20 Aug Meet our New Addition!
1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7
● Engine – 2.7-liter overhead cam fuel-injected flat 6
● Horsepower – 210 hp @ 6300 rpm, 188 ft-lbs of torque @ 5100 rpm
● Transmission – 5-speed manual
● Curb Weight – 2410 lbs.
● 0-60 time – 5.6 seconds
● ¼ mile time – 14.0 seconds
● Top speed – 152 mph
● Number built – 1,580
● MSRP price – $14,000.00
Unveiled to the world at the Paris Motor Show in 1972, the Carrera RS 2.7 was not only the first 911 to wear the Carrera name but also the first Porsche to be christened RS. It was designed to offer both professional and private race teams a track-focused 911. Inspiration for the name came from the Carrera Panamericana, a legendary (and very dangerous) border-to-border Mexican road race in which Porsche was a class winner in 1954 and 1955.
The Carrera RS 2.7 was first developed as a homologation special, with a limited number made to satisfy motor racing rules that required a certain number of road-legal versions of the race cars. Porsche initially planned to build 500 examples of the car to homologate it for Group 4 Special GT racing.
When Porsche developed the Carrera RS 2.7 in 1972, the company’s Head of Development asked aeronautical engineer Hermann Burst, who had worked on the 917 project, why the car was getting so much ‘lift’, causing the car to behave unpredictably at high speeds. Subsequent wind tunnel experiments revealed that the rear of the car’s classic downward sloping shape was causing low pressure, making the car unstable. To compensate, Burst innovated the rear spoiler for the RS 2.7 – better known as the ‘Ducktail’.
Germany’s regulators weren’t happy with the spoiler idea, so Porsche agreed to limit the height of the wing and said the road-going version would be capped at the 500 units necessary for homologation. This promise was quietly forgotten; 1,580 examples of the RS 2.7 were eventually produced.
The Carrera RS 2.7 is widely considered one of the greatest 911 models ever made. It inspired cars like the GT2 RS and GT3 RS and set in motion the 911’s progression from a great road car to one of the finest track machines of all time. The total package was a fun, street-able 911 with real racing capabilities that set the template that still holds for how Porsche builds race/road special models today. The color of this car is “Viper Green.”