Storez Porsche Zagato

Story and photos Graham Gauld

From time to time I get emails from people looking for photographs of special cars taken many years ago. A while back I had an odd request from the coachbuilders Zagato who wanted to know if I had any photos of one of their rare one-offs, the Zagato Porsche built for French driver Claude Storez.

It brought back memories of a warm day at the Reims circuit in September 1958. I was on my way back to Scotland from Modena but timed the trip so that I could meet up with the cars on the Tour de France that year. The Tour de France was organized by the Automobile Club of Nice and was one of the favorite events for racing drivers.

It was technically a rally, but all the special stages were actually races on a variety of racing circuits or hill climbs on some of the most famous climbs in France. English driver David Piper told me he prepared himself for racing in Europe by doing the Tour de France because it gave him the chance to get some practice on circuits like Reims, Le Mans and Rouen. Most enthusiasts know that the Ferrari 250GT TdF was named in honor of the Marquis de Portago’s win on the Tour de France with one of the early 250GT berlinettas.

The year of my visit was a good one with a raft of quick Ferraris going for the GT classes and another raft of Jaguars and Alfa Romeos going for the Touring class. As usual, I roamed the paddock and found some oddities such as English racing driver Les Leston at the wheel of a Lotus Eleven that he shared with Georges Houel.

Can you imagine two race drivers cramped in a Lotus Eleven driving all over France on the road sections? But then I saw the little white car which did not look familiar. Sure it was a Porsche, but though it looked like a modified 550 Spyder it was actually a 356 that Zagato had crafted for Claude Storez.

Born in Paris in February 1927, Storez worked with his father, who ran a large printing company in the city. But like many other young men Claude was mad about motor sport. He competed in his first event in 1950 driving a Simca sedan at the Montlhéry circuit. He then co-drove with his father Leon in the 1950 Liege-Rome-Liege with a Citroen prepared by no less a person than Rene Bonnet (later to become famous for his Bonnet and DB racers). As motor sport was a family affair, Claude was able to get time off to compete in events. He began racing seriously in 1952 firstly with a Simca Sport and then with a Porsche 356, which was the start of his love of Porsches.

Because of the links with Rene Bonnet, Storez actually had his first important racing success winning the 750cc class in the Spa 24 hour race of 1953. The following year, 1954, he made his Le Mans debut in a factory DB-Renault sharing with Jean-Claude Vidilles, but it was short lived as they retired in the first hour with a broken gearbox. At the same time he was driving the Panhard Monomil single seaters and won his first French championship with this car.

Storez enjoyed rallies as much as he enjoyed racing. With various Porsches he competed both on track and on the road, usually in a 356 A Carrera. He became French Champion in 1956 and in 1957 put up one of his finest performances in the Tour de France, when he finished sixth in a 356 Carrera Speedster behind five Ferrari 250GTs and Stirling Moss in a Mercedes Benz 300SL. In that same year he was given a full works drive with Porsche at Le Mans sharing a 550 Spyder with American driver Ed Crawford only to have the fuel pump expire on the last hour of the 24 hour marathon!

For 1958 Storez bought a Porsche 356 Speedster and sent it to Zagato to have a lightweight Spyder body fitted. Clearly Zagato thought hard about this commission and came up with a very low and light car with a smooth aerodynamic shape. The rear wings had longitudinal fins painted red and a single curved windshield. Porsche was very much involved and the new Zagato body was sent back to the factory to be completed before delivery to Storez.

At Reims on the 1958 Tour de France, Storez really showed what a lightweight car could do and surprised everyone by finishing second in the GT race to eventual winner Olivier Gendebien in his Ferrari 250GT TdF.

Tragically, five months later Claude Storez was killed driving the Porsche-Zagato on the last stage of a relatively minor rally in the north of France. He went off the road hitting a kilometre stone and plunging into a ditch. The fabulous one-off Zagato Porsche then disappeared, and no trace of it has ever been found.

There the story might had ended and been totally forgotten save for the enthusiasm of Andrea Zagato and American restaurateur and Porsche enthusiast Herb Wetanson.

Just over a year ago Herb approached Andrea Zagato about a recreation project based on the missing Storez Porsche. Using the latest CAD technology, a superb new car, the Sanction II, was built to completely replicate the original, even using an original 356 platform. Zagato had previously built a Sanction II Lancia Aprilia Sport for Herb Wetanson and his wife Olga.

To build this Sanction II Porsche, the Zagato Classic staff went back through all their historical literature and using modern state of the art technology, they were able to make an exact copy of the original car right down to the red tail fins. (Hence the request for my photos). The body was properly hand-built as with the original so that Zagato has said that the reconstruction is 100% faithful to the original. It was completed in September last year and shown for the first time at a special Concours d’Elegance in Florence.

No doubt some purists will argue that it is a “fake” but to me the fact that Andrea Zagato himself was sufficiently enthusiastic to recreate an important one-off model in the company’s history – the first Porsche to be clothed by Zagato – with such care and attention deserves praise, certainly from me, and it brought back many memories.