Back in grade school, I remember finding a fictional story in the school library about racing at Le Mans and poring over it cover to cover several times. If I recall correctly, it was set in the 1950s and followed the exploits and competition between various drivers wielding Jaguars and Ferraris around Circuit de la Sarthe in the traditional 24-hour-long endurance test.

It wasn't stock cars, drag racing or the Indy 500, but it was new and exciting. The book sparked my first nascent interest in sports cars and endurance racing.

So I continued on, searching out books and magazines that filled my newly found fascination with road racing and endurance racing. I had not given up on drag racing, stock cars and Indy cars. I merely supplemented them with an new type of machine, designed differently, driven differently and raced all over the world — three attributes I would eventually come to associate with Porsches.

Along the way, I discovered Can Am, Formula 1 and ABC's Wide World of Sports coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix. The month of May had a lot more going for it than I had realized.

In 1971, the film "Le Mans" was released. As soon as I read about it, I had to see it. My father was never a big fan of films — or racing for that matter — but knowing how totally consumed I was with cars, he relented and took me to an evening show of "Le Mans" at the local theater.

I was really excited when we got there thinking what a great experience it was going to be to see a movie about road racing at Le Mans. I never imagined my entire motorsports sphere of interest was about to be shifted to an entirely different galaxy by Porsche and the 917.

Prototypes and prototype racing had taken control. If the thrill was in the hunt, then the prey was technical information, especially concerning the 917. Books, magazines and libraries all offered potentially fertile hunting grounds.

And I didn't just want pictures. I wanted — no needed — information, technical treatises, anything that gave me engineering insight into the 917 and its design. I didn't care that Porsche built street cars because they just didn't interest me. In fact, my most prized bedroom posters were my original "Le Mans" movie poster and the poster of three 917s running in the rain at Brands Hatch. Still got 'em, too.

Skip Kuhn still has poster of 917s — including this one of three 917s running in the rain at Brands Hatch.

The late '70s brought the 930 turbo and the outrageous 935 "prototypes." I definitely liked the 935s and their fire-belching turbo engines. But, again, they were racing prototypes, and that was my vision of what Porsche was all about — supremacy on the track through technical superiority. I clearly understood the lineage to the street 911 chassis and engine, but it was the racing car that to me was Porsche.

Of course, prototype sports cars evolved and morphed as the sport continued into the 1980s and on into the '90s. Predictably, so did my interests in them. I still wanted all the information I could get on whatever the current Porsche prototype model was — the 962, 956, 936, GT1, etc. — but other prototypes had also caught my eye. Some were competitors like Ferraris, Fords and Renaults, but the rest were the predecessors to the 917, such as the 908 and 910.

Along the way, I managed to start collecting a few books for my technical and reference library. Michael Keyser's "The Speed Merchants" and Colin Campbell's "Design of Racing Sports Cars" (Appendix I — The Porsche Type 917) were two of the first. Many more have followed since, but none with an emphasis on Porsche's street cars.

So it's been 40-plus years since I first saw "Le Mans." My technical library continues to grow by leaps and bounds. I'm still enamored with the 917 — its beauty, its speed, its boldness of design and even the fact that it had substantial shortcomings in design and performance that had to be corrected before it became successful on the track.

Studying the design and development of all prototype racers is still a bug I just can't kick. My latest book acquisition is the "Porsche 917: Archive and Works Catalogue" by Walter Näher, a 575-page tome on the subject.

"Porsche 917: Archive and Works Catalogue" by Walter Näher is a 575-page tome on the subject of prototype racers.

I still view Porsche as the maker of some of the best sports racing cars out there. But, having driven Caymans and Boxsters and owning two 944s, I'm convinced they are pretty adept at creating great street cars, too.