There Is No Substitute For Porsche Legend Kevin Jeannette
“Porsche: There is no substitute.” That company tagline imparts respect for what the automaker has accomplished through the years. Along the same lines, Kevin Jeannette is clearly the most respected Porsche specialist in the world.
The owner of Gunnar Racing in West Palm Beach, Florida, Jeannette has “touched” almost every Porsche race car of importance since he began his career. We’re talking about the Porsche 904, 356, 906, 908, 934, 935, 956, 962 and the Mack Daddy of them all, the 917, in all its various forms. But this world-class raconteur started out as a California surfer kid. He moved to Florida in 1980 and continued to write his story there.
Along the way, he became the crew chief and chief mechanic to a few legendary drivers. These included A. J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Derek Bell, Brian Redman, Bob Wollek, Preston Henn, the Whittington brothers, Randy Lanier, and a part-time actor named Paul Newman.
He has even owned a 13-window 1959 Volkswagen Bus that has been adorned with Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia’s artwork. Not once, but twice. But more on that later.
California Dreaming
“My mother was raising six kids after my father died,” said Jeannette. Besides being a photographer for the Los Angeles Times, Dad was a sculptor. He had many talents, but I learned how to fiberglass. “Things were tight, and I didn’t have $27 to buy a surfboard. I could get one that someone had broken and thrown away in the alley and take all the fiberglass off it. I reshaped it and pretty much invented my own shortboard,” he remembered.
Jeannette’s initial run-in with race cars was in 1965. “My next-door neighbor crashed his racing Corvette at Willow Springs Raceway in California,” he said. Sounding a bit like Jeff Spicoli, the surfer dude from Cameron Crowe’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Jeannette said he and his friends would go over to the guy’s garage asking, “Hey man, how’d you do at the races?”
One day, the neighbor told him another car brake-checked him and he wrecked the Corvette’s nose on the other’s bumper. Knowing Jeannette had a talent with fiberglass, the neighbor suggested young Kevin could fix the nose of the Corvette. Thinking that a Corvette doesn’t look like a surfboard, he still agreed to take the job. “It was on a Friday or a Saturday, and the dude left it with me,” he said.
Jeannette realized he just had to figure it out. “I have all the big parts,” he said. “It’s just like Humpty-Dumpty. “You just put it back together again. I just thought I could do this!” Within a day, I had all the parts back together. The neighbor smelled the resin coming from next door. He went over to see the progress and saw it was back together again. At that point, he was introduced to the finer points of Bondo.
It also turned out the neighbor was a cruiser and would bring Jeannette and his friends for some of his slow-moving excursions. “We’d go cruising with him on Friday nights and then he would race cars on the weekends. He would always have a cool car,” said Jeannette. “I would usually sit in the backseat, but sometimes Chris would let me sit in the front.” Often, they would end up at Harvey’s Broiler, where Jeannette remembered the best carhop girls worked.
Jeannette attended Downey High School in Downey, California, which had a vast array of other notables through the years including musicians Karen and Richard Carpenter, figure skater Jo Jo Starbuck, brothers Dave and Phil Alvin of the Blasters and Metallica’s James Hetfield. It was a time when many people took to drag racing by hanging out at local tracks like Lions Drag Strip, Irwindale Raceway, Pomona and Orange Country International Raceway.
It was a life well lived. But it was only just beginning.
A Porsche Mechanic For Life
Around the same time, his sister Michelle had a pre-owned 1964 Porsche 356C. “She needed (or wanted) a new exhaust for it, so we bought a Bursch glasspack exhaust. When I changed that muffler, at roughly age 13, I realized I would be a Porsche mechanic for life.”
Soon, Jeannette was off to the races. Literally. His first 24 Hours of Le Mans was in 1982, crewing a Ferrari 512 BBLM. Many others followed, including other European races, the Indianapolis 500 and the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona.
And then there was Sebring.
Sebring
A race mechanic will say the biggest race in the world is the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Daytona 24 hours would be next on the list, but Jeannette thinks the toughest race is the 12 hours of Sebring. “They never paved the runway portion and there were no lights,” Jeannette remembers. “In those days, we thought that if we could just finish Sebring, mentally, that would be a win.”
Along the way, Jeannette was crew chief with Randy Lanier and the Whittington Brothers and their Blue Thunder Racing Team. Lanier and the Whittingtons were central players in the IMSA drug smuggling scandal of the 1980s, where a few drivers financed their on-track activities with smuggling proceeds. Lanier went to jail for life just to set a benchmark for life choices you shouldn’t make. He eventually was freed after serving 27 years.
