Images sourced from Porsche/Twitter
Playing off this morning’s Fintail Mercedes and the theme of less-than-likely rally cars, the latest Porsche motorsport news is centered on a potential works rally entry based on the modified Cayman GT4 Clubsport seen here. That is, depending on how it performs in the upcoming Rally Deutschland later this month.
Though it’s not the first of its kind to compete on a rally stage, this particular repurposed Cayman GT4 is the most focused attempt at making the platform into a truly competitive one in the FIA’s R-GT class (which includes other GT-based machines like the Aston Martin V8 Vantage). Fresh from setting a new overall record at Pikes Peak in an electric Volkswagen, Romain Dumas is turning his attention back to his engineering company’s—RD Limited—work on getting the more down-to-earth Cayman properly modified to handle the jumps and ruts and mud puddles of rallying. We can see the obvious changes to the bodywork in addition to that serious bank of driving lights (does anything actually look worse with these?), but as far as mechanical details are concerned there’s nothing but speculation. Since sources say Dumas hopes to eventually get the car competing in the big show that is the full WRC season rather than a support series of sorts, we can expect it to go through a few more rounds of changes along the way. You already know it will have a much more robust long-travel suspension setup, and it likely retains the base car’s (if you can call the Clubsport a “base car”), 3.8-liter naturally-aspirated flat-six good for just about 380hp even in stock form.
So where does Stuttgart come into play? Though they aren’t developing this car directly, it seems Porsche is working closely with Dumas as his RD Limited engineering team carries out the actual preparations, but the really intriguing bit was mentioned on Twitter yesterday when the motorsport arm of the manufacturer said they were considering the possibility of developing a factory rally car based on a future model (likely the upcoming Cayman refresh) should the response to Dumas’s car be the right one.
Whether that means it has to finish well or just garner attention from the fans at Rally Deutschland is hard to say, but the idea of Porsche coming back to the WRC as a manufacturer should give the crowd something to cheer for regardless of pace. Perhaps it will be a means for VAG to take back the crown from Ford.
