Lightweight Group B rally special was limited to 21 units and makes a GT3 RS look commonplace and soft
May 19, 2024 at 19:20
- Porsche built 21 examples of the SC/RS in 1984 to homologate the 911 for rallying.
- Wide-arch Turbo body was fitted with a 252 hp naturally-aspirated 3.0-liter engine for street use and 276 hp version for racing.
- Road version could hit 60 mph in 4.9 seconds, making it as quick as a 911 Turbo.
The GT3 RS is the lightest, hardest, angriest road-going car in the current Porsche 911 lineup. But it looks positively overweight and luxury-laden next to the SC/RS, one of the rarest 911s to get the Renn Sport treatment.
Porsche built just 20 examples of the SC/RS – plus one for itself that’s on display at the firm’s museum – to go rallying in the early 1980s: five for the Rothmans team and 15 for other customers. A fusion of wide-arch 911 Turbo body and a breathed-on version of the regular SC’s 3.0-liter flat-six, the 1984 homologation special was the first 911 to get the RS badge in a decade. Not that it had a physical badge because that would have added unnecessary weight.
Related: Porsche 911 SC/RS Brushes Off Snow, Gets Hooned At Nurburgring
And Porsche was fanatical about making the 954, as hardcore fanboys know it, as light as possible, right down to choosing to build it around the engine of the 3.0-liter SC that was about to exit production, and not the 3.2-liter Carrera coming through to replace it.
Keeping the capacity below 3.0 liters meant Porsche could strip the car down to just 960 kg (2,116 lbs), while an additional 200 cc would have lifted the minimum weight allowed by racing regs to 1,100 kg (2,425 lbs).
Simple fiberglass bumpers, aluminum panels, thin glass and the kind of interior appointments that make a modern RS look like a Lexus LS helped cleave the flab, making the finished car around 200 kg (440 lbs) lighter than an contemporary Euro SC and almost 350 kg (772 lbs) below a Turbo, according to period road test figures, while a big horsepower injection exaggerated the effect.
High compression forged pistons, 935 cylinder heads, hotter cams and mechanical fuel injection helped lift power from the stock SC’s 201 hp (204 PS) to 252 hp (255 PS) on street versions (and 276 hp/280 PS on race-spec examples), which together with the diet made this thing as fast as a 911 Turbo of the time.
We’re talking a sub-5 seconds sprint to 60 mph (96 km/h) and 0-100 mph (0-160 km/h) in less than 12 seconds. Oh, and you could have any color you liked as long as long as it were white.
More: Everything We Know About The 2025 Porsche 911 (992.2)
This car, chassis 021, was delivered to Switzerland fresh from Porsche in March 1984 and finished 14th in that year’s Tour de Corse in Corsica. So, it’s not the most successful of the 21 cars, but it is a stunning piece of Porsche RS history and it is available right now on Bring a Trailer if you’ve got supercar money to burn.
At the time of writing the bids have already flown past $450k and there are still nine days to run.
