The 88-year-old billionaire spokesperson for RBF and team owner of the Porsche factory-supported IMSA and WEC sports prototype program, Roger Searle Penske, has received a very special gift from the German automaker. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Porsche’s last street-legal one-off Porsche 917 built for Count Rossi, the bigwigs in Stuttgart decided to honor The Captain with a one-of-one street-legal version of the 963 that his team’s drivers race each weekend. Penske has been largely loyal to the Porsche brand since he started his own racing career back in the 1950s. Inspired by the racing version of the 963, this strassenversion literally has Roger’s name on it, being dubbed 963 RSP.
Debuting this special road-going race car in the run up to the 24 Hours of Le Mans (where Penske will field three Porsche 963s to fight for the overall win), Porsche brought the Count Rossi 917 out for the party as well, putting the two pioneering cars fifty years apart, but side by side. Finished in the same Martini Silver paint as the 917, the 963 RSP looks truly unique without the racecar’s livery and sponsor logos.
Porsche Cars North America President and CEO Timo Resch, who conceived of the original idea. “The 917 from the story was every inch a race car – albeit one driven on the road – and we took the same approach with the 963 RSP,” Resch said. “It uses beautiful materials of the best quality available, but is still every bit a race car underneath.”
What’s different from the race car?
There are a few major changes to the 963 visible from the outside, as the bodywork needed to be adapted from full-race to street-legal. Obviously the street car needs provisions for license plates front and rear. The front and rear fenders of the race car are typically open on top for maxiumum aero downforce, but the RSP needed some vents added over those holes to remain legal. The rear wing blanking plates are removed because the RSP does not need to maintain legality to the racing rulebook anymore. Finally, the whole thing is touched off with a nice metal and enamel Porsche badge on the hood, which obviously the race car does not get.
Inside the 963 RSP you’ll find a completely bespoke leather and Alcantara interior. A race car interior isn’t exactly built for driver comfort, so the engineers and craftspeople at Porsche had a lot of work to do here. While the car is still a single-seater, has to be started with a laptop, and requires the use of a Peltor headset to hear anything inside the extremely loud carbon-fiber vehicle, everything is trimmed in supple tan leather, and the carbon bucket seat is even vented with conditioned air. Porsche also added a 3D-printed cup holder so a nearly-ninety Roger could climb aboard with his coffee in the morning.
The messy bits
All Porsche 963s use a Bosch hybrid system paired to a turbocharged V8 powertrain. In race trim Porsche claims it makes 670 horsepower, though that can change with balance of performance restrictions. For the 963 RSP Porsche’s engineers were forced to find a way to remap that engine to run on pump gas. There’s no word on what the power number might be now, but the company does say it was a “significant undertaking” to re-tune the engine. It’s possible for the 963 RSP to be run on electric power only, though the power delivery has been remapped to make the car a little smoother to drive in EV mode.
The full carbon chassis of the 963 RSP is built by Canada’s Multimatic, and features the dual-valve Multimatic DSSV dampers shared with the race car, though they’re raised to maximum available ride height setting and tuned to be as soft as possible for a compliant road driving experience. Call me a skeptic, but I don’t think Roger Penske will be climbing aboard this car and stacking a bunch of miles on it. That said, I do think the changes to make it more comfortable are pretty cool.
Porsche says the car is “capable of being driven on the road under special circumstances and in accordance with local requirements. For the purposes of this demonstration on French public roads, the company applied for French ‘W’ manufacturer plates. As a further disclaimer, Porsche says “the 963 RSP is not a homologated addition to the Porsche model lineup and is intended to remain a very special one-off.” If you want the 963 RSP you’ll have to convince Mr. Penske to sell it, but he’s a business man so everything probably has a (very steep) price.
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