Stuttgart knows how to party
How did you celebrate your birthday? A limited edition car? No? Why not?
This is the Porsche 911 Speedster Concept, built to celebrate 70 years of Porsche sports cars. The body comes from the Carrera 4 Cabriolet, with a short, steeply raked windscreen, carbon-fbre wings and bonnet, cut-down side windows and a special ‘double-bubble’ rear cover in carbon fbre.
A lightweight tonneau cover protects the interior, which is trimmed in ‘Cognac 356’ leather. You sit in carbon-fbre buckets and have nothing to listen to but the engine, as the radio, navigation and air-conditioning systems have all been removed to save weight. The wheels are Fuchs-style 21s with centre-locks and the “chassis essentially comes from the 911 GT3”.
Porsche says the engine – surely the 4.0-litre from the GT3 – makes “over 500bhp and reaches speeds of up to 9,000rpm” and is mated to a six-speed manual gearbox.
The ‘Talbot-shaped’ mirrors, central fuel-fller cap, silver/white paintwork and cross-patterned headlights (the lenses are designed to look like they’ve been taped) all hark back to Speedsters of Porsche’s past.
Given the popularity of its limited-run cars like the 911 R, we’re in zero doubt Porsche could sell every one of these Speedsters 10 times over, however many it builds, and for however much it decides to charge. Then the people who bought them will resell them at a vast proft, because of course they will.