It was anything but an April Fools’ Day joke when Manthey Racing GmbH opened its new premises at the Nürburgring on April 1st, 2000. For Renate and Olaf Manthey, the start of the new millennium, ten years ago, also marked the start of a new era for their team. Not only the Porsche racing team moved from Rheinbreitbach near Bad Honnef into the Eifel region. The Manthey family itself also showed its commitment to the Nürburgring by moving to the Eifel.
The close connection with Porsche already started 20 years ago. In 1990, Olaf Manthey had his first encounter with a Porsche 911. Porsche Motorsport had just announced its first-ever Carrera Cup when DTM driver Manthey was informed about the new one-make series by a team owner he knew. Initially, he hesitated, not at all convinced by the driving characteristics of the sportscar with its rear engine, but gradually, the 964 Cup car and its driver found to each other more and more and eventually ended up winning the championship title. From then on, Manthey was bitten by the Porsche bug and the start of Manthey Racing in 1996 was a logical step. Manthey went on to build Porsche race cars for himself and for customers and also handled logistics and the running of the cars at the circuits. In doing so, among others in the Supercup, the DTM and the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft, he was so successful that more and more Porsche owners with road-legal cars came to see him to ask for suspension set-ups or engine tuning.
For 20 years, dealing with Porsche cars has been Olaf Manthey’s business and for ten years, he has been doing so directly at the Nürburgring. That has its effects, because for Manthey, function is more important than form. As a result, he doesn’t want to use the word tuning when talking about road-legal performance solutions from Meuspath. While planning his business activities, that also have been including Porsche road cars since MANTHEY MOTORS was founded in 2003, he is just as determined as he is when working at the track. “You can call it road sport”, he says, and adds: “For us, it is all about performance. That is what counts.” And anyone who knows his products also knows that it could not be any different. After a visit at Meuspath, a Porsche should still be a Porsche above anything else.
