Why the Porsche Carrera GT is the Last True Hypercar

Back in 2003, Porsche has blessed us with, most likely, the pinnacle of the automobile: The Porsche Carrera GT. It had over 600 horsepower, stunning visuals and was mid-engined. Quite a recipe then, but while most super- and hypercars of the time and even today have roughly the same characteristics the Carrera GT has always managed to seperate itself from the grey mass of performance cars. What it was, that set the Carrera GT apart and why I, like many others, think that this car, at least from a petrolheads perspective, is one of the best of all time, I am trying to explain today.

It is not easy to drive

The Carrera GT certainly had the abilty to wet your pants. With a 0-60 time of just 3.5 seconds and crossing the 100mph mark in an additional three, your organs are thrown into areas of your body they have never experienced before. And then, as your eyes start to lose track of what is happening beyond the windows, that is when you know you are reaching the top speed, which is recorded at a staggering 207 mph. And to drive at that speed without any stability-control and besides one traction-control knob, no further electronic aids to keep you alive, not only would you have to wear undies made of kevlar to carry your heavy gentleman balloons, but also immense driving skill and experience.
And I mean it like I say it, this car was not invented to fool around in. Even motorsport icons like world-rally-champion and testdriver for Porsche Walther Röhrl said “it was the first car in my life that I drive and I feel scared.” That comming from a rally-driver who drove in the famous Group B series whis cars of over 600 horsepower and little to no grip for sure means something.

In addition to the mind-bending speed, there was the handling which due to the lack of most electronic driving aids made it even trickier than it already was. Don’t get me wrong though, the Carrera GT was, like most Porsches, a car with exeptional handling abilities with its super fast steering, tons of feedback and essentially no body-roll. But as the needle of the speedometer creeps closer and closer to the edge, there was not the tiniest space for mistakes as the missing stability-control makes it unpredictable and very hard to keep on tarmac, once you lose traction. Should you somehow get out of such a terrifying situation alive, a change of underwear will be required.
That is what I love about this thing. It remains one of the last hyper-sports cars to truly scare you to death. You really had to drive it and you had to have the guts to do it because as soon as you even begin to be little over-confident, this car will bite you.

It's analog

Whilst the Carrera GT’s successor, the 918 Spyder, is all about the cutting-edge technology with its four-wheel-steering, four driving modes and 17 various traction control settings, the 980 was a completely different animal. It was one of the last true performance vehicles to bring the driver into the focus.
Nowdays, with sports cars in particular having countless electronic driving aids complementing the driver, it has gotten very easy for nearly anyone to control a vehicle capable of reaching the bespoken 200mph mark. No matter how skilled - or unskilled - you might be, you will be able to impress your colleagues and make them think you are a driving god sent by the gods of motorsport down on earth to show the weak what actually could be done in a car. Okay, maybe not so much but you get the idea.

What Porsche have done with the Carrera GT is, they designed an uncompromising race car for the road and you will immediately notice that the moment you get inside and start the engine. Its V10 howl will wake you up from every hangover you might have had from the night before and its notoriously difficult clutch will keep you on your toes everytime you want to get going at a traffic light. Although its looks do not posess the flamboyance of a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, by all means it does not look bad. Although its styling may have been a little more subtle, it for sure had the power challenge them all. As you can imagine then, if you ever were fortunate enough to be able to purchase this vehicle, you would have to know what you were buying. But then again at a listing price of more than 350.000 pounds you definetly would.

The Carrera GT was very raw and mechanical. You won’t be greeted by any distracting screens or unnecessary gizmos. Just a steering wheel, a gearknob and a key slot on the left side is everything you need to be at charge of this vehicle.
There were really very few reasons to lose focus in the Carrera GT. You are just immersed into the driving experience, and that is all there is. With 612 bhp comming from a 5.7 litre V10 engine, that is glued right onto your spine, you won’t be falling asleep in this car. But the thing that exites me the most about the Carrera GT is the fact that Porsche deliberately decided to build this thing with a manual gearbox.
You see, the 980 was launched at a time when there was a transition happening within the hypercar world. Just one year earlier, we saw the launch of Ferrari’s attempt for the greatest hyper-performance car. The Enzo. And to be fair, they got really close. But one thing that was everybody was crazy about and what was completely new at the time, was its F1-style flappy-paddle gearbox. Mercedes also switched the traditional three pedals for two in the Mercedes-McLaren SLR, which was an automatic. All over the supercar world you were able to see that change, too. The Lamborghini Muciélago or the Aston Martin DB9, they all went from the conventional gearstick to exotic paddles.
Porsche went against the trend, and boy, did it pay off.

It started out as a race car

Initially there never was a plan of making the Carrera GT. Porsche didn’t even intend to enter the hypercar market. In 1991, Porsche built a Formula 1 engine as a plan to re-enter the top tier in motorsport. Re-enter you might think? What many people do not know is that the German car maker used to be a very successful engine supplier. With 5 years at McLaren, one constructors- and two driver-championships under their belt, Porsche proved that they are able to build high-quality race-engines. But after a highly dissapointing comeback into the sport in that year, they decided to call it a day and abandon their engagement in F1.
So now Porsche has got this beautiful race-engine lying around in their storage department with nowhere to put it. As a result of that, the next idea was to enter the Le Mans 24-hours endurance race in the late 90’s to finally end Audi’s dominance in that series. The funds came in and everybody was working hard on the prototype, as the next blow shattered Porsche’s ambitions to participate is a prestigious motosport series. Regulation changes were made, in the middle of Porsche’s developement stage which made starting from scratch impossible and therefore the engine of the prototype was obsolete as there were no further funds to keep the project alive. So again, they were left with no choice but to leave their motoracing efforts behind and focus on road cars.
After such a bumpy R&D-phase with many millions of cash thrown out of the Volkswagen Group’s windows, Porsche had a bit of a financial crysis. So with of what was left of the fundings, they launched the first Cayenne. Despite the criticism the car got, mostly from Porsche purists, the SUV was a great succcess, which opened many doors for the now most profitable car company in the world to expand their brand into more ambitious fields. And with an unused race engine in the darkest corner of Porsche’s inventory, they saw a huge opportunity and the idea of the Carrera GT was born.