Matt Farah drives ridiculous $1.5m LeMans race car through LA traffic
TheSmokingTire/YouTubeCar journalist and YouTuber Matt Farah received an offer to drive a street-legal LeMans racer through LA to make a video, and he couldn’t say no.
Farah picked up the Koenig-Specials C62, which is made from what was originally a LeMans race car, to drive it into storage.
“In the early 1990s, ‘91, there was a LeMans class called group C racing, this was a Porche 962 raced in that class,” Farah explained. “When that class was disassembled … that left a bunch of Porche 962 customer chassis around and nothing to do with them.”
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“So this psycho Willy Konig bought a couple of them and this is their first one, this is the Koenig C62,” he continued happily. “It is a LeMans car that somehow, you can drive on the street.”
The differences between something like the C62 and a normal car became clear even before Farah took the monster out of the parking lot.
“You have to rev the snot out of it to get it to move, because it’s not meant to be in a stop and go situation,” Farah said as he got used to the car. “You gotta understand, this thing is 800 horsepower and it’s 3100 and change pounds, so that’s how you get it to go.”
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At first, Farah ran into some trouble with the car and even stalled out briefly, but it probably didn’t help that the hand brake was on for the first few minutes of the drive either.
“Driving something like this on a public road is honestly an absurd proposition,” he thought aloud as he bravely headed towards LA’s 405 freeway. “Once you’re moving it’s ok, it’s just the stopping and starting is such a nightmare.”
After he got into the (relatively) open space of the freeway, the C62 reminded Farah that it was still a race car in spirit with more than a few sketchy moments.
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Ultimately, Farah and the car made it safely to their destination practically unscathed, except for a little scrape when the car was entering the garage.
“I’m just glad it’s here in one piece and I avoided an aneurism,” a relieved Farah said as he finally parked the car.
The C62 is definitely an awesome car, but it certainly doesn’t seem practical at all once you get it off of the race track (which it was designed for) and onto the street.
