Leave it to incredibly talented hot rodders in Japan to build a ridiculously fun but extremely uncomfortable street car from an old Porsche factory-built race car. This 996-generation Porsche 911 started life as the 89th GT3 to drive off the assembly line way back in 1999, and was quickly conscripted into the on-track battle for one-make series supremacy as a GT3 Cup racer. After spending a few years as a track-only car, it was first registered for the road in 2005 by Tanaka Tetsusaburo, who raced in Super GT at the time. Now it has made its way to Seattle, and you can buy it on Craigslist.
Once its useful life as a race car was over, this 911 was turned into a spectacular show car. According to the seller it was shown at Wekfest in 2014 looking much the way it does now. The builders updated the bumper and headlights to later facelifted pieces before painting the whole thing in what appears to be Audi’s Nardo Grey, or a similar shade. The front bumper is recognizably a GT2-style piece, but it’s been modified to fit a narrow-body car. The big rear wing has been removed, but otherwise it looks ready to go straight to the track.
The GT3 Cup was already a pretty potent machine from the factory, delivering 370 naturally-aspirated horsepower from a 3.6-liter Mezger engine. It’s got center-lock wheels, a stripped down interior, and not much else. This car has just 18,000 miles on it, and while many of them were probably done on race tracks, this is basically Porsche’s most reliable engine of all time, so you probably won’t have to rebuild it any time soon if you drive it like a normal person.
I am a self-avowed Porsche dork and nomenclature stickler, so when Porsche launched the 991-generation 911 R for 2016 I was deeply annoyed. The original 911 R was built as an FIA GT 2.0-class rally monster in 1968, essentially by stripping a base 911 down to its most pure lightweight basics and fitting it with the 210-horsepower 906 Carrera 6 powerplant. Only 24 examples were built, and they were all race-ready street-legal machines through and through. So when the 911 R redux came about eight years ago, I expected to see a street-legal race car, but what we got was a slightly lighter GT3 with no wing and a manual transmission. What?
No, this is exactly what the 911 R should have been. R stands for Rennsport, after all. Why shouldn’t it be based on a race car?
If this car is your cup of tea, it certainly is mine, you can buy it right now. The seller, an importer in Seattle, is offering it for just $62,500. That’s significantly cheaper than a regular 996 GT3, and this one is even faster and more raw. What could go wrong?
