FULL FRONTAL

Porsche’s Weissach skunkworks has produced amazing competition cars over the years and was particularly adept at recycling redundant componentry to build cars like the twenty-two examples of the 964 C4 Leichtbau, as well as the 924 Carrera GTRs that raced at Le Mans in 1980. A decade later, between late 1992 and early 1994, those same Weissach boffins were creating a similar racing evolution from the 968 Turbo S homologation special. There were two versions of the resulting 968 Turbo RS, both powered by the three-litre turbocharged inline-four: one trim was specified for Porsche’s customer teams to contest the German ADAC GT Cup, while the other was built to meet 1993’s Le Mans GT regulations. Extraordinary cars by any standards, just fourteen examples of the 968 Turbo S were assembled, while only four 968 Turbo RSs saw the light of day.

Let’s place the 968 Turbo RS in context. Setting the scene for the 1994 24 Hours of Le Mans, the demise of the World Sportscar Championship a year earlier (due to spiralling development costs, which deterred even the Mercedes and Peugeot works teams from competing) thrust GT racing to the limelight. Typically, Le Mans organising body, Automobile Club de l’Ouest, with its unfathomable Indices of Performance and Thermal Efficiency, were not slow in devising an equivalency formula that allowed production-based GTs to compete directly against LMP prototypes and IMSA WSC cars. The corresponding regulations called for twenty-five units of each competing car to have been built in order to qualify for GT1. The number rose to two-hundred units for GT2. While the Seikel Motorsport 968 Turbo RS (we’ll come to this particular Porsche shortly) was a shoo-in for the GT2 class, Porsche shrewdly revived a pair of 962s and entered them in GT1 under the auspices of German fashion magnate, Jochen Dauer. Much to the dismay of Toyota’s LMP1 team, the Dauer 962s