Porsche GT1 Straßenversion

Stuttgart Saturday – arguably one of the rarest and most extreme Porsche road cars of all time – the awesome GT1 Straßenversion (Street version) @fosgoodwood 2013 which was celebrating 50 years of the 911.

This ultra rare car was developed to compete in the GT1 category of sportscar racing – the BPR Global GT Series which then became the FIA GT Championship – in the mid to late 90’s. To be eligible, the car had to be homologated and this required a small number to be created for road use.

The brains behind the creation of the GT1 was the Porsche legend, Norbert Singer, who had previously designed the all conquering Porsche 962. The car was launched in 1996 and was a purpose built racing prototype. The rear of the car, including the engine – a twin turbo 3.2 Litre 600hp flat six - was derived from the Porsche 962. The racing version was clocked at 205mph on the Mulsanne Straight during its first visit to Le Mans in 1996. The car was further developed during 1997 and 1998.

Probably its most memorable performance came at Le Mans in 1998. Despite being slower than the BMW V12 LM, Mercedes CLK-LM and Toyota GT-One, those teams all suffered mechanical woes, and Porsche’s bullet proof reliability, saw it record a 1-2 finish – the marques 16th overall win at the classic race. The drivers of the winning car being Allan McNish, Laurent Aiello and Stephane Ortelli.

The race statistics for the GT1 are impressive – it competed in 135 races with 47 wins.

For homologation purposes, a total of 25 cars had to be produced for road use. After the initial two prototypes were produced, the remaining cars came off the production line in 1997. The majority of these cars were either Artic Silver or Fern White. The Straßenversion had a slightly de-tuned engine – 536hp, 0-62mph 3.9s and 191mph top speed.

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