PORSCHE 964 RSR 3.8
Where would you choose to drive Stuttgart’s ultimate hardcore air-cooled racer? Octane takes to UK roads…
The idea that this 911 RSR 3.8 is a road car is undermined from the off. It’s been unloaded from a transporter, its bonnet is up and I’ve added a splash of fuel to the 120-litre long-distance fuel cell. Now, having threaded myself through the bars and spars of the welded-in rollcage and fallen into the Recaro race seat’s embrace, I take stock. No carpets, no rooflining, no frills. I twist the key. No sound-deadening either. The heavy, loping, flat-six beat is classic air-cooled 911, but richer in detail because there’s just painted metal separating us. It feels like there’s no power steering as we roll away from the pumps and, as we cross the seam between two sections of concrete, no suspension either. Can’t say I’m surprised; the deep-dish alloys look jammed into the arches, as if the car has been captured on full compression after a humpback bridge.
It takes a while to warm up, its owner had said, but I’m still surprised by how it bogs down if you ask for anything more than a breath of throttle, chugging and stumbling like it’s being fed by oversized carbs. And the ride… let’s just say the faithfulness with which it tracks the lumps and bumps of this B-road is eye-opening. ‘That looked stiff!’ photographer Alex Tapley, following in our camera car, would say later.
Gradually, the engine delivery cleans up. I’m still not using full throttle or more than 4000rpm but the level of noise is incredible, a gravelly cacophony that resonates around the bare cockpit and jangles your senses, like being too close to the speakers at a concert. It’s as if the 3.8-litre flat-six is in the cockpit with me, though a glance in the back confirms that there are only a couple of lengths of wiring loom and the Bosch Motronic ECU sitting in one of the rear seat wells.
The driver, of course, is meant to provide the sound deadening in the form of a crash helmet and ear plugs. That’s because, as the period specification sheet states, the RSR 3.8 is ‘not for street use, for racing only’. Yet this example and a few others built by Porsche’s Customer Racing department at Weissach never wore race numbers, only numberplates.
There’s little reason why it couldn’t be registered, though it all seems rather unnecessary because there was a road version of the RSR. The RS 3.8 was the homologation special that allowed the RSR to be raced in GT championships and Blue Riband events around the globe. So why not just have an RS 3.8 instead?
Contemporary reports describe the RS 3.8 as a very basic car, lacking rear seats, electric windows and power steering, but it’s all relative. The two cars weigh about the same; the RSR is a fraction heavier at 1215kg despite being yet more stripped-out, its lack of trim offset by the installation of the ’cage. In compensation, it offers a bit
more power: 325bhp versus 300 for the RS although, as we will discover, 325 seems a conservative figure.
These two owe their existence to the collapse of the World Sportscar Championship at the end of 1992, which gave road-car-based GT racers the opportunity to star. The RSR was conceived and developed by a couple of Porsche legends to exploit that opportunity: Jürgen Barth, then director of Customer Racing, and Roland Kussmaul, the project manager.
There was already a 964-generation RS but the RS 3.8 took things to another level. The naturally aspirated flatsix was enlarged from 3600 to 3746cc, upping power to that 300bhp from 260, and this was installed in the widearched body of the Turbo S, topped off with an even bigger, twin-deck whale-tail spoiler. Weight-saving measures included aluminium doors and bonnet plus thinner glass for the side windows and rear screen.
To promote some interest in the RS 3.8, and to help shift the 50 built for homologation, in early 1993 Porsche brought an RS to Donington Park to demonstrate to the UK press. It was a mighty thing but I was even more impressed by it after lunch. There had been a downpour and I asked Barth if he could show me how to drive a powerful, fat-tyred 911 in the wet. Still wearing his suit jacket, he obliged, flicking his cigarette out of the driver’s window as we splashed down the pitlane.
It was a revelation. The understeer that felt possible at each corner in the dry was neutralised simply by tipping
the RS into oversteer at every opportunity – even down the edge-of-the-world swoops of the Craner Curves. It’s still one of the finest displays of driving I’ve witnessed. When we pulled back in after a couple of laps, there was a queue of journalists waiting for a turn.
A couple of months later, Barth drove an RSR to class victory (and 15th overall) at Le Mans, sharing with Dominique Dupoy and Joel Gouhier. It was slightly lucky, with the faster Jaguar XJ220 denied the GT win on a technicality, but before the year was out the RSR had proved itself a remarkable ‘turnkey’ race car. It won the Spa 24 hours outright, along with the 1000km of Suzuka and the Mil Milhas Brazilia (1000 miles of Brazil).
A steady stream of orders from around the world caused Porsche to build a total of 51 RSRs over two years, very nearly matching the number of RS 3.8s made (55). In 1993, an RS 3.8 would have cost you DM225,000 (about £93,750), which made it around £20k more expensive than a 911 Turbo. An RSR cost DM234,783 (about £98,000), plus whatever taxes applied in the territory it was shipped to. The car here was one of the last, delivered in Autumn ’94 to the Porsche dealer in Pforzheim just a few miles up the autobahn from Weissach. The current owner bought it about four years ago from a Japanese collector.
The RS and the RSR look pretty much the same from a distance, except maybe for the RSR’s lower stance. Only when you get closer do you notice the bonnet pins and