Porsche 911 GT3 002
Michael Taylor1 Mar 2016
NEWS

GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Porsche 911 R

Has Porsche's iconic 911 gone soft? Not this one – the lightest example of the current breed

Porsche purists can put the sekt on ice because the German sports car strongman has listened to enough criticism.

Yes, it’s bringing the six-speed manual gearbox back to the sharp end of the 911 range with the new 911 R.

The iconic Porsche 911 has been getting larger and more complicated with each passing generation, and that hasn’t sat well with every engineer at Porsche.

That’s why Porsche Motorsport developed the 911 R, a stripped-down version of the classic coupe that has all the feel of a cut-price version of the 911 GT3 RS.

Except it won't be cheap, at $404,700 plus on-road costs, which is $17,400 more than the 991-series 911 GT3 RS on which it's based, and almost $40,000 more than the 911 Turbo

Designed to bring driving purity back to the 911, the 911 R is a strict two-seater and has a uniquely developed six-speed manual gearbox with what Porsche describes as short throws, direct linkeages and its own short gear ratios.

Porsche 911 GT3 001

Shunning the 911's new 3.0-litre turbocharged six, the 368kW 911 R uses the same high-performance, naturally-aspirated 4.0-litre flat six-cylinder engine as the 911 GT3 RS.

The first of 991 (to celebrate the current-series 911 on which it's based, which is actually the facelifted '991.2') examples of the 911 R coupes are scheduled to start rolling down the Zuffenhausen production line alongside the rest of the 911 range starting in May, and will arrive in Australia late this year.

The good news is Australia will receive double its initial allocation, but such is the demand Down Under that its dealers asked for twice as many as the 25 or so cars they'll receive – about 2.5 per cent of the global production run.

Porsche Cars Australia will carefully vet potential customers in an effort to prevent speculators profiteering, and some examples could go to those who missed out on the GT3 RS, Australian deliveries of which have so far been limited to about 100.

While it borrows the GT3 RS’s engine, Porsche insists the RS is still the 911 to have if it’s cards-on-the-table lap times you’re after. Instead, the 911 R developers focused on trying to give it the most driving purity it could cram in – hence the six-speed manual transmission.

That’s despite the 'R' denoting 'Racing' and the 911 R name being taken from a limited run of production cars to deliver Porsche the homologation papers it needed to race the 911 in the 1967 sports car road-racing season, including at events like the Targa Florio.

Porsche 911 GT3 003

Offering Carrera S-beating straight-line performance, the 911 R has had its rear seats removed in the hunt for weight savings, along with a raft of new lightweight bits engineered, developed and proven by Porsche Motorsport.

The kilo-cutting starts at the body and bores all the way into the 911 R’s chassis components, though there are some obvious nods to the marketing department that survived the dietician’s axe.

The body, most of which is directly from the 911 GT3, is made from a combination of carbon-fibre (bonnet and front guards) and aluminium, but that’s not all. The roof structure is made of magnesium and the side and rear screens are polycarbonate (both taken from the GT3 RS), all part of a campaign that cut 50kg from the RS to tip the scales at 1370kg – making it the lightest current 911.

While it has lurid red or green racing stripes as standard, it’s not supposed to be as wild in its look as the GT3. The faster car’s adjustable, tall-standing rear spoiler is replaced with a more- subtle pop-up version. Any downforce shortfall is made up by an under-bumper diffuser element.

The two seats that remain are carbon-fibre shells upholstered in tartan cloth (another nod to early 911s) and while it’s a road-registered sports car, the interior door-handles have made way for much lighter pull straps.

There’s a one-off steering wheel, 360mm across, plus a host of carbon-fibre trim pieces and the car’s build number is even carved into an aluminium badge in the cockpit.

There’s not much luxury inside, though, with the radio being flung along with the air-conditioner, all gone in a slash-and-burn exercise.

It won’t lack for speed, though, thanks to the naturally-aspirated 4.0-litre flat six sitting behind the rear axle. The direct-injection unit delivers 368kW at a fizzing 8250rpm and its motorsport origins are obvious in the 6250rpm peak point for its 460Nm of torque delivery.

The combination of big-grunt power and lighter weight won’t hurt the 911 R’s performance, which logs in at 268kW per tonne, making it 10kW better than the 911 GT3 RS.

Porsche claims the lightest current 911 will reach 100km/h in 3.8 seconds and it insists it will hit its redline in sixth gear to give it a 323km/h top end.

The 4.0-litre engine’s peaky power delivery is an intentional nod to Porsche’s motorsport traditions, but the dynamic engine mounts, which hold the mid-corner weight transfer steady, are decidedly new.

Porsche insists that it didn’t consider the seven-speed versions of its manual and dual-clutch transmissions for the 911 R because of their extra weight, but there’s a clear nod to some of the more celebrated fast 911 forebears here. They even fit it with a push-button double-declutching function to make it sound better and shift smoother.

The 911 R is a pure rear-wheel drive, with all of the car’s power punched into a mechanically locking differential.

The familiar 911 chassis has been refettled and now features 410mm carbon-ceramic disc brakes up front and 390mm carbon-ceramic units at the rear.

The suspension tune is helped by rear-wheel steering and Porsche has given the 20-inch, centre-lock rims a set of high-performance tyres, with 245mm of width up front and 305mm at the rear.

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Written byMichael Taylor
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