This all-white wonder you’re looking at here is the second-most rare variant that Porsche has ever built. While it looks like any other 911 to the layperson, this is a motorsport-division-built rally racer from 1984. With some extreme weight savings tricks, the engineers managed to get this thing down to just 2,160 pounds, nearly 600 pounds lighter than a standard 911 of the time. Power was bumped from the 207 ponies in a street Carrera 3.2 to 280-ish for the SC/RS’ 3-liter. Light weight and more power to boot? It’s a potent rally machine. I’ve been feeling pretty down in the dumps lately, but if I bought this, I might create enough dopamine to be happy again. At least for a little while.
This week the online car auction site Bring A Trailer is closing in on its 150,000th auction listing, and somehow it keeps managing to find more and more rare and exciting cars to bring to cross the electronic block. This auction will likely go well beyond the realm of normal “rare” Porschedom, and head into the upper echelon of prototypes and race cars. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it tip well into the seven figures. As of this writing the auction began just a few hours ago, and the bidding is already up to $450,000. Another of the twenty sold at auction in 2019 for $687,000.
This car was effectively created because of Rothmans cigarettes. The tobacco brand had terminated its deal to sponsor the Opel rally team at the close of the 1983 season. Porsche and Rothmans already had a lucrative partnership in sports cars, and homologating a car for rally was a very easy lift for the Porsche team. So it made a 911 rally car for the cigarette brand to sponsor. The four-wheel drive 959 was supposed to be ready for the 1984 season, but it was running behind schedule, so this car was tapped in.
I’m sure you want to know how Porsche got all that weight out of this car. Porsche started with a thinner steel for the car’s body shell, and most of the exterior panels are aluminum. Even the rear glass is thinner, and the bumpers are fiberglass to keep the pounds in check. As with most race cars, the first things to go were creature comforts. The rear seats, power windows, radio, heat, hood brackets, clock, glove box door, and door pockets went out the window. To improve the braking, Porsche grabbed a bunch of parts from the 911 Turbo parts bin and dug a couple out of the old 917 bin for good measure. The decklid is shaped after the 911 Turbo tail for a bit of extra downforce.
The car on BaT is the last of the 20 SC/RS built, chassis 021. It was delivered new to Swiss Van Dijk Racing, and unfortunately it raced just once in-period, at the 1984 Tour De Course in France. I guess I’ll have to sell my house and a few cars and maybe an organ or two to get the funds to bid on this car, but it’s probably worth it, right?