1950s Porsche Fascination.(Column)(Column)

Byline: Matt Davis

Hurley Haywood has run in more races these 35 years than I'll ever watch in my whole enthusiast life. And he won plenty of them. Among his victories are five Daytona 24s, three Le Mans and two Sebring 12s. An avid Haywood follower calculated the number of miles the master has driven at Daytona alone. More than 50,000 and counting.

I had a vision of a tough guy with little time for some weasel reporter flying in from pizza country. Hence my pleasant surprise when I met this nice, accommodating and easygoing boyish man.

He warned me right away on that first night in Jacksonville that I could ride shotgun all the way to my hotel, but that I wouldn't like it. Of course I accepted the dare.

I was there to have the James Dean experience-sans deadly accident-in an impeccably restored Porsche 550 1500RS Spyder built in Zuffenhausen in late 1954. (I tried to set this up locally in Europe, but all the 550s ran and hid at the idea of my driving them.) Its chassis No. 550-030 and engine P 90052 put it some months prior to Dean's chassis 550-055. Whereas Dean's car came with the full-width windscreen, this one was built as a factory race car and had only the small wind deflector on the driver's side.

Everything was fine in the north Florida December night until we exceeded 5 mph. The streamlined front end of the impish 550, in the tradition of many Porsches, funnels all wind from the local countryside directly between the headlights and into the base of the windscreen. In the absence of such right seat, my neck and face served as deflectors.

Coming after 12 hours of flight time, this blast of chill evening air drained my tear ducts dry in maybe ...