Road-legal Porsche 963 RSP Le Mans hypercar on the way!
Porsche’s road-going racer will be unveiled in June, potentially at the fast-approaching 24 Hours of Le Mans
Yes, you read the headline correctly: Porsche is about to unveil a road-legal version of its 963 Le Mans race car. Sadly, though, the firm is only building one, and our guess is it’s already found a home.
The Porsche 963 RSP, as it’s been christened, is set to be unveiled in June and considering the 24 Hours of Le Mans is taking place in just a few weeks, we’re assuming that’s where the unique creation will make its public debut.
Based on the teaser video Porsche has released, it’s done a lot more than slap a number plate and some bigger headlights on a race car. We can see the carbon fibre bodywork being sanded down and given a fresh lick of paint, while other craftspeople put together what looks like a new, Alcantara-lined interior. The final touch is a proper Porsche badge on the nose, instead of a sticker as the race car has.
The Porsche 963 race car features a 671bhp hybrid powertrain which includes the twin-turbo, 4.6-litre V8 engine from the Porsche 918 Spyder supercar, but allowed to rev out all the way to 10,000rpm. Whether or not the road car will do the same remains to be seen.
Sounds amazing, but why is Porsche building this thing? Well, as it happens, 50 years ago the legendary Porsche 917 – a two-time Le Mans winner – was similarly modified into a road-legal car at the request of Italian Martini heir ‘Count’ Gregorio Rossi di Montelera, who was an enormous fan of the brand.
While they might be designed to compete at the highest level of endurance racing, the idea of a road-going version of a Le Mans car is nothing new. In the nineties, we saw the likes of the McLaren F1 GTR and even Porsche’s own 911 GT1 make it to public roads. Before that, several Jaguars and Ferraris from the sixties crossed the divide and, returning to the present, Aston Martin’s Valkyrie LMDh entry this year is based on an admittedly limited production car.
The Porsche 917 that managed to get a licence plate – in Alabama in the United States, of all places – back in 1975 was altered with a set of exhaust silencers, extra mirrors, side indicators, a horn and even a spare tyre. We expect a fair few revisions will be needed to make the 2024 World Endurance Championship-winning 963 fit for the road, too.
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