Omar Martinez's 911 Wears the Canon Livery Nick Mason Raced

Omar Martinez's 911 started out like any other Guards Red car on Fuchs alloys, unremarkable in the specific way a factory spec Porsche can be. It was never going to stay that way. Martinez had collected roughly 200 scale model Porsches, most of them race cars pulled from the brand's history on track, before he owned a full sized one of his own. That collection set the terms for what the real car would eventually become, a rolling tribute to a Porsche 956 that ran Le Mans in 1984, sponsored by Canon and driven in part by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.

Omar Martinez Bought His First Porsche in 2020

Martinez bought his first full sized Porsche in 2020, two hundred scale models into a habit built since childhood. "After a while I started to add personal touches here and there," he said. "I always wanted to keep the car somewhat period looking so I started with some BBS RS wheels along with some gold mesh turbofan covers." The wheels and covers pulled the car toward the 1980s, the decade his diecast shelf leaned on hardest, a look that reads on Porsche race cars in a way it rarely does on the street. Original Guards Red 911s left the factory on Fuchs alloy wheels, the same wheel design collectors still chase decades later.

1984: The Year Nick Mason Raced This Livery at Le Mans

The livery Martinez chose is not an invented graphic. It traces to a real Porsche 956, chassis 106, entered by Richard Lloyd's GTi Engineering team in Canon sponsored colors at the 1984 24 Hours of Le Mans. Nick Mason, the Pink Floyd drummer and a serious Porsche racer in his own right, shared driving duties with Lloyd and Frenchman Rene Metge. The car was disqualified after 139 laps for receiving outside assistance on track, and the race marked Mason's final Le Mans start after five attempts between 1979 and 1984. Martinez has said he owns diecast models of the car and had never seen its livery replicated on a street car before his own.

No Other Street Car Wears This Canon Livery

That absence was the point. Martinez wanted the Canon 956/962 scheme specifically because, by his account, no one had put it on a road going 911 before. The choice fit a car he had already spent years steering toward the 1980s, from the BBS RS wheels down to the gold turbofan covers he added early on. A livery built for a factory backed prototype racer, reduced to fit the lines of a street 911, is a different design problem than wrapping a car in simple stripes. The proportions of a 956 do not map directly onto a 911, and matching them took several weeks of back and forth before anyone cut vinyl.

Klassewerks Finished One Livery While Building Another

Martinez credits Jun at Klassewerks with making the wrap happen, after reaching out months ahead of his planned trip. "Coincidentally they were doing the same livery on a 996 cup car, also bound for Rennsport," he said. The two projects moved in parallel, a street car and a track car wearing the same 1984 paint scheme, built by the same shop for the same weekend. White turbofan covers replaced the gold ones on the finished car, a change Martinez called the final touch once the wrap design was locked.

White Turbofans, Gold Mesh, and an 800 Mile Drive

Klassewerks delivered the car in time for Martinez to drive it 800 miles round trip to Rennsport Reunion, the Porsche organized gathering of race cars, drivers, and fans that has run every few years since 2001. "The car never skipped a beat," Martinez said of the drive. Recent editions of the event, staged most recently at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, have drawn more than 90,000 fans and over 300 race cars, the scale of gathering a Canon liveried 956 tribute is built to stand out in. The personalization on Martinez's 911, from its original Fuchs alloys down to a full 1984 tribute wrap, sits alongside a broader run of customized Porsche builds treating factory cars as a canvas rather than a finished product.

The verdict here rests on specifics. The Canon 956/962 livery Nick Mason helped race at Le Mans in 1984 is a real, documented car, not an invented graphic, and Klassewerks translated its proportions onto a 911 accurately enough to survive an 800 mile drive without complaint. Guards Red paint under a Le Mans tribute wrap, gold mesh turbofans traded for white ones, and BBS RS wheels holding a look four decades old: that is a period tribute built to be driven, not trailered.