cars news 10: We Wish This Porsche Vision Gran Turismo Was Real

As much as we would like to see the mighty 918 Spyder sitting pretty on the race grid, the closest Porsche has come to building a strictly race-ready 918 Spyder was the optional Weissach package. For $84,000 more, Porsche offered the deletion of some amenities, and gave the car lighter carbon fiber trim pieces, lightweight magnesium wheels, flame-retardant upholstery, racing seat belts, and further aerodynamic elements. Overall, the Weissach Package dropped the car’s weight by 80 pounds, yet it was never a true racing car. If it ever saw reality, this 908-04 Concept would change that.

Created by six devout “car guys,” the 908-04 is aimed at not becoming a real car per se, but rather a concept car you can drive in Gran Turismo 6 as one of the company’s wildly popular Vision GT concepts. According to the designers, “We wanted to create a car that nobody makes anymore. A ‘Back to basics’ kind of feel, mainly focused on generating a feeling for the love of racing.” And by the images here, it’s definitely affecting us in a positive way.

The genesis of the project was to create a modern interpretation of a 1969 Porsche 908 LH using the 918 Spyder and 919 race car architecture. As you can see, the 908-04 heavily uses the overall design of the 918 Spyder road car, but the entire exterior appears to have been lowered onto a 919 Le Mans race car chassis. It also features the same type of wheels, and top exhaust ports as the 918 Spyder. Additionally, the car also features a throwback “long tail” that extends well past the rear wheels, and a front end from the Mission E concept Porsche debuted last year.

“We made the choice to have the longtail because Porsches with this feature have something genuinely unique. And until now, nobody, as far as we know, has tried to create a modern version of it. In our opinion, it is a bit of a forgotten idea, so we thought it would be a ‘rebirth of an icon’ that would generate nostalgia in car and Porsche enthusiasts alike,” reads the release.

Hearkening back to the wonderful Porsche 917 race car is a giant fan on the top of the car, right behind the exhaust ports. The fan, like in Adrian Newey’s Gran Turismo Red Bull X2014 concept, is used to create huge amounts of downforce by essentially sucking the car to the pavement. It’s the ultimate aerodynamic addition to a car that pays tribute to sports car racing history.

If you are scrambling to turn on your PS4 to download the car, we’ve got bad news. As of right now, this is not an officially sanctioned project from either Porsche or Polyphony Digital, the team behind Gran Turismo. For the meantime, it exists only in these beautiful renders.

Source: Porsche Vision GT