Geneva 2016: Porsche Unveils the 911 R, the one for the purist

Porsche at Geneva unveiled its most purist pleasing car yet, the 911R. Unlike the GT3 which is built to decimate lap times, the R has been built to provide pure driving pleasure. But to make the car even more driver friendly you need to lose some weight and Porsche hasn’t deviated from that plan of action at least. The rear seats of the car have been thrown out and replaced by air. Even the chassis has been lightened and there are plenty of weight saving materials on the body as well. The roof for example is made from magnesium, the bonnet is built from carbon-fibre while most of the body has been made from aluminium. Even the big spoiler has been replaced by a pop-up unit to keep the design lines clean and manage weight. 

Where Porsche has deviated is the drivetrain. The R comes powered by a 4.0-litre flat-six naturally aspirated engine which makes 495PS of power and 460Nm of torque. And here’s the kicker, the engine has been mated to a 6-speed manual transmission (now do you get the purist part?). The car makes about 13PS more than the GT3 RS and has a better power to weight ratio as well. 0-100kmph is dealt with in 3.8 seconds and the 911 R tops out at 320kmph. And the icing on the cake is that this is a limited edition car and only 911 of these will be made though, it’s not confirmed yet but all of them will be sold out by time this story goes online.