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2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S

A Wicked-Fast Street Legal Multi-Tool
Walter Röhrl was carving up the circuit in the Porsche 911 Turbo S like a skilled Jedi Master - and I was sitting next to him, mesmerized by the breathtaking show. I had strapped myself securely into the front passenger bucket of the all-new coupe less than a minute earlier, expecting nothing more than a few quick laps around a track at the hands of another celebrated race driver. Been there, done that. Many times, actually.
Yet this was different. Röhrl was not only calculated and methodical in his approach, but his rally-tuned cerebrum appeared to be actively reading available grip levels while effortlessly tossing the all-wheel-drive Porsche into each corner at gut-wrenching speeds. His hands were moving rapidly, sending tiny steering corrections to the front tires, and he was using every inch of the track to extract more speed. We launched over a curb, dropped a wheel in the dirt and then drifted around a wide off-camber turn. His human precision and focus was astounding, and the performance he was extracting from the machine was just short of breathtaking.

Petrolicious profiles the rare Italian Porschephile

If you're Italian, you love Ferrari. It's almost a national requirement. If not Ferrari, then Lamborghini, or if you're a bit contrarian, perhaps Alfa Romeo or Maserati. This common belief, though, flies in the face of Rosita Corato's devotion to a certain unique Porsche. Despite growing up around cars from Italy's most treasured automakers, Rosita's family of coachbuilders had a passion for Porsche. This love was fostered by her father, who made a living repairing Ferraris. Despite his work, he'd longed for a rear-engined German, finally picking up a 1959 356 Speedster that was in desperate need of restoration. Rosita describes it as "practically a heap of metal" before her masterful metalworking father got to work on it. While it was originally meant to be a racer, it could best be described today as a restomod, and Rosita still uses it regularly on rallies. The engine and brakes have been upgraded, while the ratios on the manual transmission have been tightened up for improved performance. To save weight – remember, Rosita's father wanted a racer – the doors and hood were replaced with aluminum units, while other aesthetic upgrades were made as well, such as moving the fuel access up onto the hood. Check out Rosita's gorgeous 356 Speedster in the very latest episode from the team at Petrolicious. Related Video:

'Faster. Farther.' dives into the history of Porsche racing tech

No doubt, Porsche has produced some of the best endurance racecars around, such as the turbocharged, slant-nose 935 of the 1970s and the ground-effects-enhanced 956 and 962 of the 1980s. But the company's most famous racecar, its first overall winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, was the 917.
The 917 embodied many of Porsche's technological achievements up to that point, such as the company's first 12- and 16-cylinder engines (the flat-16 was never used in competition), fiberglass bodies that implemented early aerodynamic practices and the use of new, exotic materials, such as magnesium and titanium.
The racecar was commissioned by the head of Porsche Motorsports, Ferdinand Piëch, to win overall at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970, after he realized a loophole in the rules that allowed cars to compete with engines up to five liters in the Sport category if they were also production models. Piëch saw opportunity: the top prototype class was restricted to three liters; the production minimum to compete in Sport was 25 cars. And so, with much effort, Porsche assembled 25 "production" 4.5-liter 917s and had them parked in a neat line for the race inspectors to verify their legitimacy. It didn't take long before people realized the new Porsches were much faster than the prototype racers, with a top speed approaching 250 miles per hour.