Every car is an argument about what matters, and the Porsche 911 GT1 makes its case with 3164 cc, twin-turbocharged, Porsche M96/80 flat-6 and 400 kW. Porsche built from 1996 to 1999 — when airbags, anti-lock brakes and Japanese build quality became the world standard. The shape is credited to Tony Hatter.
The story
The Porsche 911 GT1 is a car designed and developed by German automobile manufacturer Porsche AG to compete in the GT1 class of sportscar racing, which also required a street-legal version for homologation purposes. The limited-production street-legal version developed as a result was named the 911 GT1 Straßenversion (Street version).
What is underneath
The engine is 3164 cc, twin-turbocharged, Porsche M96/80 flat-6; the output is 400 kW. On the scales it comes to 1150 kg. That is roughly 348 horsepower per tonne: genuine supercar pace. Drive goes through a 6-speed manual. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
In the Porsche line-up the Porsche 911 GT1 has a clear place: the factory was Stuttgart, Germany. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Ferrari 550, the Bugatti 18/3 Chiron, the Ford GT90. Nearby in the Porsche catalogue sit the Porsche P1 and the Porsche Type 12.
Owning one today
Buying one now means $36,800–$134,200 for a typical example, and running it — fuel and maintenance at its age — costs about $4,531–$7,295 a year. Insurance sits around $1,980–$5,080 a year. The figures are class-level estimates from the federal record, with the formula on the methodology page; the model-year pages carry complaints, recalls and repair costs year by year.