New Porsche Hypercar Teased as Modern 911 GT1 Successor
Teaser Confirms Road-Legal Version of LMDh Car
In a black-and-white YouTube video hashtagged #RACEBORN, Porsche has teased its upcoming 963 RSP, a one-off road-going version of the LMDh racecar that won races in WEC and IMSA. Back in April, Porsche hinted at an upcoming street-legal hypercar by highlighting its 1975 917 race car, which was also converted for street use. Now we know that the imminent reveal will be of the road-legal version of the 2023 963 endurance racer that won twice at the 24 Hours of Daytona.
Porsche 963 at Long Beach —
Source: Porsche
A Racer For The Road, Named For A Legend
The 963 RSP is presumed to be built for Roger Seale Penske – hence the 'RSP' moniker that's never been used on a Porsche before. Penske owns the team that runs Porsche's factory endurance-racing program, and is the most successful team owner in motor-racing history, winning four out of five championships in 2024 alone in the FIA WEC and IMSA seasons. The car is expected to stay true to the racer, with the same twin-turbocharged 4.6-liter V8, hybrid system, and seven-speed sequential transmission.
Porsche has done this before when it handcrafted a single road-legal example of the 1996 911 GT1 Le Mans racer that competed in the GT1 class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans – which it called the 911 GT1 Strassenversion. The 963 RSP is similarly handcrafted, and in Porsche's teaser video, Porsche workers sand down carbon-fiber panels, mix paint, do interior stitchwork, and generally apply their specialist trades to finish the one-of-one masterpiece. With the teasers now starting, it won't be long before one of the most covetable Porsches of the modern era is revealed to the world.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
33 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Germany's crisis-hit car industry is the key to its rearmament
Once the pride of the nation, Germany's car industry is reeling from an annus horribilis of poor sales, job losses and the threat of unprecedented factory closures. But defence firms have found a silver lining in the decline of the 'auto' trade: rehiring skilled workers to build equipment for a new German army that may soon have to defend Europe from Russia. Sources in the European defence industry, which will play a critical role in German rearmament, say they are eager to snap up engineers who have been let go by car companies so they can be put to work producing tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Discussions are also being held in Berlin about repurposing car factories to produce military equipment. 'Let's put it this way: there's a similarity in the jobs, which means teaching an expert to weld vehicles other than cars takes less time than [training] a new person,' said a defence industry source. 'Thus, job offers usually work quite well for those who left the car industry.' It comes as Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, seeks to turn his country into a major European security power, after decades of Berlin taking a back seat on geopolitical issues. Mr Merz, the centre-Right Christian Democrats (CDU) leader, has vowed to increase German defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP and transform the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, into the 'strongest conventional army in Europe'. The CDU chief has created a special €500 billion (£430 billion) fund to rebuild Germany's crumbling infrastructure, a key requirement for the rapid transit of Nato troops and tanks to its eastern flank. His coalition government is also mulling a possible return to conscription, and last month unveiled the deployment of a new brigade of soldiers in Lithuania to defend the border with Russia – the first permanent military deployment by Germany since the Second World War. The dramatic shift in German defence policy, known as the 'Zeitenwende' or turning of the times, has created unprecedented opportunities for the German arms industry, which used to be a pariah in the country due to its Nazi past. At the same time, years of economic stagnation, Donald Trump's tariff war, poor electric car sales and fierce competition from China have all wrought havoc on the once mighty German car industry. A recent study by the Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) said the German car industry is facing its worst slump since the pandemic, with two fifths of businesses struggling with a shortage in orders. 'Intensifying competition, especially from outside Europe, seems to be increasingly taking its toll on the German automotive industry. The crisis in the German car industry is continuing,' the Ifo said. Another study by EY, an audit firm, found that the German car industry suffered 19,000 job losses in 2024 and now only employs around 760,000 people in Germany, the lowest figure since 2013. But Mr Merz's rearmament policy could come to the rescue. Rafael Loss, a German security expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said discussions were under way to convert German car factories, which might otherwise have closed down, so they can be used to build weapons, such as one Audi factory in Brussels. Volkswagen, which is Europe's biggest carmaker but losing sales to China, is also understood to be looking for alternative uses for its factories in Dresden and Osnabrück. 'In cases where you have a car factory that already has skilled workers and is equipped for production of heavy machinery, that is one of the stronger arguments for the defence industry getting involved to prevent job losses,' he said. Mr Loss added that electricians could also have a valuable role to play in developing military technology that has similar design features to civilian cars. 'This could be applied to micro-electronics, the sort of electronic devices you see in automated cars such as proximity sensors for parking,' he said. 'They are not too different from the sensors being used in military vehicles.' Germany's 'Zeitenwende' policy began under Olaf Scholz, the previous chancellor, who announced the concept in a major speech in 2022 responding to Vladimir Putin's illegal and full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He vowed that Germany would no longer be a bystander on issues of European security, as he created a €100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr, in addition to giving billions of euros in aid to Ukraine. Mr Scholz was initially reluctant to provide German military support, due to fears of angering Putin, but eventually sent tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, air defence systems and huge quantities of ammunition to Kyiv. His successor, Mr Merz, wants to take German support even further, having swept to victory in elections last February and formed a coalition propped up by Mr Scholz's Social Democrats. 'Germany is back,' he has declared. Now there is speculation as to whether Mr Merz will finally agree to send powerful long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, a step that the government of Mr Scholz always maintained was a step too far that would drag Berlin into open conflict with Moscow. Mr Merz's government maintains a policy of secrecy on the nature of arms supplies to Ukraine, which it says is to keep Moscow guessing, although critics wonder if it really means that he has developed cold feet about the Taurus system. The coalition is also hampered by doveish figures in the Social Democrats, who hold many of the same views about Russia as their former leader Mr Scholz. At the same time, the rise of the Kremlin-friendly far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party – which came second place in the last election – is putting pressure on Mr Merz to temper his actions against Russia. Some German officials have been slightly taken aback by the highly positive response to Mr Merz's rearmament policy, fearing that expectations have been set too high for his government. 'We know expectations in Europe are high, and we view this defence reform as an important and necessary step,' one source said. 'But buying tanks, building tanks, this is not something that Germans are enthusiastic about,' they added, citing Germany's previous and far more infamous attempt to build the biggest army in Europe.
