GOLDEE

Goldee

The 911R tribute build that left no stone unturned.

There really isn’t a screw out of place on this Porsche 911R build. Though it isn’t one of the 20 originals that came out in 1967, it was built by Bryan Calvero of Period Correct a few years ago to virtually identical specifications and is now owned by Jan Sussman.

The name of the game on the 911R was weight savings, to a frankly obsessive degree. To build the original prototypes, each component from a standard 911 of the time was re-engineered and weighed on a set of scales against its unmodified counterpart to prove that it’d been lightened.

Polycarbonate was used for the windows, fibreglass for the removable panels, even the light clusters were sourced from NSU because they weighed less than any alternative that could be found at the time. All told, the final weight figure came in at an astonishing 810kg (1786lbs), a 22% reduction on the base car.

It was essentially the first serious attempt at making a stripped-down race car out of the 911, which meant the factory didn’t yet have the confidence to green light a major production run of the project. Therefore, just 20 were actually built, a figure so low that the 911R was actually excluded from most of the FIA classes that it was intended to compete in, which in turn contributed to the car’s relative obscurity in Porsche’s racing history.

It was essentially the first serious attempt at making a stripped-down race car out of the 911.

With so many specialist parts, recreating a 911R properly is a marathon task, which makes the car Bryan built all the more impressive. Even the colour, Cadillac Gold, is a match for a specific car. Most of the originals are white of course, but chassis number 15 was painted gold by special request. That car then featured on the front cover of Excellence magazine in June of 1992, a copy of which was given to Bryan as a child. To say it had an impact on him would be an understatement.

Since Bryan sold the car to his friend Jan, the car has remained unchanged. Without a doubt, it’s one of the most faithful 911R-inspired builds that we’ve ever seen.