Relaunching the legendary Porsche 935 was top secret, right up to the end.
Not even other departments within Porsche knew.
Small wonder, that the reveal at Laguna Seca in California was “immense”, in Porsche’s words.
Designer Grant Larson and his development team had maintained a “vow of silence” throughout.
“Taking on the heir of such a legendary Porsche filled each and every one of us with pride from the first moment,” Mr Larson said.
“We essentially didn’t have a lot of time to make our vision a reality. At least the exterior design had to be created in three to four days, which meant that there was just one attempt – and it needed to stick,” he said.
Made for fans, the new Porsche 935 will be used for club sport events and for private racetrack training sessions, Porsche said in a press statement.
Mr Larson said that unbounded by homologation rules, he and his team essentially had carte blanche over the design process of the new Porsche 935, codenamed “Project Flatnose”.
Based on the 911 GT2 RS, and taking inspiration from its historical role model, extensive body parts were replaced with carbon fibre elements.
Like its predecessor, the new Porsche 935’s base colour is white. With a total length of 4.87 metres, the elongated rear shields the Porsche 911 hidden deep underneath.
Porsche engineers were involved unusually early in the vehicle development phase.
“We normally join the process in the wind tunnel stage at the latest, but with the new 935 we were already included at the design studio phase – it created a special group dynamic,” said overall project manager Matthias Scholz.
The original Porsche 935 was was based on the Porsche 911 model 930, and raced between 1976 and 1986.
The 935 was used by Porsche works teams as well as private racing teams.
It dominated the 12 Hours of Sebring on multiple occasions, as it did the 24 Hours of Daytona.
It was also the class victor at Le Mans.
In its white Martini colour scheme, it earned the Le Mans 935/78 model the nickname “Moby Dick”.
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