For years, the difference between road car and race car was a bit more nebulous than it is now. Especially at places like Le Mans, it wasn’t until the 1960s that the paths for road cars and top-flight prototypes started to diverge. Now, the stuff you see at the pointy end of the grid at La Sarthe has more in common with a Formula 1 car than, say, a 911.
Which is precisely why the Porsche 963 RSP is so remarkable. This is a real-deal 963 LMDh car, tamed just enough for road use, wearing a set of French license plates. We spoke with those who turned a crazy idea into reality.
Photo by: Porsche
At last year’s IMSA-season-ending Petit Le Mans, a group of Porsche folks got together to talk about how they could commemorate the 50th anniversary of the company’s creation of a roadgoing 917. Porsche made the car for Count Rossi, heir to the Martini & Rossi liquor fortune. Despite a fully-trimmed interior, Rossi’s was a full-on Le Mans-winning race car for the road. The Italian managed to get a license plate from the state of Alabama, of all places, and actually enjoyed the car on the street.
“October 12th was the very specific day where a couple of people sat together and we were brainstorming. ‘How could we reimagine such a story as of today?’” recalls Timo Resch, CEO of Porsche Cars North America, in a virtual media roundtable. “And we started on that day project where only very few people were involved.”
They created what in Germany is referred to as a submarine project—one involving as few people as possible, existing beneath the visible surface, only emerging when absolutely necessary.
The team quickly deemed creating a fully road-homologated version of the 963 impossible. A car like this is just too far divorced from the requirements of street cars, so Porsche would have to alter it to an unrecognizable state to get it homologated. Instead, Porsche would create a one-off that hewed as closely to the race car as possible, and a car that could get special dispensation for very limited road use.
Photo by: Porsche
Obviously, Porsche would have to work with Porsche Penske Motorsport to make the car a reality, and the team decided that Roger would be the car’s ideal owner. The name RSP are the captain’s initials, Roger Searle Penske.
Porsche Motorsport in Germany prepared a new chassis for the 963 RSP—this is not a reused tub from a race car. Under designer Grant Larson, Porsche Exclusiv Manufaktur did the design work, but the car was actually put together at Porsche Cars North America’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. There, it was worked on behind temporary walls, so the other technicians wouldn’t know what was going on.
“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,” says Jonathan Diuguid, managing director of Porsche Penske Motorsport. “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.”
This isn’t to say the race cars aren’t Penske Perfect. But the finish on their carbon-fiber body panels is rough, and wrapped simply with vinyl. Here, PCNA craftspeople sanded down the carbon fiber bodywork and painted it in the same Martini Silver as the Count Rossi 917. They also trimmed the interior in Alcantara matching the tan of the 917 as well, and there are other nods to road usability. There’s leather on the steering-wheel grips and even a 3D-printed removable cup holder.
Photo by: Porsche
There are some bodywork changes, too. Racing rulebooks require huge vents over the wheel wells to prevent the car getting blown over in the case of a spin. For the RSP, Porsche created pieces that close in gaps, while still allowing for some ventilation. Also, the team had to make accommodations for front and rear license plates.
Despite such niceties, this is very much just a 963. You get a 4.6-liter V-8 twin-turbo V-8 paired with a spec hybrid system consisting of an electric motor and power electronics from Bosch, and an XTrac seven-speed sequential transmission. The battery is a small, 800-volt lithium ion unit from Fortescue Zero that bolts into the carbon-fiber tub from below.
The engine is derived from the naturally aspirated V-8 in the Porsche 918 Spyder hypercar, which itself was a development of the RS Spyder LMP2 car of the 2000s. It shares about 80 percent of its components with the 918 Spyder’s engine, so adapting it for road use wasn’t as difficult as it could have been with a bespoke racing engine. Still, adapting the V-8 to run on pump gas was a significant calibration challenge.
Porsche Penske Motorsport also tweaked the deployment of the hybrid system to be smoother, better suited for low-speed driving on the street. Porsche doesn’t quote a power figure for the 963 RSP, but the race car is capable of around 700 horsepower, split between the hybrid system and the V-8 depending on balance-of-performance.
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Source: Porsche
The 963 RSP sits on the same Michelin treaded rain tires the race cars use in inclement conditions, and they’re wrapped around 18-inch OZ wheels. Porsche set the ride height as high as it could, and put the dampers in their softest settings to make the car drivable on the street, though one imagines the ride quality will be a bit firm still. And yes, the 963 RSP has turn signals and a horn.
Famously, the 917 starts on a key drilled out to save weight. Starting the 963 is a bit more complicated—it requires a laptop, and the assistance of a race team that knows how the car works. So, Penske will need to do a bit of planning ahead if he wants to exercise the car, though as Porsche points out, he owns a race track and a race team, so using the 963 RSP won’t be too difficult.
Porsche got special permission from French authorities to drive the car on the roads around Le Mans, and the license plates it wears are for automakers testing prototypes. Longtime Porsche works driver and current brand ambassador Timo Bernhard drove the car on the roads near the circuit alongside the Rossi 917 earlier today. “That was an experience that will stay with me for a lifetime,” he said in a statement. “Driving down a public road with a 917 beside me—it felt unreal. The car behaved perfectly—it felt a little friendlier and more forgiving than the normal 963—and felt super special and a lot more comfortable, especially as I was not needing all my safety gear.”
Penske will have to wait a bit before he can take the car home. It will be on display at Le Mans, and then at the Porsche Museum. Next month, Porsche plans to take it to the Goodwood Festival of Speed to run it up the hillclimb. Then, the car will head to California for Monterey Car Week in August for more road drives, and the final handover to the Captain.
For now, at least, Porsche doesn’t have any specific further plans for another roadgoing 963, but that doesn’t mean it might not make one. “Of course we will not build exactly the same car again because of the nature of the project… but as I said before, never say never,” says Urs Kuratle, head of the Porsche LMDh project. “As Porsche, we like to sell cars first of all, and if there is an opportunity or possibility to do it again at a later stage, why not? But at the moment, there’s nothing planned.”
So if you want one and you’ve got oodles of cash to spend, get in touch.
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