Porsche’s secret stars revealed Porsche Unseen, a new book by Stefan Bogner and Jan Karl Baedeker, reveals the concept cars that until now have been hidden away on designers’ laptops, never before seen outside the firm’s R&D centre in Weissach. Despite Porsche’s reputation for evolution rather than revolution, some of them are left-field in the extreme. By Piers Ward
PORSCHE 919 STRE ET
This is what the 919 LMP1 prototype could have looked like if it had been made street legal. The car runs the same carbonfibre tub and 888bhp hybrid powertrain as the racer but wrapped in a road-friendly skin and with driving characteristics more suited to amateurs. Presumably for when your imagined Mark Webber skills don’t match reality.
PORSCHE 904
Based on the same carbon monocoque as the futuristic Volkswagen XL, this is the modern interpretation of what a 904 Carrera GTS could look like. It weighs only 900kg and Porsche thought about using a mid-mounted vee-twin motorbike engine to power it. A stripped-out, banshee-engined sub-Cayman sports car gets our vote.
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The car with Le Mans in mind. The Vision 920 was designed either as a hypercar for the road or as a customer racer, based around an LMP1 prototype. Either way, it’s probably the most extreme machine to come out of Porsche in recent history. Next stop La Sarthe?
PO RSCH E 918 RS
Hailing from 2019, the 918 RS was inten ded to offer the next step on from the 918. Like its ancestor, the RS featu res hybrid technology, only this time enhanced to be even more dramatic on road and track. Will Porsche buil d it to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 918? We can but hope.
