Porsche’s First True Exotic Car Since The 918 Spyder
963 RSP, the badge says it all. This upcoming Porsche hypercar, thankfully, isn’t a concept, but a street-legal Le Mans prototype, and it’s real. Last month, during the 50-year celebration of the street-legal 917, the German sports car maker teased us with the silhouette of what appeared to be a 963, which Porsche said was coming in June, coinciding with this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Well, that is this car, and Porsche has dropped yet another teaser with a few more details and the name, of course, 963 RSP.
In the video, we can see carbon-fiber panels being wet-sanded by hand, alcantara for the interior being stitched with surgical precision, and a painter lying down what appears to be a can of silver paint, and a classic Porsche crest on the nose. At the end of the teaser, ‘963 RSP’.
Now we know that RS stands for RennSport in German, which translates to Racing Sport, but we’re still unsure about the ‘P’. Perhaps it stands for prototype, we don’t know just yet? But what we do know is that the RSP is not a homologation special like the 911 GT1 Straßenversion of the late ‘90s, a race car that was tamed enough to wear license plates.
Unfortunately, for Porsche fans who were hoping for a McLaren W1 or Ferrari F80 contender, this is not the start of a series. Instead, it is a one-off street-legal car built around the 963 LMDh, Porsche’s current top-tier endurance racer that taakes part in WEC and IMSA and features an 800-volt hybrid system and a heavily re-worked 4.6-liter V8 that can trace its roots to the 918 Spyder.
Given that this is a low-slung, wide-tracked racer with little to no ground clearance and requires a pit crew to operate, it’ll be interesting to see what changes Porsche has carried out to make it compliant and usable for street use. Besides lights and turn signals, the car would require a completely reworked exhaust system to comply with current emissions regulations and athe powerplant would have to be recalibrated for road use.
But regardless, even if this is indeed a one-off, the fact that we’re finally getting to see a Porsche exotic at all in over a decade is worth celebrating. The Porsche 919 Street concept and the Mission X concept gave us hope, but the 963 RSP is finally happening, and we can’t wait to see what Porsche has in store in June. Watch this space.
Source: Porsche