Porsche’s One-Off Road-Legal Flachbau RS Is The Weirdest Modern 911 Yet

There are many ways people describe the Porsche 911. Archetypal, iconic, precise, usable, expensive, the list goes on. However, when it comes to the water-cooled era, “weird” isn’t usually one of them. Considering it’s one of the few truly rear-engined cars sold in America this century, that seems a bit surprising. Here’s one that deserves that adjective, due to being a new interpretation of the marque’s wildest 1980s visual treatment. This is the 911 Flachbau RS, and it’s rather unusual.

First, some background: In the mid-’70s, Porsche decided to turn its Turbo Carrera into a Group 5 race car. Thus, the 935 was born, but not as we know it. Initially, it featured the same sort of headlights as any other 911 of the era. Distinctive, but not exactly conducive to a small frontal area. Then engineer Norbert Singer decided to stretch the rules around modified fenders to their absolute limit. Enter, the slantnose, known in German as the Flachbau. With the headlights relocated to the front bumper, their housings could effectively be lopped off completely to create an impressively pointy front end. The shape of winning in Group 5 was born then and there, and it should come as no surprise that some Porsche customers wanted a similar treatment on their road cars.

For the right price, Porsche’s Sonderwunsch program was happy to oblige. With pop-up headlights eventually replacing the race car’s bumper-mounted items in order to conform to headlight height regulations, the slantnose Turbo was up there with the Countach and Testarossa as a four-wheeled object of ’80s excess. A proper poster car, and a treatment that continued to be an extremely special option into the succeeding 964-generation 911.

Well, the Sonderwunsch division has done it again. Starting with a customer’s special request and a 2018 911 GT2 RS, a team including in-house Nürburgring wizards Manthey Racing, revered designer Grant Larson, and Porsche Motorsport spent three years building a road-legal modern slantnose. Think short-tailed 2019 935 for the road, and you wouldn’t be far off conceptually.

The lengths the team has gone to here are astounding. The Flachbau RS tips the scales at nearly 70 pounds lighter than the 3,175-pound GT2 RS Weissach Package it’s based on, which is already 40 pounds lighter than a standard GT2 RS. The navigation system, the sound deadening, and the carpets were all thrown in the bin in favor of a half-cage and simple exposed paint. The wiring harness is unique and lighter than the one on a GT2 RS, thanks to reduced complexity. Even the snap-in cargo area mounts for the towing eyes have been left behind. Recovery gear instead comes in a removable box that the owner can set aside once fixing a towing eye for certain track work.

Then there’s the aero. That enormous new rear wing allegedly generates up to 1,221 pounds of downforce at V-Max. Those aerodiscs on the rear wheels are entirely functional, as is the new front splitter, as are all the additional vents. Oh, and that’s before we get into all the Manthey underbody parts. However, none of this is especially weird. Obsessive, certainly, but not strange in the slightest. The headlight situation, on the other hand, blew my shit smooth off.

First, we have to talk about the front end as a whole entity. Pretty much everything ahead of the doors save for the hood is unique to the Flachbau RS, which begs the question: Why go with that U-shaped carbon fiber insert? It breaks up the front end in a rather strange way, making the hood look unusually small despite it being entirely normal-sized. The desire for additional vents is entirely understandable, but perhaps body color would’ve suited parts of the insert better. Of course, the insert serves a purpose beyond styling. While the most famous 930 Flachbaus featured pop-up headlights, those are generally frowned upon these days for pedestrian safety reasons. As such, Porsche’s gone to great lengths to sink rows of LEDs into what appear to be vents, and the result requires some serious time to adjust to.

Porsche claims this is “a specially designed lighting system,” and if those units weren’t off the shelf, they must’ve cost an absolute fortune. Headlights are some of the priciest parts on any car, so to engineer and homologate new headlights for one single, solitary car, you’d need absolute bulk cash. The sort of cash that might want a more elegant solution than this, or maybe the slight kludginess makes it more racecar.

While I’m still not entirely sure what to think of the Flachbau RS as a piece of design, I massively appreciate its existence. It’s proof that so long as your pockets are deep enough, Porsche’s Sonderwunsch division will let you go absolutely bonkers. Sure, some of the more subtle Sonderwunsch stuff is cool, but imagine just letting it rip. Could you get Porsche to modify an original Boxster to look much closer to the concept car? What about a third 914/8 with a flat-eight, or a functional version of that Cayenne convertible design study that never made it, or a 996 GT2 Targa that blends widowmaker performance with an astoundingly complex affair of glass? The sky’s the limit, and letting your freak flag fly high is so much cooler than just buying another hypercar.

Top graphic image: Porsche