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Johnny Tipler is a UK based freelance journalist and author. Next to numerous articles in diverse magazines, like Total911, 911 & Porsche World, Classic Porsche or the Porsche Post magazines, he’s the author of about 30 books on automotive subjects. His books cover a wide range of cars in the automotive industry with titles like ‘Alfa Romeo Giulia GT and GTA Coupe’, ‘The Ferrari F40’, ‘Lotus and Caterham 7’, and biographies on Ayrton Senna, Ronnie Peterson or Graham Hill. One of his masterpieces is a book about the Carrera Panamericana,a race he drove himself in a Porsche 914 in 2011.
Johnny Tipler is a fanatic Porsche lover, which made it quite obvious he had to write a book about Porsche too. In Porsche circles, just mentioning the word Carrera puts smiles on peoples faces since decades.The first time an engine was named after the famous Carrera Panamericana race in Mexio, was in 1953. Ernst Fuhrmann developed a four-cam flat-four engine and honoured it the name Carrera, as Porsche got a class winin this iconic race. From 1954 the Carrera name was applied to many Porsche racing and sports cars powered by the Fuhrmann Engine or its derivatives.
Tipler describes the history of the Carrera engines and cars, from the origins in the early 50s where the 550 Spyders had the Fuhrmann engine in the back. Later on, some of the Porsches 356 with a pure race destiny,received this engine too. It continuous in the late 50s with the Porsche RSK that evolves into the Porsche RS61, and later on the Porsche 356 Carrera 2 and Porsche 904 receive a 2.0 liter 4cylinder version of the famous engine too.With the birth of the Porsche 911, the four-cam engines disappear, except for the Porsche 912 that still has a 4cylinder engine. The 1973 Porsche RS and it’s racing derivaties like the different RSR’s got highly tuned Carrera engines too.From 1975 on, stock road cars were baptized with the Carrera name too, and this tradition continues right now.
The book has lots of tremendous stories of the people involved in developing, racing and owning Porsche Carrera’s. Johnny Tipler drove thousands of miles to meet people like Hans Herrmann, Sir Stirling Moss, Herbert Linge or Klaus Bisschoff to interview them, mostly in company of Antony Fraser, who’s responsible for most of the pictures in the book. Jurgen Barth wrote the foreword of this book that can serve as a encycledia when you need a detailed profile of a Carrera model, a buyers guide when you’re into buying one, or just a pleasant read when you like to know more about those iconic Porsches.