The Carrera GT is a truly analogue Porsche hypercar
It’s strange how the most rarefied supercars come in batches. We all remember when the McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 918 arrived at the same time just over a decade ago to form what became known as the Holy Trinity. ‘Which is best?’ was a question that occupied us for what seemed like an eternity and, to be honest, it’s still up for debate more than ten years later.
Rewind by another decade and it was a two-horse race between Italy and Germany. The Ferrari Enzo arrived in 2002 and the Porsche Carrera GT came to steal its lunch in 2004. Both took aim at the McLaren F1 which has been king of the hypercars since before the term ‘hypercar’ had even been coined in the 1990s.
The passage of time has been kind to the Carrera GT’s aesthetic. OK, it might look a bit ‘big Boxster’ from some angles, but its subtle styling has proven surprisingly timeless. Free from aggressive aerodynamic addenda that characterises modern hypercars, the Carrera GT looks like a pure road car, but it is rooted in motorsport.
Its ancestry can be traced back to 911 GT1 and LMP1-98 racers of the 1990s. There are also strong rumours that Porsche pulled out of top level endurance racing to allow fellow VAG company Audi to compete at Le Mans without in-house competition. The 5.7-litre V10 engine, meanwhile, is based on a unit that Porsche secretly developed for the Footwork Formula 1 team.
The Carrera GT’s first public appearance was in concept car form at the 2000 Paris Motor Show. A positive reception gave it a hope of production, while orders from the Cayenne that was introduced two years later provided useful revenue. Porsche went on to build 1,275 Carrera GTs of a planned 1,500 and made money on every one it sold — which is not always the case at this level.
Today, it takes its place as a truly analogue hypercar that predates the hybridisation that came with the next generation. While it is a technical tour de force — the construction is carbon fibre and the V10 is a paragon of engineering attention to detail — it has three pedals and a manual gearchange.
It’s always a joy to get up close with a Carrera GT, and even better when there’s more than one of them. That’s exactly what we were able to do at the recent Super Sunday Breakfast Club, when several of them arrived to enjoy the early morning June sunshine with the roof off. We’ll never get bored with those howling V10s.
Photography by Joe Harding.
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