Porsche 911 RSR By Rennsport: Sublime Or Sacrilege? | Carfection

Launched in 1963, the 911 quickly proved itself to be a rally car, but when Porsche turned its attention to circuit racing in the 1970s, they found themselves needing a few hundred legal 911 racing cars to comply with the new rules. homologation, what they came up with was the 2.7 Carrera RS RS stands for Rennsport, a name now shared with Paul Cochran's company, where this iconic 911 competition from 1973 is celebrated and reinvented. Has it always been a 911? Have they ever doubled down on something else? I've dabbled with some of the different cars. but the heart of the 911 Desormeaux since I left school and was actually working on 1980s cars when they were new.

The inspiration for Rennsport was kind of reliving my youth when I bought the first Carrera 3-2, which was around 2007 2008 when they weren't much money and I converted it visually into a 2.7 RS, so you made your own. I did it. I did a white Grand Prix with the Mexican blue stripes, blue stripes and blue lettering on it and it kind of went from there, so this was originally an '88 car that you obviously restored to look like a 73 RS or a Touring version of a 73 R. If Porsche had built one you would get the purists saying you know how to play with any 911.

Absolute

sacrilege

, what is your opinion on the offer we received? Many people, we are very close to the Porsche Club. We get the Porsche Club owners to come and say it's

sacrilege

to do what we do, but the cars we actually use are 80's cars whose impact on cars there are thousands and thousands of them out there it was an everyday sports car in the 80's in my opinion is not really sacrilege, I think it would be if we did it with an original 72 narrow body car and doing it would maybe be yes, but there are a lot of them out there that are very believers: if you want to build something , build it however you want, it's profitable all around, so we strip it of its bare shell and start again, so what?

Does this snow work? We are now on a 3.5 liter engine. Yes, the base is the original 3.2 Carrera, but now the 23.5, which works with independent injection systems, has been eliminated. The throttle body system that we use and that we just developed with 80. power and then runs its own independent ECU that is completely programmable so we can get optimal performance. It has about 350 horsepower right now. 350. Well, I know there's a certain California restomod company that tends to go with the latter. models and it has all the coilovers and things that you've tried to keep things a little more in line with the original, that's right, still on the torsion bars, it's still on the torsion bars, we've done the 964 conversions with the coils and three, four, eight and four-litre engines, but we're finding that more and more people want the authentic 911 feel of the torsion beam light cars, which sort of got lost along the way when the 964 came out and started. to put it on. kilos and kilos of weight, how much does this weigh approximately, it's around 1100 kilos in the 73 car, the 73 RS and the RS are the things that really drive you here, these are the inspirations for everything you do, why, in particular, the 73 car. the shape of the 73 car before it was ruined by a big impact, the bumpers just scream 911, we have actually manufactured it, we did it all by hand with a lightweight steel panel beaten the old fashioned way, we use both thin gauge steel and We can just try to reduce the weight a little bit, but we don't go too far because we're building it like a road car, we're actually going against the grain and putting some soundproofing on it, it's the way.

People want cars now to be a road car to drive well and have a conversation about their spirit. It's really taking a classic design and making it better. It's not the original RSR, but it has that nice luxurious feel when you drive it. air conditioning sunroof satellite navigation Bluetooth has no abs or traction control with 210 full throttle horsepower available, the original RS could hit 60 in just 5.6 seconds 100 miles per hour in less than 13 and cruise passes at 150 , but if you want even more, you can check the option box marked M for 9 1 and the brainiacs at Zuffenhausen will remove another 80 kilos of excess weight and work on the new 2.8 liter block to give you just 300 and 8 hp . 55 Rennsport Arendt cars, meaning the race cars were built on the track.

The RS r was phenomenal, winning the Targa Florio, the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring, all in its first season. This is the motorsports legend that inspires the rental guys. more and it's the closest a mere mortal like me will get to that childhood hero designed by Bootsy Porsche Branson by Ferdinand Porsche this car is easy to drive the ergonomic Lee got it right with the 911 the first time he tried it it's not cramped and awkward and overly complicated as some of the early classics can be, it's just a very easy retro supercar, now this is how Rennsport would have imagined an RS touring would have turned out if Porsche had ever built one, being a comforting creature things like the sunroof air conditioning. the heat of the works, these beautiful reclining seats that are period correct and have some period nods to the original RS, like the flat black door cards, the design of... it's all very familiar, but there are some touches charming some nods to other Porsche racing graces, like the nine-one-seven's balsa wood shift knob, kind of nervous about taking something with 320 brake horsepower or stuff like that on these deep police roads of Cotswolds, but it feels so planted it feels absolutely Bob, people say you should never meet your heroes, well, because this is incredible, only about 50 genuine RSRs were built and a good chunk of them were stuffed into the Armco by gentleman drivers in the past, they almost never come. on sale and a few years ago when classic 9/11 prices were going absolutely crazy, the RS's are good, the RS's are light, we're hitting almost seven figures, so if you're an LFO fan like me I'm and you have about a hundred thousand dollars burning a hole in your Geno and you really want to scratch that 911 itch.

We have a tough decision to make because you could go out and buy a new 911 for about a hundred thousand dollars. Great, you could buy the Carrera S, the 992, or you could go to the guys at Rennsport and ask them to build you something really special, the car that will probably hold its value and pay homage to perhaps the classic, the latest, the greatest air. Cooled 911 that Porsche once made as Bootsy Porsche's old ferry. Porsche once said that he couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I had to build one instead, so I'm talking about how many hours are spent on this type of car on average. between nine hundred and one thousand hours for a car to build when you were thinking about designing this, why did you build it to this particular specification?

Orange is my favorite color, true, but the RSR body is my favorite body for the car. I like it. The large arches are like the ducktail, although many cars have now opted for the flat trunk. Lee, yes, the ducktail is making a comeback. I love the spotlights on the front. I think it's just a period effect. Everything in this car. It's everything I want and the way I can use it as a daily car. You designed it with a real driver in mind, right? It's been used the way it's supposed to be, here it is. a 1979 11 above that is stuck in the kun car and it's kind of a garage queen but there's no point in having it it's just an investment and it's a bit boring nothing I like driving it and I like driving it I have I've seen I'm not sure I'll revive it my youth or mid-life crisis any time the tires can be replaced.

Yeah, I don't think there's any point in owning a car unless you're going to use it. What's the point of having it? 350 horsepower if you're not actually going to use it from time to time some people are into this like a game of Top Trumps well yeah that's it that's what it is right? I'm in this because I want to use it.