Believe it or not, this race-tuned Porsche 911 is legal
Race cars are angry beasts that squeeze your insides with their G-forces, rattle your skeleton, evacuate your lungs and make your eyes bulge. Which is why you’re generally not allowed to drive them on public roads.
Driving can be psychologically taxing (indeed, from my observation, it is well and truly above the mental capacity of at least a third of the humans on our roads), but we don’t tend to think of it as physical work. I would estimate that I expend the same amount of energy at the wheel as I do on my couch, waving my remote-control hand furiously and kicking the cat while cursing the fact that I seem to have finished Netflix – and yet several websites, including the scientific-sounding Captain Calculator, agree that driving a car burns between 150 and 250 calories an hour.
Driving a race car is a whole different kettle of fat burning, however, because unless you’ve tried it, it really is hard to explain just how physical it is. I was once unfortunate enough to see a video of my gurning, sweat-pink-pig face while I was wrestling some monstrous Italian machine around a track and it looked as though I was attempting to expel a large watermelon filled with lava from my rectum.
Race cars are angry beasts that squeeze your insides with their G-forces, rattle your skeleton with their rough ride and evacuate your lungs with their violent brakes, all while making your eyes bulge with their fear-factor speed.
Which is why you’re generally not allowed to drive things like the loudly ludicrous Porsche 911 GT3 RS on public roads. Indeed, several people who saw me attempting to climb out of its rigidly racy seats before splatting messily on the ground stopped to ask me whether this machine was actually legal.
There are several signs that this RS is a race car, the most obvious being its ridiculous rear wing, which is so large and high off the ground that I found half a dozen of my neighbours sheltering under it when it rained (there’s not much to do where I live). Look closely at this silly wing thing and you’ll notice that it has actuators, which connect to a DRS (Drag Reduction System) button on the steering wheel, which, for an F1 nerd in particular, is hilariously wonderful. There are almost too many buttons to count on said steering wheel, allowing you to adjust everything from the amount of power from the engine to the levels of active aerodynamic downforce and how hard you’d like the car’s computers to work on stopping you from spinning off the road via many, many levels of traction control.
This, too, seems designed to make people who have quiet, solitary fantasies about being an F1 driver very, very happy indeed.
There are other clues, too, like the fact that the rear seats have been replaced by a sexy carbon fibre roll-cage, and that the Porsche’s frunk has been deleted, with the space taken up by two huge fans to help cool the most powerful naturally aspirated engine ever fitted to a road-legal 911 (a 4.0-litre flat six-cylinder, making 386kW and 465Nm).
Then there are the racing harnesses, the fire extinguisher and the fact that driving this 911 at pace really hurts, albeit in a delightfully exciting way. It’s fast, of course, howling its way to 100km/h in 3.2 seconds, but that’s merely the smallest part of what makes it so quick, point to point. The magic of this car is in its downforce, the way it feels like giant magnets are sticking it to the road surface and making sure there is no body-roll or nose-pitch of any kind, no matter how hard you are pushing. This allows you to not so much slice through corners as obliterate their existence. Supremely sharp, almost sentient steering also helps and, as you get used to the extreme limits of its performance envelope, you find yourself huffing and puffing from the G-forces, like someone who’s genuinely exercising rather than just driving.
On the right road – which has to be as smooth as possible, because track cars like bumps about as much as I like licking cat food – the GT3 RS is simultaneously revelatory and religiously inspiring. I called for some kind of God repeatedly, although He might not have appreciated all of my swearing in shock.
To put this crazed car in some kind of perspective, I swapped out of it into a Porsche 718 Cayman, a vehicle I have always loved and desired, and found it dull, slow and lacking in steering feel. I was appalled at myself.
The 911 GT3 RS is a lot more expensive than a $132,500 Cayman, of course, with a starting price of $537,600, while my test car also featured the optional $76,420 Weissach Package, which adds even more carbon bits and magnet-infused shift paddles, which provide “a more precise pressure point and a clearly perceptible click”. Yes, they do, and it’s beautiful. You can’t have this car as a manual, but I loved those paddles so much I almost didn’t whinge about it.
Sure, buying a home gym might be a cheaper and more effective way to exercise, but owning a Porsche 911 GT3 RS is clearly the better choice.
Porsche 911 GT3 RS
Engine: 4.0 six-cylinder (386kW/465Nm)
Fuel Economy: 12.8 liters per 100km
Transmission: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic, rear-wheel drive
Price: $537,600
Rating: 4.5/5