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Bottle brand Air Up sniffs UK success
A scented water brand backed by actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis is targeting the UK for expansion. Air Up, which sells bottles that make water taste like fruit and soda, is aiming to crack Britain following success in Germany. The Munich-based company, which is 1 per cent owned by the Hollywood couple, sells water bottles that can be fitted with scented 'pods'. These emit smells which trick the brain into thinking the water is flavoured. The bottles start at £30, while pods for flavours such as watermelon and bubblegum start at £5. While UK customers can already buy the bottles online, Air Up chief executive Christian Hauth said the brand was looking to stock its products in more shops across Britain. Air Up is sold in Boots and Sainsbury's but agreements with more major retailers are expected in the coming weeks. 'We're hitting open doors and open arms in the UK,' Hauth said. 'The main goal for us is to be as ubiquitous as possible and, for that, we need to be where the customer is.' Since it launched in the UK in 2021, Air Up has raked in more than £100 million in sales from British customers, thanks in part to a social media advertising blitz.
BBC News
11 hours ago
- BBC News
'I always practise that' - Bellingham fuels Jude comparisons with first Dortmund goal
Jobe Bellingham already knew the comparisons to big brother Jude were inevitable, especially after scoring on his first start for Borussia years, nine months and one week after Jude scored on his first start for the black and yellow - a 5-0 win in the German Cup - Jobe scored on his first 19-year-old scored 45 minutes into his full debut - a 4-3 defeat of Mamelodi Sundowns in the Club World Cup - 15 minutes longer than it took Jude against Duisburg back in September went on to score 24 goals in 132 games for Dortmund before joining Real Madrid in 2023, and Jobe certainly showed signs of his sibling's nack of arriving late in the box to goal in Cincinnati showed anticipation and poise, agility and ruthlessness. After timing his run perfectly, Jobe cushioned the ball away from his marker before firing past the goalkeeper, albeit with the help of a slight capped a fine display on his full debut, and by his own admission, it's something the former Sunderland midfielder has been working on. "It's a really nice bonus. I am glad we won but there are still a lot of things for me to improve on personally and for the team. I am really pleased with it," Bellingham told Dazn."I practise that so many times, not that exact finish, but arriving late on the edge of the box as a midfielder is something you need to be really good at."If you can score, if you can contribute those kind of goals a certain amount per season then you are doing really well. "I was really pleased because it was something I practised as a kid and at Sunderland so many times, during training, after training. So yeah, I am really proud of it." Comparisons to Jude are no doubt tiring for Jobe, but there is a reason they are fact, the timing of his runs into the penalty area are reminiscent of another English midfielder."It's easy sometimes as a midfielder to just pass the ball then stand still," former Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel told Dazn. "But no, he wants to arrive late in the box. He wants to be there when the ball drops."He reminds me of a certain player I played with, Frank Lampard. 20-odd goals every season by being there and arriving at the right time. I think he's going to score a lot of goals for Dortmund."What I like about him is he's very direct. Once he has the ball he's looking up, he's passing forwards, running forwards. He wants to arrive at the box at the right time, and that's exactly what he did. "The chest control and the volley - he wouldn't have scored this goal if he hadn't passed and then run forwards."Former Italy and Inter Milan forward Christian Vieri said: "He's going to score a lot of goals because he's always going towards the goal - he looks like his brother, the movements are exactly the same."Should Dortmund and Real Madrid both win their respective Club World Cup groups and win in the last 16, then the Bellingham brothers would face each other in a quater-final clash in New Jersey.
