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January 2012 www.911porscheworld.com
REVOLUTION! NEW 911 DRIVEN NOT JUST AN EVOLUTION, THE NEW 991 MODEL 911 IS THE DEFINITIVE SPORTSCAR
£4.50 US$9.99 CANADA $12.95 No.214 www.911porscheworld.com
UNDER NEW ENGINE MANAGEMENT 964 RS GETS THE MOTEC TREATMENT
911&PW ON THE CARRERA PANAM THRASHING A 914 AROUND MEXICO
RALLY RIVALS: 928 V 911 RALLYING IRISH STYLE
BUYERS’ GUIDE The price is right: Get your hands on Porsche’s GT3 RS road racer while you can
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Words: Adam Towler Photography: Porsche AG
COMEthe REVOLUTION At last we get behind the wheel of the new 991 model 911. Get ready for the biggest single leap in the evolution of the 911. This car moves the game on
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NEW 911 FIRST DRIVE
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Words: Adam Towler Photography: Matt Howell
INJECTION OFCOLOUR
Rubystone 964 RS v Viper Green widebody 964. But it’s not all about colour. Both of these cars are running MoTeC’s aftermarket injection set up. The result? 300bhp apiece and mid range to die for
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MOTEC MODIFIED 964 TWIN TEST
W
e all appreciate that automotive technology marches on. In just about every facet of the car, apart from arguably driver satisfaction, tremendous advancements have been made over the past 20 years, and no more so than with the electronics contained within them. It stands to reason, given that human existence has been largely defined by nano-sized technology in little ‘black boxes’ in the modern age. Although electronics now control just about every aspect of a car’s behaviour, one of the first areas in which they came into widespread use was in controlling the functions of the engine, principally the fuel, spark and ignition timing. Fuel injection had originally been implemented by purely mechanical operation, but although such systems could be made to work respectably well in racing cars that were either flat out or switched off, in potent road cars the task was a lot trickier. These machines needed to be able to idle in
traffic as well as supply plenty of fuel at high revs. With the advent of the fuel crisis and clean air legislation it was clear that something would need to be done (see panel). Porsche introduced electronic control for the 911’s engine with the Carrera 3.2 model in 1984. Before that, the SC had still used the Bosch K-Jetronic system that used so-called ‘continuous flow’ injection (classed as a ‘Mechanical’ system), albeit using an air flow meter. The Motronic system had been used extensively on Porsche’s racing cars of the 1980s such as the 962c, but clearly by today’s standards it’s a crude system. Getting rid of the air flap and harnessing the vastly more powerful electronics systems available these days should yield some significant results, surely? Our two cars here today both use an aftermarket engine control unit and injection system from specialist firm MoTec. It’s the M84 system, and promises the control and adaptability of the very latest high performance cars at a fair price. And what demo cars they are: one, a Rubystone 964 Carrera RS sourced via Autofarm and the other a 964 ‘RS-alike’ currently
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La Carrera Panamericana
CARRERA! Words: Johnny Tipler Photography: Johnny Tipler, Sarah Bennett-Baggs, Andreas Beyer
Treading on the coat-tails of the big American V8s, Porsches made up a quarter of the entry list in the 2011 Carrera Panamericana, picking up several class wins. Our man Johnny Tipler was happy just to finish without crashing his 914
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CARRERA PANAMERICANA
T
he best driving experience in the world – that’ll be La Carrera Panamericana, the fabulous week-long Mexican road race; driving a racing car flat-out for 2,000 miles through spectacular terrain, stopping over each night at a provincial city in full-on fiesta. It could only happen in Mexico. My mount for this year’s race was the Porsche 914 GT/4 owned by Californian historic racer Bill Hemmer. Veteran of two Pan Ams – ’04 with a 356 and three years later with a 550 Spyder replica, I’d met him when I covered the ’07 event and, late in 2010, he generously asked me if I’d like to do this one at the wheel of his car. He’d targeted the 914 as the weapon of choice having been inspired by a piece I wrote about an ex-works rally car from 1971 (May 2008, Marching Orders, page 88). ‘Like all mid-engined cars,’ I’d said, ‘its surefooted togetherness elicits a feeling of confidence. On a dry tarmac rally, this would be one heck of a contender.’ Could I put my money where my mouth was? Like the works rally car, ours was presented with correct GT-pattern flared wings, but Bill selected a 2.0-litre Volkswagen Type 4 unit, torquey and unburstable, rather than the aurally preferable and more powerful 2.0litre flat-six of the 914/6. In its 1950s heyday La Carrera was regarded as the most arduous of the road races that counted towards the World Championship for Makes, and not a lot has changed since its reinstatement as a classic event in 1988. An outrageous car-breaker in the ‘50s, it had more than its fair share of crash-out casualties too – though happily injuries, let alone fatalities, are less common today. So I was well up for it. Next I needed to persuade a co-driver of the Pan Am’s pleasures. Step forward the intrepid Sarah Bennett-Baggs, Britcar front-runner in Aston Martin and BMW M3, and erstwhile ‘Pink Panther’ Porsche 911 SC racer. Sarah had also co-driven celeb chef James Martin on his abortive Mille Miglia run in ’08 aboard his Maserati A6GCS, so she knew the difference between tulips and pansies. To see if we’d get on, we followed the Monte Carlo Rally Historique back in January 2011, and later sampled Porsche GB’s Human Performance Centre at Silverstone to establish whether our fitness levels (well, mine, anyway) were up to the rigours of the Mexican marathon. We sampled a 914/4 at Silverstone, Sarah
TEX-MEX RECIPE
The original Carrera Panamericana ran from 1950 to 1954 and was first staged to celebrate the opening of the Mexican section of the intercontinental Panamerican Highway. Initially run the length of Mexico from north to south, the Carrera’s orientation was switched for 1951 to encourage broader media and spectator interest at Juarez and El Paso on the Texan border. Entry for the first year comprised mostly American stock cars, with Herschel McGriff’s Oldsmobile the winner, and when F1 driver Piero Taruffi won in 1951 with a Ferrari 212 Inter, the European manufacturers caught on, with Karl Kling beating the stock cars to win for Mercedes-Benz with a 300SL in 1952. For the following year when the event counted towards the World Sportscar Championship and was regarded as the most arduous contest in the world, Lancia represented European interest and Juan-Manuel Fangio in a D24 led a 1-2-3 victory. A fierce battle raged between the works Borgward spyders and the Guatemalan Porsche 550 coupe and 356 in the Sport Menor category, and Jose Herrarte’s class win in the 550 coupe prompted Porsche to apply the Carrera name to its special models thereafter. For 1954, the final running of the original Panamericana, full works teams came from Alfa Romeo, Porsche, Volkswagen and Borgward, not forgetting Detroit factory cars, Umberto Maglioli emerging victorious in his Ferrari 375 Inter from Phil Hill in a 375MM. Porsche 550 Spyders of Hans Herrmann and Jaroslav Juhan finished 3rd and 4th overall and class winners, placing the marque firmly on the map in top line international racing.
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BUYERS’ GUIDE
’RING MEISTER! If you thought Porsche’s 996 GT3 was the baddest of the bad, then you’ve never driven its road-legal track-bound sibling. The word ‘compromise’ was clearly not on the GT3 RS’s design brief… Words: Keith Seume Photography: Michael Ward
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996 GT3 RS BUYERS’ GUIDE STYLING AND BODYWORK That the GT3 RS gives more than a perfunctory nod to the styling of the classic 2.7 Carrera RS is no coincidence. This, too, was a limited-run homolgation special that acted as a standard-bearer for Porsche’s racing department. This latterday RS was only offered in white, with either red or blue highlights. Why white? Well, a decade ago (give or take), white was an unusual colour – it had largely fallen out of favour. So, a white car stood out from the crowd – but, more importantly, so did sponsors’ logos when applied to the bodywork… The styling is altogether more aggressive, with lowered suspension and a rear spoiler that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Star Wars interceptor. Carbon-fibre was used for the bonnet and luggage bay liner, while more bare carbon-fibre graced the mirrors and rear wing for the full nononsense effect. The rear window was lightweight acrylic, too, flexing slightly as you shut the door.
