Historic Group C in Classic Driver Magazine April 2022
The highlight of this weekend’s 79th Goodwood Members’ Meeting will be a family reunion of Porsche 956 and 962 endurance racers. Nine of these Group C monsters come from the remarkable collection of Henry Pearman. We paid him a visit while the cars were prepared for the track at Moto Historics.
Many of us can pinpoint the moment when our love for a certain type of car took hold and the righteous path to what we were destined to own or collect was brilliantly, dazzlingly, unequivocally illuminated. For Henry Pearman, that moment came on a rain-soaked September day in 1982 when he travelled to Brands Hatch with college friend Roger Collingwood and saw Jackie Ickx and Derek Bell win the 1,000 km race in a Porsche 956.
It was Pearman’s first taste of sports car racing and, more importantly, his first experience of the angry, growling, fire-breathing Group C machines – and the 19-year-old Pearman wanted more. “I shall never forget our first sight of Group C cars in action – the speed, the flames coming from the turbochargers, the thrill of it all. I fell in love on the spot,” Pearman recalls.
The kindling of what was to become a burning obsession was further fuelled the following year when Pearman and Collingwood made their first pilgrimage to Le Mans and saw the Rothmans Porsche 956s secure the team’s thrilling one-two victory – with the 956 of Kremer Racing crossing the line third. It was a moment that left Pearman ‘totally hooked’ – so hooked that, helped by the success of his Eagle E-Types business that he has run since 1984, he set out to collect Group C cars, securing his first in 2001: a 1986 Silk Cut Jaguar, chassis 385, bought direct from TWR.
During the intervening 20 years, Pearman has begged and borrowed a king’s ransom to help acquire many more Group C legends – and, most notably, has accumulated the greatest collection of Porsche models outside of the factory’s own inventory. And at this weekend’s Goodwood Members’ Meeting, all nine of these spectacular machines will be on display and in full running order.
It promises to be a rare opportunity to see all of the cars together in a racing environment – and it’s one that no Group C fan will want to miss.