The Pink Pig
The cars combination of a long body, stubby face and wide hips gave it a pig-like look, which inspired Porsche designer Anatole Lapine to give the car a pink paint with butcher cut lines covering the exterior.
Dubbed the Pink Pig, 917/20 was a crowd favorite at the 1971 Le Mans race.
In Porsche’s relentless quest for ever more slippery aerodynamics, They hired aero specialist Robert Choulet to create the new body shape.
Porsche’s target was to extract drag numbers similar to the 917L, and the downforce numbers of the 917K, without resorting to the long and weighty tail that had been introduced in search of ultimate speed on the Mulsanne Straight.
The result was the Pig, though the ‘pink’ part came later. Choulet eventually presented Porsche with what was generally agreed to be an ugly racing car. The 917/20 had an unusually wide body, with strange lateral overhangs which were designed to lessen the effects of air flowing over the wheel arches. The short, stubby car was revealed to the world at the traditional Le Mans test in April, sponsored by Martini & Rossi and driven by Willi Kauhsen and Gijs van Lennep.
But Count Rossi, dismayed by its ugliness, refused to let the car run in his famous colours. So, in a rare moment of not-very-German humour, it was decided to paint it pink and mark out the bodywork in cuts of meat as a butcher might have done with a real pig
