Porsche Debuts the 963 RSP, a One-Off Race Car for the Street

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Article detailing Porsche's one-off 963 RSP — a race-derived, street-legal prototype based on the Le Mans 963 LMDh racer.

Porsche Debuts the 963 RSP, a One-Off Race Car for the Street

The Porsche 963 RSP is a one-of-a-kind machine that was specially built for Roger Penske. Based on the 963 race car and inspired by the iconic 917, the RSP has been modified for street driving, though it still features a high-revving V-8.The 963 RSP no doubt costs more than any Porsche you can buy from a dealer, and it will make its public debut at this year's Le Mans race week.There are important Porsche customers, and then there's Roger Penske, the 88-year-old billionaire owner of the Team Penske racing empire. When you're Penske and you say you want a 963 hybrid Le Mans race car that can be driven on the street, Porsche makes it happen, hence the new 963 RSP. Most track-rat Porsches are street cars that get the racing treatment—911 GT2 RS and the like—but the 963 RSP is the opposite. This is a lightly domesticated race car, 10,000-rpm V-8 and all. Inspired by the Iconic 917The street-legal part of the equation is a little bit tenuous, actually. The 963 RSP will be allowed to drive a specific route in France during Le Mans race week, where it will meet its spiritual predecessor, the street-legal 917 racer that Porsche built for Count Rossi in 1975. Once it's back stateside, well, we have a feeling that Penske and Porsche will manage to work something out with the relevant authorities. (Perhaps there's a scrap of metal in the dash that will allow it to be registered as a 1982 924.) And the United States, strangely enough, is where the 963 RSP was completed, at the Porsche Classic shop in Atlanta.PorschePorsche Classic is accustomed to high-end restorations, and that kind of expertise is what's needed to make a gritty race machine meet the expectations of a guy whose initials are in the car's name. The interior got a lot of custom leather and, much to the Germans' amusement, a 3-D-printed cupholder. (The DRK button on the steering wheel, for dispensing drinks to the driver, is still present but doesn't work.)A Race Car with a Real Interior The carbon-fiber body rece

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