Porsche Teases 963 Street Car To Celebrate Count Rossi's One-Off 917 Daily Driver 50 Years Later

Yahoo

25-04-2025

Porsche's 700-horsepower mid-engine hybrid-and-turbocharged V8-powered 963 hypercar has been racing, and winning, in the FIA WEC and IMSA endurance sports car series since its introduction for the 2023 season. While the 963 has not yet found the ultimate success at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it has won the 24 Hours of Daytona the last two years running and is undefeated in IMSA across the first three rounds of the IMSA championship in 2025. This is another in a long line of winning top-class prototypes from Porsche, which stretches all the way back to the iconic Le Mans-dominating 917 introduced in 1968. In June of this year, when Porsche aims to add another Le Mans victory to its already impressive tally of 19, the German sports car brand will unveil what is likely to be a street-legal version of the very car it will race there.
So far Porsche hasn't actually said anything confirming the existence of such a vehicle, though the teaser image above was appended to a video commemorating Count Martine heir Teofilo Guiscardo Rossi di Montelera's (of Martini & Rossi fame) one-off street-legal 917 built by Porsche for the Count in 1975. The connection, these fifty years later, could not be more blunt.
Rossi was one of those well-to-do eccentric wealthy folks with plenty of hobbies, including powerboat racing, bobsledding, and Porsches. His famed support of the Porsche factory race squad was vigorous, so when he commissioned Porsche to build him a street-legal 917, the company wasn't going to say no.
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Once its life as a race car was over, 917 chassis 030 was brought back to the Porsche factory for transformation into Count Rossi's personal street-legal 5-liter flat-twelve rocket ship. In order to meet road legality ordinances, the low-slung tube-frame fiberglass monster was fitted with mufflers, fender mirrors, turn signals, and a horn. The rules at Le Mans at the time required all race cars to be fitted with two seats and a spare tire, so those didn't need to be added, but the seats were reupholstered with leather from Hermès and a custom suede headliner.
This also would not be the first time Porsche has flirted with turning a top-flight Le Mans race car into a road-going hypercar for the jetset, as it even went so far as to commission a street-legal concept of its thrice-Le Mans winning 919 eight years ago. The 919 Street Concept (below) was floated as a 1,000 horsepower follow-up to the 918 Hybrid, but ultimately decided it was too hardcore for drivers without a racing license. There were also street-legal versions of Porsche's iconic 956, 962, and 911 GT1 Le Mans racers built, so this would hardly be new territory for the German brand.
There's no telling just yet what we can expect from a street-legal Porsche 963, but by the looks of things it'll stick even more closely to the race car formula than the 919 Street Concept did, including the massive rear wing and billboard "shark fin" of the race car's aerodynamics. Knowing Porsche, and the Penske-operated race team, it'll be incredibly fast, set a few track records, and cost a whole lot of money. Look for more when Porsche finally unveils the finished product in a couple of months.
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