We’ve talked about Porsche’s involvement with Formula One in the 1980s, and we’re all well-aware of their mega-successful 962 and GT1 racers. In short, they make very powerful motors to shove lightweight racers around tracks at ludicrous speeds.

Well, they tried their hand at Formula One once again in the early nineties with the Footwork team. However, they were not as successful the second time around, and their 3.5-liter V12 was overweight and underpowered. Economical as always, Porsche decided to hang onto the V12 when the Footwork team decided to ditch the V12 and run a proven Cosworth DFR for the ’92 season. Porsche would cut two cylinders off the motor in secrecy, and continue refining the V10 as a clandestine engineering exercise.

But it wasn’t merely an exercise. Eventually, the motor would go into Porsche’s 9R3 LMP900: a car they intended to replace the GT1 and go racing at the highest level for the 1999 season. They had come to the realization that they’d need a bespoke chassis and engine to stay competitive that year. Even the tried-and-true flat-six turbo was canned, since it was now heavier than a contemporary V8, and couldn’t be used as a stressed member of the chassis.

The V10 was pulled off the shelf and inspected as a possible candidate for the new LMP machine, and they started building the car for 2000 since it was too late to have a well-developed, competitive car for the 1999 season. Though the motor had been designed with a pneumatic valvetrain for F1, the inlet restrictor rule in LMP made the system redundant, since the inlet restrictor limited the revs by restricting airflow.

Well, it was all for nothing, since the program was canned and the stillborn LMP car would never see real competition. It was tested by Allan McNish and Bob Wollek, however, and word was that it was quick.

Perhaps that’s why the project wasn’t brought to fruition, since Audi had just started dominating the LMP categories. Rumor has it that an agreement was made between Audi and Porsche to keep it out of contention, but another reason posited was that Porsche needed to focus its manpower on the new Cayenne. It’s not easy to hear that, but as it turned out, there was still a shining future for the motor.

Implementing the Motor in a Road Car

Well, the motor which had been through various iterations to power top-tier racing cars would eventually sit in the back of a machine that could be taken to the grocery store. With proceeds from the successful Cayenne program, Porsche now had some bread to build a showstopper with. Now, the racing engine had a home.

That motor, bumped up to 5.7 liters, would sit in the back of a carbon monocoque; in fact, it was bolted directly to the chassis and used a hollow carbon cradle. Dry-sumped and used as a stressed member, it was still quite racey in nature—it had no cylinder liners, but the cylinders were coated with Nikasil.

The motor made 605 horsepower and 435 lb/ft of torque, and weighed a mere 471 pounds. As the whole car weighed just 3,146 pounds, the power-to-weight ratio was stout enough to hustle the Carrera GT to 125 mph in roughly ten seconds. Though we’ve grown a little jaded by the modern-day rocketships which can hit 125 in the time it takes to say onomatopoeia, that’s ridiculously fast. Better yet—it had none of the dulling effects of turbocharging and still hit that speed with a prominent, birch-knobbed shifter—a homage to the 917—and a strange third pedal on the left.

The Carrera GT quickly developed a reputation for being wild. Even the carbon clutch was overkill for most, who would find themselves either stalling or cooking the rear tires when a few too many revs were added into the mix. For those familiar with racing gearboxes, they could manage, but successfully chuddering away from a stoplight required some real focus. Hardly a compromised road car then.

The sound of the motor only complemented the bestial nature of the car. That shriek still tops many’s charts when it comes to ranking most exciting exhaust notes—it’s otherworldly. From 3,000 revs onto its 8,200-rpm redline, it pulls smoothly and with huge torque. So naturally, the powerband allows a driver to get at the limit of the rear’s quite easily, and that only adds to the allure of the bare-fanged Carrera GT.

Suspension is wishbone all-around, and uses inboard suspension too. That level of motorsport-sophistication is complemented by carbon ceramic brakes, and a bare-bones interior that still looks exotic—which can’t be said about the F40; a car it’s often compared to.

The two go together because of their intents. Though the F40 preceded the Carrera GT by nearly twenty years, the two were designed to offer little in comfort or civility, but deliver the sort of performance and involvement one historically had to rent a real racing car to enjoy. Lightweight, manually-shifted, rear wheel-drive, and very lively; these cars are far from the sort of techno titans that dominate the scene today.

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One of the few videos of a Carrera GT driven well shows how agile, twitchy, and enjoyable the machine is—provided it’s in the right hands.

Perhaps a little morbidly, the death of Paul Walker and numerous” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen> crashed Carrera GTs only prove the point. Hell, even Jay” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen> Leno spun one of them at Daytona, and was fortunate to have walked away unscathed. Unfortunately, the death of a Hollywood star launched an uninformed campaign against performance cars, and the Carrera GT—the million-dollar scapegoat—was put right in the crosshairs. Respectable journalists rose the occasion and defended the machine, and yet, this only added to the mystique of the definitive analog hypercar. This uproar caused hordes of critics to ask: is it too much for the average driver?

Absolutely, but that’s why it’s so special.