30 Oct 06
Pretty much since Day One Porsche and motorsport have been an inseparable pairing and over the years the 911 has accumulated enough silverware to crazy pave the M25. Hardly a surprise, then, to find a couple of motorsport-derived 997s craving the attention of your wallet.
The 997 GT3 is the 911 to buy if you enjoy your driving to an unnatural degree. You talk to it, it talks to you, and by means of that very explicit dialogue, the pair of you annihilate great swathes of road in a speeding blur of colour and a wail of sound. It's the sort of thing best experienced on a track, and for that reason there's the non-cost option of a Clubsport package for the 3.6-litre 415bhp pseudo-racer - a built-in roll cage, fire extinguisher system, six-point safety harness and a battery isolator switch.
The GT3 RS has all that gubbins pre-installed - plus carbonfibre-shelled race-style seats - on the understanding that you will be taking it to a track. Although it shares the GT3's engine and rear-wheel-drive transmission, the RS uses the broader bodyshell of the four-wheel drive models and is 20kg lighter than its stablemate.
As a measure of what a serious bit of kit this is, the RS features the same fully adjustable suspension as Porsche's GT3 RSR race car, and its seemingly ostentatious rear wing can also be adjusted to suit different types of race circuit. For any Porsche enthusiast (in fact, most car enthusiasts), the GT3 RS is 911 heaven, the Holy Grail. This status and its rarity will ensure prices will sit heartily higher than the £94,280 list price for many years to come. Makes the £79,540 GT3 seem like good value for money; as with the RS, don't expect acquire one for less than list price any day soon.
