Coupe - page 204

Remember that Top Gear test from 2008 where Jeremy Clarkson compared a Lotus Elise to the OG Tesla Roadster? Yes, the same one that led Elon Musk to sue Clarkson. Well, it appears to be coming full circle for the Elise, because we’ve got our first hint of the mysterious Lotus Theory 1, the rumored all-electric Elise, how ironic. This is a car that could shape up to be a formidable rival to the upcoming Porsche 718 EV. Lotus’ marketing chief, Qiao Xinyu, dropped a shadowy image of the Theory 1’s rear end. Sure, while the image doesn’t really reveal much, that prominent wing hovering over a sculpted rear-end, the sleek taillights flanking the classic Lotus badge, and the aggressive diffuser all but shout "sports car." But this electric silhouette throws a bit of a curveball. While the Eletre and Emeya have their sporty bits, that rear end wouldn’t be caught dead lumbering on an SUV or a four-door.

People just love doing stuff on the Porsche 911 platform. It seems every day, a new, reimagined version of the rear-engine sports car pops up, and nine times out of 10, they’re mostly good. The 911 lineup is the most versatile of any sports car ever produced, and there is a variant for every need. With the platform being as versatile as it is, you would think Porsche themselves would be giving you the craziest iterations of the 911, but no. Another neat example of a heavily modified 911 comes from a California-based Russel Built Fabrication. The company started out in the 2000s, by maintaining movie prop cars, but eventually evolved into a fully-fledged custom shop. Russel Built Fab’s latest and most ambitious project is the Porsche 911 Baja, which takes an already-capable platform and gives it the ability to jump over sand dunes at seriously impressive speeds. While this is not the company’s first off-road 911 build, it is, by far, the most extreme that I have ever seen. Here’s what makes it tick.

Modern digital tools and computing power, give pretty much anybody (with some level of skill of course) the ability to manipulate images like never before. A.I. has only taken that narrative further, with endless ways to come up with silly stuff. But it can also be put to good use as we have here with this rendering based on the already stunning 2021 Mission R concept car, this time sans the wing. But here’s why I think this one is a bit more special when compared to previous Mission R renderings that cropped up online.

The Porsche-Piëch connection is a deep-rooted family relationship that goes back decades and has shaped the history and success of the Porsche and Volkswagen automotive groups. Now, for those of you who haven’t heard of the Piëch name before, the late Dr.Ferdinand Piëch was one of the most influential automotive personalities of the 20th century. He was involved with the motorsports division of Porsche and Audi in the 1970s and ’80s and was instrumental in proliferating technologies such as Quattro and TDI. As CEO of Volkswagen in the 1990s, Piëch was also responsible for acquiring iconic brands such as Bugatti, and Lamborghini into the wider VW Group portfolio. Despite these phenomenal achievements, no car ever bore the Piëch name, until recently.

TECHART is one of those tuning houses that have cemented a reputation for high-quality performance parts. Since 1987, the company has done wonders for mostly (but not only) Porsche sports cars. Eventually, TECHART expanded its work to models like the Cayenne and Panamera, but what the outfit does with the 911 is something else. Back in 2021, the German tuner introduced the GT Street R - a 992 Turbo S with more power and crazy aero. At the same time, TECHART introduced Flyweight - its new performance brand for personalization. Think Porshe’s Sonderwunsch, but from TECHART.

Porsche’s 911 GT3 has long been the choice for driving purists seeking the ultimate road-legal track car. After being absent for the 2017 model year, it reappeared for 2018 with some crucial upgrades to improve its already-compelling racing pedigree. Gone was the 3.8-liter engine! A 4.0-liter naturally aspirated derived from the GT3 Cup racer motivated it with 500 ponies of might, capable of revving up to 9,000 rpm. A seven-speed PDK was standard, but a six-speed manual made a comeback for purists.

