It’s tough to overstate just how crazy Porsche’s new one-off car is. See, normally, the stuff you see going down the Mulsanne straight or any of the other tracks the World Endurance Championship races on is pretty far from the cars some of these brands, like Porsche, put on the road. Really, the two couldn’t be more different, as the WEC doesn’t require homologation — the process by which a manufacturer has to make a set number of road cars that closely mirror what you see racing on Sunday. The new Porsche 963 RSP is about as close as anyone who isn’t driving on the company’s WEC team will get to wheeling a Le Mans racer.
Porsche Teams Worked On The Hypercar In Secret
How this all started is a remarkable story in its own right. A small team at Porsche, known to few at the company, began evaluating whether any of this would be possible and concluded, quite frankly, that it wasn’t. Simply put, the starting point, a Le Mans race car, was too far from a road car to ever bridge the gap. Getting the car homologated would be a regulatory nightmare, but doing a one-off looked much simpler. So, the team set to work.
“A lot of changes have been made to suspension and systems to make it more tame and more like a road car, but still keep the pedigree of the 963 race car. On top of this, what the restoration group in Atlanta has been able to bring forward is a level of quality that is not aligned with the race car at all, whatsoever.”
– Jonathan Diuguid, Managing Director of Porsche Penske Motorsport
In close collaboration with the company’s WEC team, Porsche Penske Motorsport, the team got to work on a new chassis, assembled at Porsche’s Atlanta HQ. The team worked in secret behind temporary walls, so other Porsche employees couldn’t see what was going on.
Porsche’s One-Off Le Mans Hypercar Has A Darn Cupholder
Scores of changes were made to set the car apart from its WEC counterpart. The carbon bodywork was sanded and painted, unlike the Penske racers, which simply use a vinyl wrap. The interior is trimmed in leather and Alcántara, and there’s actual padding on the seats. The steering wheel grips are leather instead of the usual black Alcántara, and there’s even a 3D-printed cupholder. The bodywork was also modified, nixing the car’s huge and probably not very road-friendly wheel arch vents, as well as places for license plates. The car is currently registered in Alabama, of all places.
Then there’s the motor. The V8 is a version of the naturally aspirated one from the Porsche 918 Spyder race car. This one shares about 80 percent of its componentry with the racer, though changes needed to be made to the motor to get it to run on comparatively low-octane pump gas. In spite of the lower-octane fuel, the V8 and its hybrid system churn out around 700 horsepower. The suspension is set up for the road, too, rather than the track. The car is owned by Roger Penske himself, hence the RSP, Penske’s initials, in the car’s name. He’ll be waiting a while to take it home, however, as the car is on a bit of a media tour first, stopping at the Circuit de la Sarthe in France, then the Porsche museum, following a stint at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, then sometime at Monterey Car Week before finally heading home.
TopSpeed’s Take
The 963 is a truly incredible feat of engineering, and a homage to Porsche’s famous 917 Le Mans racer. It’s a uniquely cool piece of automotive art, and there’ll be a handful of opportunities to see the car in the flesh before it spends a life in Penske’s garage. We’d recommend going to see the one-off, if only to marvel at the engineering that went into both this specific car and Porsche’s WEC efforts as a whole.
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