Off to the limit of unreasonableness: With the new GT3 RS comes the new "King of Elfer". There has never been a car like this at Porsche. An extreme racing machine that is actually too good for the street. And of an endangered species.
Please buckle up, it might be a little faster today. Let's park our sustainable thoughts at the side of the road for a moment and drift into the border area of unreasonableness. Doors open for the new 911 GT3 RS. One of the last of its kind. An uncompromising muscle beast, threatened with extinction. Never before has Porsche built a road car so consistently designed for performance. The leap from one generation to the next has never been greater. This 911 GT3 RS is the essence of Porsche, an extreme racing machine that seems to have swindled its street legal status by accident.
The new "King of Elfer" looks more radical than many thoroughbred racing cars. A miracle from the wind tunnel. "There was no project where we spent more time in the wind tunnel," says Andreas Preuninger, series manager for the GT vehicles. More than 250 hours came together, plus 1500 simulations. This lighthouse project is really all about aerodynamics.
Measured against the fact that it is a road vehicle, a gigantic effort was put into it. At the front, active, stepless wing elements move the air under the vehicle floor out of the way for the first time in order to minimize lift. There is now only one cooler in the middle under the bonnet, previously there were three. The mono cooler weighs seven kilos less than the previous three combined. It is also more efficient and is 30 percent more compact. This creates additional space for further aerodynamic elements. The trunk is completely eliminated.
The warm breeze from the radiator is laboriously routed around the body, fins on the roof prevent it from flowing back to the engine at the back and being sucked in. There are also side blades, openings in the fenders, a rear diffuser and a stately active rear wing (two-part), which can be adjusted automatically or at the push of a button. Even components of the chassis were designed streamlined in teardrop shape. According to Porsche, the entire aerodynamics package ensures downforce of 860 kilograms at 285 km/h, and at 200 km/h it is still over 400 kilograms, with which the sportiest 911 is pressed onto the road. The so-called downforce could be doubled compared to the old GT3 RS.
The second major topic is lightweight construction. In principle, the outer skin is completely new, hardly a part still comes from the series 911. In order to reach the combat weight of 1450 kilos, body components such as the front fenders, roof, front and trunk lid and the entire rear wing including the carrier are made of light carbon. For the first time, the doors are also made of CFRP, which alone weighs five kilos. In addition, all panes are extra thin and light, inside the standard CFRP full bucket seats save additional weight.
If you thread yourself into these screw clamps, you end up in the middle of motorsport. Everything that follows now is not conditioned for pure acceleration or high speed, but for optimal cornering speed and maximum driving pleasure. Compared to its predecessor, the performance of the revised 4.0-liter six-cylinder boxer has only been increased by 11 kW/15 hp to 386 kW/525 hp. And with a top speed of 296 km/h, a GT3 RS stays under the 300 mark for the first time. But the sovereignty with which the model athlete throws himself into curves is simply spectacular, a completely new dimension. The sharpest series 911 of all time pushes the limits up a notch again. It turns mediocre drivers into fast ones and good pilots into professionals.
In the basic setting, the chassis is designed so that it should fit 90 percent of all drivers. The remaining, really ambitious racers can now configure their sports equipment completely individually while driving using four rotary knobs on the steering wheel. For the first time in a production Porsche, the compression and rebound stages of the dampers can be adjusted in multiple stages. To do this, agile mechanics used to have to crawl under the car and get their hands dirty.
After-work drifters will hardly be able to fully exploit the possibilities of this insane doctoral thesis and the author of these lines has reached his limits if he wanted to describe all the finesse of the new GT3 RS in detail. Even Preuninger admits: "When we defined the concept of the car, we were really brave."
But even normal people without a driver's license quickly notice how this greyhound is trained on racetracks. How calculated it is when cornering, how the aerodynamics help keep the car stable when braking from high speed, how the electronics help you get out of the corner quickly without embarrassing pirouettes. In addition, the short dual-clutch transmission serves a seven-course menu that always fits and the six-cylinder blows a march up to 9000 revolutions that would do even pure racing cars credit.
Incidentally, it would be misleading to speak of something like suitability for everyday use in this context. The guy belongs on the circuit, not on the street. He has no place because behind the seats a carbon cage provides stability. He has no comfort because nobody would demand him anyway. And he has zero ambitions to succeed in city traffic. What's he supposed to do there?
The 911 GT3 RS has everything it takes to make its owners happy. Good customers of the company, who are “allocated” one at the list price of 229,517 euros, get hold of one of the probably best-interest-bearing shares these days. A decent increase in value is part of the guarantee. In the USA, where dealers are not subject to any fixed prices, the new 911 GT3 RS is already being sold at a premium of 250,000 dollars above the list price. And the race has only just begun.
Technical specifications
