Porsche 963 RSP review: road legal Le Mans prototype driven!

Road legal. Really. Come on now, behave.

Well it’s all a bit murky, but Porsche is clearly having fun here, so let’s play along. What we have here is a genuine one-off Porsche 963 sports prototype hypercar that’s fitted with legitimate numberplates and can drive on a public road.

However, to do so you will need just two small, trifling things: a full house race team and a very understanding local authority. Porsche drove this 963 around the town of Le Mans. I suspect local authorities that don’t happen to have a legendary 24 hour race in their town will be less understanding.

What’s the point? Why has Porsche done it?

Because history. There’s another car in some of these pictures (keep scrolling), the infamous Count Rossi Porsche 917. The story goes that the heir to the Martini drinks fortune (and the man responsible for arguably the coolest motorsport livery of all time) decided it would be fun to have a road-going 917. The world needs more people like this.

Porsche, somewhat unbelievably, got on board with this plan, took 917 chassis 30, which had barely raced and then been used as an ABS test mule, fitted it with mirrors, indicators, exhaust mufflers and a horn, painted it silver and shipped it out the door. On 28 April 1975, Count Rossi picked it up from Weissach and drove it the 600km (373 miles) to Paris. It’s still owned by his family, has never been fully restored, and is apparently still driven from time to time.

Does the 963 have such a cool backstory?

Of course not. That was creating history, this is just trading on it. Do the maths and you quickly work out that it’s 50 years since Rossi’s 917 first turned a wheel on the road, so Porsche is just connecting the dots and reminding everyone of its long endurance racing legacy. The idea this time round came from Porsche themselves, rather than a client.

So Porsche itself owns the car?

No, in another bit of neat collaboration, the RSP name is taken from the initials of its new owner, Roger Searle Penske. Yes, that Roger Penske, legendary team owner with a Porsche motorsport history dating back to 1972 that included running Mark Donohue in a 917/10 in the Can-Am championship.

Whether he has been gifted this 963, or has had to pay for it, Porsche isn’t saying. But if you wanted to buy a 963 customer race car it would cost you around £2.5 million. And let’s just guess the conversion work has cost at least half a million on top of that.

And what conversion work has been done?

It’s been painted. This is more remarkable than you might think, since it’s the first 963 ever to have been painted. All others just wear decals and livery on top of the naked composite bodywork, while this has been painted in the exact same shade of Martini Silver as the Rossi 917 – a paint to sample match was made.

It looks utterly alien without logos interrupting the lines. The shape is insectoid, no concession to beauty has been made. A few of the riskier aero flicks have been removed to lessen slicing injuries to pedestrians and the open tops of the wheelarches have been covered with vents, but that’s about it.

Inside, some luxury has been added. Tan leather, for one: On the 917 this was added later, sourced by Count Rossi from Hermes, while for the 963 the seat has not only been reclad, but also gained a load more padding. Would have been great to see an extra seat a la 917 as well, though. Yes, it’s very clever that you’ve 3D printed a cupholder Porsche, but being able to take someone else along for the ride is the step onwards we were looking for.

After that, it’s the little things that help road legality: it already had indicators, so a horn was added. Like people won’t have heard you coming.

That raucous is it?

Oh yeah. There’s a level of intensity to the car, and a level of concentration from the driver that puts this in a realm far beyond the most extreme road-going hypercars. It doesn’t, you’ll be amazed to learn, start on a key.

Instead it requires a team of people, several laptops and a lengthy sequence before the engine fires. After it thrashes rowdily into life it needs to warm through for a while. And then you’ve got to get going. Using hand clutches. This isn’t actually too tricky once you get the hand-eye right as the electric is always there and the clutch just connects the idling twin turbo V8 when you want the fun to begin.

Tell me more about that twin turbo V8. Has Porsche used it elsewhere?

The V8 started life as a 3.4-litre in the super successful RS Spyder LMP car, and after a bit of work – including being enlarged to 4.6-litres – found its way into another hybrid, the 918 Spyder. Around 80 per cent of the components from the road car incarnation are carried directly over for the 963, although it’s no longer naturally aspirated, having gained a pair of Van der Lee turbos.

Combined power is capped at 680bhp, obviously restricted by regulations, and the 963 can balance that between petrol and electric sources. The hybrid is actually one of the few mechanical changes that have been made: the race car’s more aggressive, potent e-celeration has been toned down for the road, delivering no more than about 70bhp.

Doesn’t sound like the 963 RSP is going to be that fast.

Assuming weight hasn’t ballooned too far from the 1,030kg race version, we’re looking at about 650bhp/tonne. Which is a better power to weight ratio than a Ferrari SF90, level pegging around the Pagani Utopia and GMA T.50 mark. Plenty, in other words.

You get it rolling on the electric, drop the clutch at about 30mph, the engine clatters and rattles into life, but the moment you bury the throttle the sound hardens and focuses in and the 963 explodes forward. Lights flicker on the race wheel, you pull paddles, vibrations buzz through the chassis, the steering twitches and caught in the midst of all this, your adrenaline spikes as you realise the attention the 963 requires. Simply managing it on a public road would be full on.

I guess you didn’t drive it on roads?

Ex-Porsche racer and brand ambassador Timo Bernhard had that singular pressure. Sorry, pleasure. Given he’s the chap who piloted the 919 Hybrid Evo to the fastest ever Nurburgring lap time, this excursion was presumably child’s play. My experience of it was up and down a runway at Le Mans airport. A bit of slalom along the lines and a full lock hairpin at either end.

The steering is super direct and responsive, digging eagerly into direction changes way faster than any road car I’ve driven. And this with the ride height as high as it will go and the DSSV spool dampers softened off completely. Initially the brakes were so unresponsive I thought there must be another clutch pedal in the footwell, but once they had heat in them the stopping power was so immense that I was glad to be held in by a harness rather than a three-point seatbelt.

Is there any point to this 963 RSP project?

Besides reminding people of a very cool chapter in Porsche’s history? Not really. This isn’t an homologation special like the GT1 Strassenversion, it’s a gimmick, a bit of fun. There was no need for it to exist. But fair play to Porsche for investing in it and seeing it through – it could just have been a colour and trim job and remained a conceptual show pony.

It’s more than that, and if Penske has the guts to get authorities on board and take a race team around with him, he could do some great stuff with this car. More likely it will do fewer road miles over the course of its life than Count Rossi did in one journey.