Ride of the Valkyries: Renée Brinkerhoff’s 1956 Porsche 356A

Lead photo by Christina Brinkerhoff

After raising and educating four children, Renée Brinkerhoff was ready for some fun. Finally, after 20 years, she had a moment to go for a bike ride, run to the beach, or read a book—things she never had time for between the tutors, piano lessons, carpooling, and soccer coaching. “One day,” she decided, “I’m going to race a car.” Then, she saw the Porsche.

It was a relative’s Porsche 356 that led Denver-based Brinkerhoff to race her own 1956 Porsche 356A on all seven continents, becoming the first to do so. With no power steering or brakes, the 2.0-liter Flat-4 356A reminded her of the souped-up Volkswagen Bug she zipped around in high school. The feel of the stick shift and the rumbling revs filled her ears and her soul with the freedom and independence she felt as a teenager. 

“I thought, if I’m going to do something, I want it to be fun and challenging,” she says, reflecting on her decision to rally race at the age of 57. “It sounded interesting because you were on the road, going from one place to the next. I grew up in Southeast Asia, and my parents gave me a lot of experiences in different cultures and places, and I thought, well, that sounds fun.”

As she couldn’t find a US-based rally race with a classic car designation, Renée looked further afield, to Mexico, where the annual La Carrera Panamericana stage rally stretches 2,000 miles over seven days. Her mindset going into the event was resolute: she would compete, get it out of her system, and be done. It turns out this wasn’t Brinkerhoff’s last race but the first of many. The La Carrera was also, unbeknownst to her, the most dangerous tarmac rally race in the world.

“I just thought I would join a team and hold a wrench, run errands, learn about the race, but the team actually wanted someone in the car,” Renée reflects on her first Panamericana experience in 2012. Eager for more, she attended classes at the Porsche Track Experience, where she was taught by American race car champion and three-time Le Mans winner Harley Haywood. Hitting the ground running, Brinkerhoff entered the La Carrera Panamericana with her own Porsche the following year and placed first in class with navigator Roberto Mendoza. The Mexican event was a magnet, drawing her back in 2014 and 2015 to defeat teams racing vehicles with double (and triple) the horsepower. 

“You have to be able to rely upon your team,” she says, reflecting on what she learned during the first few years of racing. “The relationship with the navigator is crucial because your life is at risk.” In 2013, a navigator died during a speed stage of the Panamericana while four cars shot off a cliff on a downhill section of the rally. Then, in 2015, Brinkerhoff was involved in a serious accident where the Porsche suffered extensive damage. “I almost killed us,” she says. “Then I questioned everything. Do you know what you’re doing? Who are you? What have you accomplished? Did you really accomplish that, or was it luck?” 

Rebuilding her confidence from, as she puts it, “shattered glass” or “pulverized dust” was tough and required revisiting her relationship with fear. She had to move past the uncontrollable shaking to the zone—where the out-of-body experience takes over. By the beginning of 2017, Renée had mended her self-confidence from shattered to stained glass. She also found her voice, committing to the Project 356 World Rally Tour: six races on seven continents in her 1956 Porsche 356A—including Antarctica. 

“I definitely have a yearning and desire to pursue challenges,” she says. “But they must have meaning and purpose beyond myself. When you’re the only woman out of 300 cars, or it’s the first time an old car is racing in a modern event, or you’re one of two women drivers, those [opportunities] give you a voice.” Renée knew Project 356 was the vehicle to raise awareness and fundraise for a cause she believed in. 

“[Bringing awareness to human trafficking] was something I strongly believe chose us,” she says. “I was on a tour bus and started chatting with a newly engaged couple across the aisle. You know, small talk.” The gentleman told her he worked for the FBI and his job was to hunt down criminals who were making and selling child pornography. This involved rescuing the children and ensuring the buyers and sellers were convicted. Then, the agent dropped a bomb. “He told me the children involved were too young to speak,” Renée says. She felt sick. “I wanted to do something. But how would we talk about this issue?” 

In Renée’s mind, it was all about going big. Get the people talking. Do something extreme or out of the ordinary. Choose the most difficult races. Be the first vintage vehicle to tackle the rally. Be the first vehicle to race on all seven continents. That was the goal. “I was adamant,” she says about driving the same Porsche in all six races. “There were folks who tried to talk me into another car. I said no.” 

By 2021, Brinkerhoff had placed first in class at the 2017 La Carrera Panamericana, checked off the tarmac-based Targa Tasmania and Peru’s Caminos del Inca in 2018, then finished the Peking-to-Paris and the East African Safari rallies in 2019. Until then, the legendary Tuthill Porsche—a UK outfit synonymous with building competition-ready 911s—prepared the car for each Project 356 rally. 

But racing the Porsche in Antarctica was another challenge altogether. “We had to build a separate undercarriage because you can’t attach old metals from a 60-year-old car to modern metals with different stress and freezing points,” she says. “There were things to overcome, but it worked.” Around this time, in 2019, polar explorer and the project’s Senior Chassis Design Engineer Kieron Bradley began the development and re-engineering process that would turn the Porsche 356 into an “ice-ready beast” fit for polar terrain. 

