One was at Dutton’s Garage in Melbourne, but I missed that one. The buyer, who I knew and had sold a 996 RS to, was not interested in selling, unfortunately.
JC: Did it have to be a 906? If a suitable 904, or something later, like a 910 came up, would you have considered those?
RG: 910 or 908 yes, 904 no. The 904 does nothing for me.
JC: I’d imagine 906s rarely come up for sale, so if you didn’t get this one from the Keillers, you’d be waiting years for another?
RG: Absolutely. I’m still on the hunt now. If one ever comes up and it was at a reasonable price, I’d buy it. Most cars I’ve got I have two of – it’s like a Noah’s Ark sort of thing!
JC: So what sort of condition was the 906 in when you bought it?
A: It needed a fair bit of work. (The Keillers) do a great job, but everyone has their own levels of perfection and mine’s just a little bit higher
JC: This car is a little bit different in terms of specification from a factory 906. Can you explain some of the differences?
RG: The engine’s a lot bigger – 2.4 litres with modern internals. The transmission’s not a genuine 906 transmission, because that’s $70,000 and I don’t want to wreck that on the track – it’s just too dear to fix. The guys in America, where I got this transmission from, change theirs as well.
We’ve had special titanium driveshafts made for it and titanium front end stuff to keep the unsprung weight down. And then we had the guys at Boyd Coddington’s make copies of the original (steel) wheels in billet aluminium.
The chassis was built from scratch by the Keillers down in Melbourne. These cars, back in the 60s, used to run oil through the chassis, so a lot of them rusted out. The new chassis are 0.4 mm thicker than the old ones, so they’re a bit safer. (The Keillers) have sent three chassis to Porsche and two to American race teams to rebuild 906s over there.
JC: Did Porsche help with locating and acquiring rare parts?
RG: Yes, they did. Porsche have been behind us with a lot of the stuff and a lot of the race teams in the US also helped us out.
JC: The 906 took five years of work, from purchase to completion. What was the hardest part of the process?
RG: Finding stuff. And, because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, nothing seemed to be right. You might put 95 per cent of it together and have to pull it all apart again just to change one thing.
JC: In the limited you have spent behind the wheel to date, how different is driving the 906 compared to the 356s you’re used to?
RG: Completely different. In the 906, you’re nearly lying down. The first time I drove it into Sydney Motorsport Park for a test, it was early in the morning and dark. Going through the tunnel and down the backroad, I actually thought to myself ‘I don’t know how guys drove these at 200mph at Le Mans at night’. Unbelievable.
JC: And there’s a difference in the power delivery and handling compared to the 356?
RG: Absolutely. The 906 is like driving a go kart, while the 356 is a bit ‘agricultural’. The 906 is more refined and goes where you want it to go.
JC: Is a big chunk of that down to the mid-mounted engine, rather than the 356’s rear-mounted engine?
RG: Yes. And also the coilover springs and disc brakes. It’s got all the right stuff…and it’s a full chassis, too.
JC: The 906 will be making its debut in the sprints at the Geelong Revival this November. Do you know anything about the event?
RG: Not at all. I’m running three cars down there - the 906, a 356 coupe and 356 cabriolet.
JC: That’ll be something to see for sure. I’m sure people will be wondering what the 906 is.
RG: Yeah. Everywhere I’ve taken it, it creates a crowd. We took it to a car show, it won the car show. We took it to cars and coffee, it blew everybody away. So we’re pretty happy with it.
Future plans for the Porsche 906 including taking it to the Goodwood Revival in the UK and the Le Mans Classic in Frnace. In bringing the 906 to fruition, Ron thanked Tim and his crew at Exclusive Body Werks, Mick from Corse Automotive and Michael Newton for engine work. And wife Christine, of course, for supporting his Porsche passion.
Words: Mike Ryan. Photos: Ron Goodman and Rob Scheeran
