The origins of the 1998 Porsche 911 GT1 Le Mans winner can be traced back to a roadgoing version of the Group C 962 launched five years earlier. In order to homologate the 911 GT1/98, the FIA required a single street legal version of the race car to be made. You could call it ‘White Lightning’ because this road legal version of the race car had a top speed of 193 mph (310 … [Read more...]
Road Cars
911 Carrera Club Sport – rolling back the years
The 911 Carrera Club Sport was Porsche’s attempt at rolling back the years and once again, stoking the fires of high performance, lightweight motoring. Porsche Road & Race pulls back the covers to reveal the origins of the 911 Carrera CS. Originally created on the core building blocks of lightweight, high performance and superb engineering quality, the early 356 model … [Read more...]
Turbocharging the 911
In 1973, the Porsche 911, by now a decade old, was ready for a make-over. The 3-litre engine had reached its development ceiling, and it was thought that lessons learned from turbocharging the 917 Can-Am racers in the early ‘70s could be put to good use in a production environment. Turbocharging the 911 would open a world of new opportunities for the model, and today Porsche … [Read more...]
The 911 Carrera Type 964
From a technical perspective, the 911 Carrera Type 964 represented one of the most significant steps forward for Porsche, for many years. The new Type 964 looked like a 911 that had just undergone an annual face-lift, but this was because the only real external changes were to the wheels and details below the bumper line, which were designed to improve aerodynamics. Even the … [Read more...]
Déjà vu
The dictionary defines the term Déjà vu as ‘already seen,’ or the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced, has been experienced in the past. This was certainly true for Porsche enthusiast Dave Whelan, as he returned to the scene of the West Cork Rally where, in March 2000, he almost wrote off his 1972 Porsche 911 2.4 … [Read more...]
On Auction: Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 3.8
Every so often, Porsche creates a short production run of cars that celebrates the attributes of one of their special models. In 1993, the Stuttgart engineers decided to develop a race version of their 911 Type 964 Carrera RS, aptly named the Carrera RSR 3.8, and aimed it squarely at the race track. With the 1993 Carrera 2 as the starting point, Porsche had to make at … [Read more...]
Celebrating the Porsche Carrera heritage
The origin of the model name, Porsche Carrera, is not only interesting but also somewhat hazy. It all started in a dusty town called Tuxtla Gutiérrez near the southern border of Mexico. The year was 1950, and an epic road race was about to get underway, La Carrera Panamericana, in celebration of the completion of the Mexican section of the Panamerican highway which stretched … [Read more...]
Porsche Carrera RS (Type 964)
Porsche’s popular 911 model range has evolved hugely over the years, but a few iconic models stand out head and shoulders above the rest. In 1973, the Carrera RS 2.7 lifted the bar in the sports car market, but a decade and a half later, it was the turn of the Type 964 Porsche Carrera RS to carry the baton. From its inception in 1963 up to the end of the G-Series in July … [Read more...]
Porsche 959 Sport
It’s hard to know where to start when writing about a car like the Porsche 959, because for its time, it was just so advanced and leagues ahead of its rivals. Launched in 1985 at a time when the British motor industry was busy imploding, the 959 was billed by Porsche as the ‘Car of the Future’, a supercar with its origins in the humble 911. The brainchild of Porsche … [Read more...]
