Born : December 16 1939
Deceased: March 16 2021
Biography Manfred Kremer
Manfred Kremer was a petrolhead pur sang. He always showed a huge interest in cars and the skills to both maintain cars and improve them. These skills proved to be invaluable and of huge importance to the career of Manfred Kremer. In 1962, together with his brother Erwin Kremer, Manfred Kremer founded a workshop in Cologne. The first project of the brand-new shop was the rebuilding of a Porsche 356 they found in a scrapyard. Together with running the workshop, Manfred Kremer studied to become a master craftsman car mechanic. The master’s degree allowed him to take charge of the business, and develop it further.
Soon, the Kremer brothers gained more and more customers and soon they hired Willi Grossman as their chief mechanic. During weekdays, Erwin did the administration and public relations for the workshop, Manfred managed the workshop. In the weekends, Erwin Kremer raced the Porsche 356 Carrera he had bought. In the 1960s, Auto Kremer was involved in low-cost motorsports like slalom events, and rallies. Erwin at the wheel, Willi Grossman as co-pilot. Manfred Kremer remained where he felt safe, behind the pit-wall. Soon after the Kremers upgraded racing in a Porsche 911, and started going international, Erwin Kremer realized he could not compete with the true professional drivers. The Kremer brothers started hiring racers to compete for the Kremer Racing team.
The Kremer brothers had always been known for their meticulous preparation of their Porsches. And they used the success of their racing team as publicity for their workshop. They kept on gaining customers, and in the early 70s they started applying a special designation to their cars, to let the world know this was not an ordinary Porsche but a Porsche that left the Kremer workshop. In the mean time, a fierce rivalry sprouted between Georg Loos and the Kremer Brothers, with drivers like John Fitzpatrick who changed teams a few times as a consequence.
In the mid-seventies Manfred Kremer developed the Porsche 935 K1, based on a factory Porsche 935. The success of this car encouraged him to make the car even better. The final results were the Porsche 935 K2 and Porsche 935 K3. All versions of the Kremer Porsche 935 showed dominance at race-tracks all over the world, both in sprint-races as in endurance races like Daytona 24H or Le Mans 24 (to name just a few).
The Kremer Racing Team was familiarized with victories. However, Manfred Kremer always remembered taking the checkered flag at the 1979 Le Mans 24H. Klaus Ludwig teamed up with the Witthington brothers and after a race filled with incidents, they won the race before the Dick Barbour Porsche 935/77 (Rolf Stommelen, Dick Barbour, Paul Newman).
The Kremer brothers kept tuning and reengineering Porsches. These cars were both used by the Kremer Racing Team, as by private teams that bought cars at the Kremer Workshop. From the Porsche 936 to the Porsche 956 and Porsche 962, all had a Kremer version. In 1981 Kremer Racing even surprised the complete race-world. For the Le Mans 24, they entered a car that brought the very first outright victory for Porsche at Le Mans in 1970: a Porsche 917 K81
In 1998 Manfred Kremer retired from the company and moved to Spain. His brother Erwin suffered a heart attack in 2004 but never fully recovered. When Erwin died during his rehabilitation in 2006, Erwin’s wife inherited the company. However, she had no entrepreneurial ambitions. In 1992, when she passed away, Manfred Kremer feared the ‘Kremer’ name would disappear. To prevent that from happening, he bought the company from the estate to find a suitable successor. In 2010 Eberhard Braunach, a Cologne-based entrepreneur took over Kremer Racing.
March 16 2021, Manfred Kremer passed away at the age of 81. We strongly recommend reading the books Porsche Kremer Racing and Porsche Kremer Eine Erfolgstory 1962 – 2012.
Pictures courtesy unknown, Kremer Racing and Porsche AG.