Today, Jeannette concentrates on the restoration and maintenance of customer cars that would make most Porschephiles’ eyes water. Unfortunately, they were off-limits to our eyes…and cameras.
Cars Of Note
Since that time, Jeannette has turned his talents to restoration and innovation of some of the most unique race cars in the world. Here’s just a sampling:
- Porsche 917: Kevin rests on the body of John Wyer Gulf Porsche #1 while talking with Paul Newman. “We’ve worked on many, including two or three of the John Wyer Racing Gulf Porsche 917s and about 12 Porsche 917 cars overall.” We asked Jeannette his thoughts on the evolution of the 917 from the initial model to the 917 LH (Langheck or Long Tail), 917 Spyder and the Can-Am 917-10 and 917-30 cars. He commented that, “all Porsche race cars go through an evolution process through the years. The 917, like others, just kept getting better and better!
- 1993 G93 (Gunnar-built G93): Before Porsche introduced the mid-engine 911 RSR in 2017, Jeannette had beaten them to the punch with the first mid-engined Porsche 911. Initially painted green it utilized a Porsche 962 drivetrain in a 1989 Porsche 930 tub. Known as the G93 (Gunnar-built G93) it was initially approved by IMSA, who under pressure from other manufacturers, wrote new rules for this car. “The engine placement is free, as long as it’s in the same location,” he said. “That was very open to interpretation. They came to see it during the build, and I had to change a few things.”
Someone from another manufacturer saw it and complained. We said, you didn’t look in the rule book because everything about that car is in the rulebook. They replied with, “Well, we’re not so sure we like that idea because maybe we didn’t understand the rules as much as he (Jeannette) did. Jeannette thought, well that’s just too bad. The scheduled drivers were John Paul Jr, Paul Newman and Charles Slater, who had just bought IMSA. Because of the manufacturer’s complaints, the car was pulled from the entry. “But I had paid for this car using my nickel,” he remembers.
This was a glass-half-full proposition for Jeannette. He’s thinking, “this is great because he didn’t need to spend the money to run the race at this point. After the event, we were going to take it to the 12 Hours of Sebring. They even outlawed it there.” So, ever the promoter, Jeannette created a huge cage to surround the G93 and put a sign outside the cage saying this car was “too wild for Daytona.”
- Ferrari 275 Competizione Speciale Preston Henn’s Widow, Betty Henn owns the 275 Competizione Speciale or 275 GTB/C for short. This model, chassis #6885, could be the most valuable car in the world. Powered by a 3.3-liter Colombo-designed V12 engine, there were three built. This was the only one raced during the 1965 racing season. In 1965, it was a 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, achieving 1stin class and third overall.
- Porsche GT1. We bought it from one of my customers, and it came with a bunch of spare parts. It was campaigned by Paul Newman and Gunnar Jeannette, Kevin’s son. “A friend called and asked “Hey, man, are you going to come to Homestead? I’m asking for a reason. I have a bunch of fighter pilot buddies (who are going to be at the Homestead Air Reserve Base) that I will be hanging out with.
Ever the promoter, Jeannette had the idea to paint the car in military gray and have the fighter pilots dress in their pre-flight suits. I’ll dress the guys so they can help on the team said Kevin. The friend liked the idea but said, “we are mechanically inclined, but we’re not mechanics.” Jeannette was quick with a response: “Relax, it’s just for the PR!” The paint included bullet holes, shark teeth on the front and the fighter air wing logos on the doors.
- Gunnar Porsche 966: Based on the Porsche 962, the Gunnar 966 Prototype was an open-top IMSA GTP car driven by the father and son team of Derek and Justin Bell along with Jay Cochran. It featured a 962 powertrain and was built using a Chapman Honeycomb chassis. It was the perfect donor for a Spyder-style car. It has been sold twice and we now have it back. In its race livery, car sponsor BF Goodrich promised to donate a dollar per signature of spectators who signed their names to the white body, to support U.S. Armed Forces during the time of the Gulf War. Response was so overwhelming that BFG upped their share to two dollars per signature. The Gunnar 966 appeared in many liveries and now lives in Brumos Porsche colors.
- Jerry Garcia’s Volkswagen Bus Art Car: The “Jerry Garcia” art bus was a 1959 Volkswagen Bus originally owned by Jeannette and painted mango-green. It ended up in the hands of Discover Card wrapped with Jerry Garcia’s artwork. The Discover Card people eventually gave it away at the corners of Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco. Six owners separated, it turns out it was Jeannette’s old bus. He bought it through Hemmings for the grand sum of $7,800. Through another owner, it was repainted to the original mango-green color. Eventually, he re-bought it and had it repainted, as it was, with Garcia’s artwork.
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