The Porsche Speedster, despite its silver and white exterior and close resemblance to many other versions of the 991.2 generation of Porsche 911s, is something quite special.
It’s evocative instantly grants it cult-like status, but there’s also something unexplainably alluring about its shape that’s shared with the original 930 Speedster and indeed its precursor, the 356 Speedster.
The car’s inherent mass appeal is corroborated by the excitement it generated at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed, where the car was showed to the public for the first time. Its presence alone almost drowns out the fact that it’s existence is in celebration of Porsche’s 70th anniversary. Ironic.
Calls for Zuffenhausen’s brass to put the 911 Speedster into production have been echoed through past model generations, and it looks like they’ve relented this time as well, as a report by Autocar seems to confirm. Prototypes, they say, have already been spotted in known Porsche test locations, something not typically done if it were to remain a concept study.
The timing certainly does match up give there’s an all-new 911 on the horizon. The previous car to wear the Speedster name was the 997 Speedster, released in 2010 toward the tail of the model’s generational life, and to the great relief of Porsche collectors everywhere. Being strictly limited to 356 units, they were quickly snatched up for near astronomical sums of money. That seems a little unfair.
Indeed, the next natural question upon confirmation that there will be yet a new 911 Speedster is: how prohibitively exclusive is Porsche going to make it? It’s a complete unknown so far, but upon reviewing the confirmed specifications of this road-ready concept, it’s fair to assume it to be a high end variant nonetheless.
The open top non-Targa, Cabriolet-based 991.2 Speedster shares essentially the same drivetrain and suspension set up as the track-focused GT3, that being a 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat-six that outputs 373kW at a heady 9,000rpm while torque peaks at 460Nm.
Should the GT3 recipe be followed to the letter, a six-speed manual transmission is mated to that engine by default, though the option to have a 7-speed PDK dual-clutch transmission is available upon customer request.
An official announcement that the 911 Speedster based on this concept car is to reach series production is expected to be released in the coming weeks, and likely confirming the limited run cap being more than the previous versions 356 units but less than 2,000. Deliveries should start in early 2019.
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