I’ve got the ultimate score for anyone smooth enough to take it on. If we can pull this thing off, we’ll have the coolest car to take to PCA track days. All we have to do is infiltrate Broad Arrow Auctions’ Monterey sale later this month and abscond with a highly unique Porsche race car. On the plus side, once we get the car in our grasp, it’ll make for a really swift getaway car. Forget sixty seconds, we’ll be gone in ten. Of course we’d have to repaint the car like a game of Grand Theft Auto to get the heat off of us, which is a shame, because the livery is so good.
When McLaren wiped the field with its F1 in 1995, Porsche went back to the drawing board for 1996, and the 911 GT1 was born. As the swan song of Porsche’s 993-generation, the company built what is essentially a racing prototype with some concessions to make it street legal in limited quantities. This big yellow mid-engine monster carried 600 turbocharged horsepower, and was intended to take on all comers at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the middle 1990s.
This car, an early 1996 example, was built around a standard street 911’s center monocoque, bulkhead, dashboard, and frunk, as well as the original front suspension pickup points. As a concession to aerodynamics, the car’s roof was chopped by a few inches, and a 911 Speedster windshield employed. Out back a custom rear end saw the car increased by nine inches to accomodate a mid-engine layout.
This particular car was built and delivered to Roock Racing for the 1997 season, where drivers Ralf Kelleners and Yannick Dalmas would turn wheels. Dalmas had been a factory effort GT1 driver during the 96 season, and had won Le Mans with McLaren in 1995. The car took home a podium finish at an endurance race on the streets of Helsinki, but DNF’d at Le Mans just eight laps in, and Roock decided to offload the car to Rohr Racing. It was Rohr that would give the car its iconic rainbow scribble livery, which it wears today.
The Ohio-based team took possession of the car in July, making this the first 911 GT1 to ever enter the United States. The car was immediately successful, winning four IMSA GT Championship events in a row and securing pole at two of them, piloted by Allan McNish, Andy Pilgrim, and Dorsey Schroeder. Through a couple more racing teams, the car continued to compete through the end of the 2001 Grand Am season, never receiving serious crash damage.
So now that we’ve assembled our team and we know the target, does anyone have any ideas on how to get it out of the auction and then out of Monterey, California before getting apprehended by the police? There are no bad ideas, let’s just get them all out and written down. OK, go!