Bonhams is set to auction a very special 993-generation 911 Turbo at Goodwood Revival Collectors’ Motor Cars And Automobilia. Officially named ’The Last Waltz’, it is the last air-cooled Porsche to be built and released from Zuffenhausen. An important milestone in the brand’s history, the Last Waltz was built at the factory on March 27, 1998. It’s too bad that I was only eight years old and completely oblivious to history unfolding. It was commissioned via the Sonderwunsh program for German Author Clauss Vanderborg. Jerry Seinfeld’s famed 993 Carrera 4S Cabriolet was finished and delivered on 31st March, shortly after the Last Waltz came off the line. However, the latter spent six months with the special wish wing of the brand getting specially kitted out with a bunch of aesthetic and mechanical modifications.

When it comes to reimagining and modifying Porsche cars, there is no shortage of great names that specialize in the art of making the German company’s performance models even more capable than they already are. Such treatment is not limited only to the Porsche 911 and 718 models though. The German company, Friedrich Performance Manufaktur (FPM) offers performance-enhancing treatment for all Porsche models, and one of its latest kits is dedicated to making the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT faster than the latest, most powerful 911 we have. Of course, the 992.2 update is about to bring even more radical variants of the iconic, rear-engine sports car, but the Friedrich Performance package for the Cayenne GT gives it a 36-percent bump in power with a bit of extra torque. As you may expect, the numbers are impressive, but even more surprising is how little it takes to unleash that extra power from the Porsche SUV.

Unfortunate circumstances are just as likely to hit cars as they are people and I recently stumbled upon one such build on the web and this one is bound to raise a few eyebrows, among the classic Porsche 911 community. Air-cooled Porsches are one of those things that are considered art. Altering any aspect of them is the automotive equivalent of blasphemy. Unless, of course, you are Singer, Tuthill, or one of the other names, dealing in reimagined 911s. Essentially, what you are looking at is a Frankenstein of a car. It started as a 1976 model that was turned into a race car, and eventually, thanks to a landslide, it required a powertrain transplant. Chris Ashton from Ruffian Cars is the man behind the crazy Porsche 911 race car, and what he had to say about this build and how it um... evolved, was quite the story. More importantly, the Tesla powertrain is not where the madness of this classic 911 build ends. This also raises the question - is it better to let something die or save it through unconventional methods?

Regardless of the generation, beyond the 911 Turbo models, the GT range is the next natural step. These track-bred cars have continued to evolve since the late 90s and early 2000s with the introduction of even more hard-core models with the likes of the GT3 RS and GT2. Given how most of these track-bred cars are limited-run models, they tend to command a premium over your average run-of-the-mill Carreras. I was curious to see how the GT3 market in particular has been faring over the past few years, given the wild ride we had with regard to pricing, through the pandemic, and here’s what I found.

Sharing production costs between models is not uncommon in the modern-day automotive industry. It seems even Porsche’s iconic sports cars are no exception and the Porsche 981 and 991 models are a perfect example. The 911 doesn’t need an introduction as it has been Porsche’s flagship sports car since 1964, after succeeding the 356 - Porsche’s first sports car, since the company officially became a brand. That said, Porsche’s financial troubles from the 1990s, prompted the company to give us a budget-friendly model. In came the 986 Boxster, and it immediately became clear it was a cut-price, mid-engine 911, minus the rear seats. This was not the last time Porsche did this. Australian YouTuber and Porsche aficionado, Jeff Richardson took a deep dive into the 981 and 991 Porsche models to examine how much they have in common. He also bought a flooded 981 Boxster solely to dismantle it. One thing became clear to him – the extent of the similarities between the 911 and Boxster/Cayman is a lot more than you initially may have thought, and it doesn’t stop with these two models.

Strap yourselves in, gearheads, because a piece of automotive and cinematic history will soon hit the auction block, and it’s gonna make your wallet weep. Remember that #20 Porsche 917k that stole the show in Steve McQueen’s Le Mans? Yeah, the one with the screaming flat-12 and the Gulf Oil livery so good it should be illegal? That very car, chassis number 917-022, is getting ready to trade hands in January 2025 at Mecum’s Kissimmee auction.