9 coolest cars at Rennsport Reunion 7
There's a lot of Porsches here at Laguna Seca for Rennsport Reunion 7. That's not a surprise to you or me, but for those of you out there thinking something along the lines of "oh god, a load of 911s", no. Here's nine cars we've found that you have to check out and only one 911.
Dauer 962
Breaking the rules isn’t big and it isn’t clever kids. But bending them to the point at which they’ve basically broken so you can create something great, that is undeniably cool. Enter the Dauer 926, a ‘road car’ that conformed to GT regulations despite being, quite literally, a Porsche 962 Group C car.
911 GT3 R "Rexy"
Take a Porsche 911 GT3 R and put a dinosaur livery on it. Sounds cheesy doesn’t it, but Rexy is already an absolute icon and he’s not even finished his first racing season in IMSA. There’s a decent chance that it had even more of an impact in RSR form when it arrived at the Le Mans 24 Hours too. In person you just can’t help but be charmed. Turns out dinosaurs are pretty friendly.
Andial 935L
This is the answer to the question “what would happen if someone built a second Moby Dick from memory”. When Porsche had stopped building 935s but hadn’t introduced a replacement that was quite legal in IMSA yet, some teams turned to other options. Andial decided to manufacture its own version of the famous one-off long tail, but with Porsche unwilling to provide detailed drawings, the team had to create it themselves. What resulted – after a few mishaps – was the Andial 935L, a truly brilliant looking creation.
917 K
Pedro Rodriguez at Brands Hatch in 1970. Quite possibly one of the greatest drives in the history of motorsport. And he did it in this very car. Chassis 016 was raced by the famous JWM team in Gulf colours, with Rodriguez the star in horrific conditions storming from seventh on the grid to the lead, only to be set back by a penalty which dropped him to fifth. Undeterred, the Mexican proceeded to carve through the field again to victory. A feat he and team-mate Leo Kinnunen repeated a few weeks later at Monza.
963
There’s quite a few of Porsche’s latest Le Mans Hypercar/IMSA GTP challenger around. The company being the only one so far to sell top level sportscars to privateers has led to its dominance in the market. We’ve seen Jota’s lovely gold Hertz-liveried car at the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard, but now get ready to meet a car that has been nicknamed by some ‘The Banana Boat’. Why? Well quite simply because JDC-Miller Motorsport’s 963 is a vivid shade of yellow and has very little else to take away from that hue – a lot like those inflatable waitng catastrophes.
917 PA
When the Porsche 917 was first introduced it turned out to be… not very good. The aerodynamic characteristics of this long-tailed white machine meant it was more prone to imitating an aeroplane than a squat sportscar. While attempting to make it better Porsche experimented a little. First creating an open-topped version for Can-Am competition and then a flat-16 engine (yes, sixteen). The massively over-cylindered engine never caught on, but some of the changes for the Can-Am car, called 917PA did, and would help create the 917K. There were only ever two 917PAs and the name isn’t some incredible code about that experimental engine – it stands for ‘Porsche | Audi’ the name of Porsche’s US importer.
908 LH
Meant as a stopgap before Porsche’s Group 5 sportscar was really ready to race, the similarities between what became the 917 and the 908LH are obvious. This was a fast, slippery speedster designed to fly down the Mulsanne Straight before there were any chicanes to get in the way. The slight problem was that its aerodynamic slippiness, which was then transferred over to the 917, was rather good at reducing drag and not very good at creating lift, meaning the 908LH was at best tricky to drive and at worst downright dangerous. That said, it looks absolutely stunning, and even the trickier parts of Porsche’s history tended to lead to new developments.
944 GTR
It’s not often you’ll find me getting particularly excited about the Porsche 944. But, you will regularly find this writer getting a little over worked up by Trans-Am cars. So when we stumble across a Porsche 944 that has been created as not a humble 944, but a Trans-Am machine, well, then I’m interested. The chassis is a tubeframe, the body made by Fabcar is slotted over the top and in the front somehow over 500PS has been eaked from a 2.5-litre inline four-cylinder engine. No weight, lots of power, old school turbo, wide arches… what’s not to love?
Cayman GT4 e-Performance
And perhaps the total opposite of the 944 GTR – a raw machine with at times rudimentary technology – is the Porsche GT4 e-Performance. This is a four-wheel-drive electric concept car that envisions a future Porsche race car. Never mind 500PS+, the e-Performance has over 1,000PS and can decide where the power needs to go. Not only does it look pretty cool and sound (genuinely) awesome it finished second in the Timed Shootout at the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard in 2022.
Rennsport Reunion
Rennsport Reunion 7
Laguna Seca
Porsche
Andial
944
935
GT4 e-Performance
917
963
