A Porsche Dressed Up for Racing Success
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The German word for racing, Rennsport, is where Porsche got the name for its new roadster, the GT3 RS.
The idea here — or at least it’s what they’d have us believe — is that there are two kinds of racing: The first, American, involves lots of colorful baseball caps, trailer homes, and Confederate flags.
The other kind of racing is what Europeans prefer. Anyone who’s been to Le Mans, France, for the “24 Heures” knows that race-courses aren’t perfect ovals: They’re meant to wind through medieval towns. And crepes taste better when you get a whiff of the red-hot engine and brakes of the car whizzing by the café. The Tiattinger tastes better, too.
Of course, if you’d rather drive than watch and eat and drink, the GT3 RS is one of those rare cars that allows its owner to have as much fun getting to the track as he does racing on it.
The engineers in Germany remind us that a safety roll cage, harness, fire extinguisher, and a few other minor items are all that’s required to race competitively. This means going way beyond just keeping up with the Joneses. Leaving the poor fools in the dust is more like it.
The exhilarating 415 horses are pumped out of a normally aspirated (non-turbo) 3.6-liter, horizontally opposed six-cylinder engine. For real racing buffs (both American and European), the car is light; it accelerates from 50 to 75 mph in fifth gear in just 6.1 seconds. This Porsche goes from zero to 60 mph in four seconds and hits 99 mph in 8.5 seconds.
What’s really special about the new Porsche is just how beautifully it pulls off all this brute automotive strength. When Porsche came to town for the New York Auto Show earlier this month, they photographed a few versions of the car at Splashlight Studios and fashioned a hip cocktail lounge around the whole event.
Porsche displayed two versions of its cars — one in lime green, the other in bright orange — alongside one of its Penske-inspired Spyders. Automotive enthusiasts aren’t known for fashion prowess, but trust us with the prediction that bold greens and oranges will be the big racing hues of the next few years.
In fact, skip the trip to Savile Row and invest the suit money in a GT3 RS, which goes for just north of $100,000. Crepes-eating spectators won’t get to see what you’re wearing when you’re behind the wheel of this Porsche — because you’ll go by too quickly.
