Covers finally come off Porsche's 'Project Gold'
Porsche's mysterious Golden Yellow 993 is revealed as a one-of-a-kind 911 Turbo S
So what exactly is Project Gold? Well, as we were lead to believe by a long series of build-up videos, it's primarily a 993-generation 911 Turbo S. Except that, for all intents and purposes, it's a brand-spanking new one. Not rebuilt, but constructed from the ground up over a year and a half by Porsche Classic specialists in Stuttgart. Only the bodyshell was pre-existing, and even that has been put through the same corrosion protection and painting process that all its current production models receive.
You maybe asking why? Or you may not. After all, 'continuation' cars are not exactly thin on the ground at the moment, and there isn't a sports car maker in the world not intrigued by the idea of charging up to a million quid a pop for (incredibly evocative) old rope. But Project Gold is not that - or not on the surface, at least. For a start, there is only ever going to be the one, it isn't road-legal and come October it will be auctioned off, with the proceeds going to the manufacturer's new non-profit Ferry Porsche Foundation.
So what gives? Well, it's mostly about showing off the 'comprehensive skill' of Porsche Classic itself, which probably feels like it could do with blowing its own trumpet given the amount of high profile, third-party competitors currently swanning about in the limelight. Hence the expensively shot footage of the technicians going about their painstaking business. Who wouldn't want a car restored or repaired by a nice German chap in dungarees?
Beyond that, there is the even bigger business: spare parts. The reason Project Gold can claim to be new is that it's almost exclusively built from genuine 993 parts that Porsche Classic keeps in stock. Over 6,500 components to be precise, all specific to that generation. Overall, the division says it can get its hands on around 52,000 parts - which is quite some collection when you consider that the firm has only recently branched out into higher volume models.
Not that the Golden Yellow (insert your own gag here) painted car is just a glorified parts bin - it's far too special for that. We're talking about the last of the air-cooled 911s, after all, and a Turbo S to boot. The sight of modern-day Porsche engineers sliding a brand-new 450hp 3.6-litre twin-turbo flat-six into anything is enough to make 993 fans go all giddy. Ditto the hand-stamped chassis number which follows on from the last series production Turbo model that rolled off the line in 1998.
Elsewhere, some of the car's design elements - most notably the colour - were co-ordinated by Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur, which is essentially Stuttgart's equivalent of McLaren's MSO division, and was responsible for the current limited edition 911 Turbo S Exclusive. Back in the nineties, only 345 examples of the 993 Turbo S were ever made. Twenty years later, Porsche has made it 346. Care to have a flutter on how much it will go for at a special RM Sotheby's auction in Atlanta? We've thought of a number and doubled it. It's probably still short of the mark...
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