The 40th annual Classic Motorsports Mitty stormed into Road Atlanta this past weekend with around 300 classic race cars from around the country and from nearly every era. It was a beautiful show for fans who got a rare opportunity to see some of motorsport’s most legendary cars take to the track again years after retiring from professional competition.
Porsche was named the featured marque of The Mitty, so just over 100 Porsches of all ages were woken up for a fun weekend at track. There’s so much to cover from this event that I’ll be doing a two-part recap on the best of The Mitty, and since Porsche was the marque of honor I’ll start with them. Stay tuned for the second part tomorrow.
[All images © 2017 Hooniverse/Greg Kachadurian – full sizes and extras on Flickr]


With the Porsche North American headquarters just an hour south of Road Atlanta, 103 Porsches from the 60’s to the teens competed in several run groups with other cars from similar eras and in one of two Porsche-only feature races. There couldn’t have been a more impressive collection of Stuttgart’s finest outside of Rennsport Reunion or Porsche’s own museum.
Sadly there weren’t any Can Am, GTP, or Group C cars as they were known for and Porsche didn’t field anything from their own collection as far as I can tell. But with so many beautiful rear-engined classics and a few modern GT2/GT3 cars in one place, it was hard to be disappointed. It was all wonderful and beautiful enough for me to take 2,246 shots in one day, about 1,000 of which were all Porsche.
Below are a couple dozen of my favorite shots of my favorite Porsches on track and in the paddock so I’ll let them do most of the talking.

Starting with the oldest first, this stunning 1956 Porsche 356A was one of my favorite classics, I think.

There were a few of these 356Bs running around too with their roofs chopped off and all of them looked like the most fun.

My other favorite classic is this 1969 911 2.0 liter. The looks and the sound were equally amazing.

Real talk: classic 911s don’t get better than these RSRs from 1973 and 1974, respectively. They had the best styling, the best engines, and could be steered with the throttle which is just plain fun to watch. The good people at Goodwood Road and Racing put a camera in the black RSR/IROC during its feature race and I highly recommend watching it here. The driver, Todd Treffert, is absolutely fearless.

Then there’s this thing. A fine example of a 1973 911 RS. It was just… perfect. Here’s another angle.

This 993 made great turbo noises. The driver did a good job of keeping it in boost, but you could still see the huge difference in acceleration when it was spun all the way up.

This guy really liked Canada, eh.

Now we’re into some of the more modern race cars (by comparison). There were a handful of 996 GT3-spec cars on track but I think this one was pushed the hardest. And yes, even though it’s not as huge of an event as the Monterey historics, many of these cars were still driven hard.

Gulf liveries may be overplayed, but this was the most creative reinterpretation that I’ve ever seen. I had to take a picture of it every time it came around. I think I have about a dozen other shots of this same car from this same turn… and about 200 from everywhere else.

And this 997 RSR was so cool I had to include it twice. The Salzburg racing design looks perfect on this. This car was also near the front in every race it was entered in.

 My favorite Porsche here had to be this 2012 911 RSR formerly run by Flying Lizard Motorsports. This was one of only a handful of cars that I could actually relate to because it’s one I remember seeing race in person at this very track. I got into the American Le Mans series after my first Petit Le Mans in 2010 and I got to see this car kick ass on three occasions.

Seeing it again made me smile, but it also made me feel old because it’s in a classic motorsports event now.

These 991s don’t exactly fit the whole “Classic Motorsports” theme very well since they’re practically band new GT3 Cup cars, but I’ll let it slide because they, along with the 997s above, put on a really good show. These were talented drivers in some very capable Porsches who weren’t afraid to go door-to-door. They were fast, beautiful, and made great noises.

More coverage on the way

In conclusion, Porsche’s race cars (new and old) are all awesome, Road Atlanta is awesome, and the Classic Motorsports Mitty is awesome. It’s been going strong for 40 years now and is consistently one of the best classic motorsports events you can go to. Anyone in the south east should plan to spend a weekend at this wonderful track next year. I’ll bring the beer.

Of course, this was only a small fraction of the cars that were running last weekend. There were at least 80 other Porsches I didn’t even show here and there’s still another couple hundred cars from other marques. Highlights from the other 2/3rds of the field will be published tomorrow right here on Hooniverse.

In the meantime, you can check out all of these images and dozens of others in full resolution on Flickr.

[All images © 2017 Hooniverse/Greg Kachadurian]