Lord of the Wings

IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT’S GOT A SENSE of humour, but it has. It just hides it well. Static and silent – you might almost say brooding – in a garage deep in the heart of Porsche’s Weissach wonderland, the new GT3 RS strikes a pose that’s as serious as an off-duty comedian. This is a car that is overtly tooled-up. It doesn’t wear its 860kg of downforce lightly. It’s as clearly destined for a pitlane as a new Range Rover is obviously homing in on the nearest Waitrose.

But it can also crack a joke. Walk around the back, admiring the monstrous 13-inch-wide rear wheels wrapped in 335-section rubber as you go, then crouch down. See that little vent? Not the big vane immediately behind the rear tyre, but just aft of that. Where the painted bodywork wraps down over the rear red reflector. That vent. It’s fake.

I know, what happened to ‘form follows function’? But that’s not the funny bit. Look closer.