Brinkerhoff wanted the Porsche to tackle all 356 Antarctic miles on tires, but the car was too small. “The tires would have been so big we would have had to cut into the door,” she explains. Instead, Bradley’s design featured a ski and track combination that, he notes on the Valkyrie Racing website, “increase flotation by as much as 300 percent when compared to Antarctic 4×4 support vehicles on the 42-inch tires.” The original rally-prepared suspension and steering could only be complemented by a system added to control the tracks, so Bradley used single-arm suspension with coilover shocks for both rear tracks.

In November 2021, the Porsche was unloaded from an Ilyushin II-76 airlifter onto the Union Glacier—its tracks set down on Antarctic ice for the very first time. The mission was to complete 356 miles, fully unsupported, with the Union Glacier as the start and end point. Joining Brinkerhoff and Bradley were Renée’s daughter and Valkyrie Racing’s Head of Operations Christina Brinkerhoff, Ice Mechanic Simon Redhead, Videographer Neil Carey, and Navigator and Expedition leader Jason De Carteret, whose extensive polar experience includes driving a modified Toyota Tacoma to the South Pole in 2011 and beating his own world record time. 

In order to be as light as possible, the Porsche was outfitted with only the necessities. Twin solar panels, a crevasse bar, and a roll cage were fitted, as were a rear engine frame winch point, a 12-volt on-board compressor, and various Anderson power adapter plugs. A test run had been limited to Kieron’s backyard in the UK, so Brinkerhoff and De Carteret just had to get in the car and figure out what it was capable of, learning by trial and error. “It was a very different turning radius,” Renée reflects on the Porsche’s driveability. “There is no quick turning. But it was super cool, snow driving in that thing. It was flying.” 

Dazzling blue ice covers a mere one percent of the Antarctic continent. Revealed over time, as wind erosion removes younger layers of snow and frozen water, blue ice can be millions of years old and resilient enough to handle a large aircraft landing. However, the going was difficult for a modified Porsche 356A despite its 30-degree approach and 45-degree departure angles. “It was like going over a frozen, choppy lake,” Renée says. “There was terrible vibrating that was tough on the car. We just had to crawl our way across.” 

Sub-zero temperatures, 50-mph winds, and whiteout conditions took their toll. A bolt sheared off the right front hub. The carburetors froze. Kingpins in the front left and right ski arms failed. The Porsche was towed to camp on more than one occasion. The track system had to be lubed up with low-temperature grease. Without interior heat, it literally snowed inside the cab. The team overnighted in tents pitched on the ice, which struggled against inconceivably powerful winds. On day four, with 16 miles remaining, another bolt sheared from a suspension arm. But, on December 10, 2021, after five days of driving, the crew completed the last few miles, clocking 356 at the Drake Icefall. Overall, Renée says the Porsche performed well. “If we could do it again, I would do a few things differently. I would put a heater in it—why not?”

Reflecting on the past decade of racing, Brinkerhoff says she has learned a lot about balancing endurance with speed, what makes good leadership, and what it takes as a driver and a human to be on your game and win. “I found strength I didn’t know I had. I found capabilities and talents I didn’t know I had. It wasn’t until I did something that totally stretched me that I ever discovered those things. But those resources were there inside me. They were always there.” 

Renée says she chose the name Valkyrie Racing without even knowing what a Valkyrie was. According to Norse mythology, the Valkyries are fearless women warriors who ride to the battlefield, spear and shield in hand, to rescue the wounded and the slain, transporting them to glorious Valhalla to restore life, where feasts and a splendid palace await. Brinkerhoff’s non-profit organization, Valkyrie Gives, aims to raise a million dollars to combat child trafficking by working with partner organizations in Kenya, Peru, India, and Thailand. With over $800,000 raised to date, this endeavor is well underway, but for Renée, it doesn’t feel like enough. “I do undercover trafficking work,” she says. “I don’t just want to read about it; I want to do something about it.”

Photos by Christina Brinkerhoff

The 356 Porsche just finished up a world tour featuring a whiz along the frozen lake of St. Moritz, followed by a stint at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles as part of the We Are Porsche exhibit, commemorating the company’s 75th anniversary. The question is, what is in store for this highly specialized rally car? “There is something I’d like to do in its current setup,” Renée hints. “Again, it would be a global first, even harder than what we’ve already done. We’ll see. I don’t know. I pray about things. So, I’m praying and thinking about it. The answer will come, I’m sure.”

Specifications

1956 Porsche 356A 

Power

2.0-liter flat-4 engine

Suspension and Drive

Original rally-prepared suspension
Rear snow tracks: single-arm suspension with coilover shocks
Front skis: specialized brace and suspension system
TIG welded rear track suspension mount frame

Wheels and Tires

Spiked ice tires
Rear snow tracks
Front skis 

Recovery and Armor

TIG welded crevasse bar
TIG welded roll cage
Rear engine frame winch point

Accessories 

Twin solar panels
Twelve-volt, low-temperature compressor
Bag jack, 4-ton

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Overland Journal’s Winter 2024 Issue. 

Read more: The Rover Boys: Bristol Foster and Robert Bateman Reflect on their Round-the-World Expedition

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