PRODUCTION AND MODELS
TAKE NO PRISONERS Back in our November 2011 issue, we took a look at the Porsche 996 GT3 as a candidate for a good used buy. We like the GT3 – it’s a pretty impressive compromise between a road car and a trackday special. A great all-rounder, in fact. But in the case of its wilder sibling, you can forget all that nonsense about ‘compromise’ and ‘all-rounder’ – the GT3 RS was a real Porsche race car that anyone could buy through their OPC.
Launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2003, the GT3 RS was a homologation special designed to compete in international GT racing. Just 200 of them needed to be built to satisfy the FIA that it was a ‘production car’ but, in reality, far more than this were sold (see the panel to the right). The drivetrain shared the same 993-based motor as the GT3, but the RS reputedly came with a few extra ponies (rumored to be close
to 400+bhp) and more torque than its ‘lesser’ sibling. And if you thought the basic GT3 was, well, ‘basic’, the RS model came with even fewer frills – this was only ever meant to be a racer in thin disguise. Nomexcovered seats and a fireextinguisher should give you an idea of what the RS is all about. Weighing 50kg less than the second generation GT3, the RS version makes an extremely rapid road or trackday car.
The Porsche 996 GT3 was always a pretty exclusive car, and was really only ever intended to be a bridge between ‘ordinary’ road cars and true racers. The road-legal GT3 RS was primarily built to homologate the GT3 RSR race car. It is not to be confused with the GT3 RS racer of 2001, which was a development of the earlier 996 GT3R. Confused? Don’t be… The chances of you coming across one of the previous RSs at your local specialists are slim to, frankly, remote. Although the original plan was to build just 200 cars, there seems little doubt that considerably more were actually sold. ‘Unofficial’ official sources put the figure at 686, of which 113 reputedly came to the UK with righthand drive. Of these, it is inevitable that a number have since been written off (indeed, at the time of writing, there are two damaged vehicles advertised for sale in the UK). Of the two colour schemes offered, around two-thirds of GT3 RSs came in white-with-red, making the white-withblue example shown here doubly desirable in our eyes. Production ended for the 2005 model year.
You could only buy the GT3 RS in one of two colour combinations: white with red, or white with blue. Two thirds were sold with the red trim. Rear wing is straight out of Star Wars
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CLASHOFTHE
TEUTONS Different animal versus a beast more sharp and twitchy. That’s one way to sum up our 928 v 911 rally car twin test. The results are surprising as we discover
A
rds Peninsular, Northern Ireland. Windswept flat-ish lands south of Belfast, home to the only club-owned racing circuit in the British Isles; Kirkistown. We were there to bring you the only published track test of an historic 911 rally car against a rallying 928. A 928 rally car? Could only be Irish surely? Not exactly: a swift survey shows three other 928 rally cars in the world; one German, one French: and one in Australia – with 450bhp at the rear wheels. All prepared for asphalt events. However the subject of our test has received thorough preparation for motor sport, and is building an admirable competition history in its first full year. It is a 1981 928 S, bought rally-ready two years ago by its justifiably proud owner Alan Courtney from Geoff Crabtree. Resplendent in Gulf Racing colours Courtney’s machine has already contested nearly 20 events in its short competition life. When asked why he bought the car, Courtney displays admirable logic in his reasoning: “300bhp and relatively cheap; simple as that.” Maylum Motorsport built it for rallying in 2009 for
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Crabtree. Based in Sittingbourne, Kent, Pete Maylum, an ex-Ford Boreham technician specialises in MkI and MkII Escort rally cars and builds replica Lancia 037 Rallys. The bodyshell work entailed a complete strip-down, seam welding, welding-in of a modified 944 roll cage and installation of a bag tank. The heater was removed, as was the original wiring loom, replaced by custom hand-built wiring: “There’s far too many electrics in a 928 as standard,” opines Courtney: “Terry, who works for us, made the loom for it; a neat job – all the relays are in there. Beautiful; really well done.” Removing much unwanted sound insulation material helped pare the overall weight and Sparco replacements for the big and heavy (c.a. 100kg each) standard seats with their heavy frames and six electric motors bring weight down from the 1540kg of the standard road car to 1364kg; fully fuelled, guarded, ready to rally. Remarkably, much of the running gear is standard –
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IRISH RALLY STARS
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