The beautiful simplicity of it all. It doesn’t take much to make us smile, and this artfully driven 911 tracking down a snow and ice coated forest rally stage is certainly on the list of smile-inducing activities. Outside of the scenery, Porsche has crafted a phenomenal exhaust note in their rally-prepped 911 SC/RS. Running a car like this through the gears on a slick surface takes skill that we do not possess, and watching a skilled driver sliding at ten-tenths is positively joyful. If you can watch this video and not have a brighter outlook on life afterward, you might not be a Porsche fanatic.
Only twenty of these SC/RS homologation specials were built for worldwide consumption, as a ‘production’ stipulation was included in the rulebook for the FIA’s international rallying series. Five of those twenty were sent off to David Richards and his then-new Prodrive operation to be prepared for serious competition. The other 15 were sold primarily to privateers, but some of them were never raced at all. One such car sits in a collection only a few miles from where I am right now, but that is a story for another day.
This car, owned by Tuthill Porsche, is not one of those genuine Porsche-built cars, but a faithful reproduction of the original. Tuthill not only still does maintain real-deal SC/RS examples, but they were involved in the original build process with Prodrive, being that they’re just a few miles apart. The car in this video was built on the backbone of a 1984 911 Carrera Turbo-look, and is 100% as homologated, down to the FIA-spec Kugelfischer mechanical fuel injection. It may not have authentic rallying history, but it’s an impressive car all the same.
