Road Test: Porsche 911 GT1 2dr

The GT1 exists as a result of current GT sports car racing regulations. These rules are confusing to say the least, but in a nutshell - a splendidly over-simplified splinter of a nutshell - the GT1 class is supposed to be for roadgoing supercars.

And at Le Mans' pre-qualifying session, manufacturers of GT1 cars must provide one road-legal version for scrutiny in the paddock. That car must also be 'for sale' at a price not exceeding US $1 million. To keep costs down, you understand.

For Le Mans in '96 the works Porsche team showed up with two never-seen-before fully-fledged GT1 racers and a 'display' road car. Long before they'd managed a one-two in the GT1 class and second and third overall, other teams cried 'cheat', but to no avail. This year they tried the same trick (though crashed and burned while leading) but so did Nissan, Panoz, Lotus and Lister, while McLaren, who had at least started off with a true road car, responded with race-only long-tail bodywork.

But, to Porsche's credit, the firm is now geared up to build around thirty 911 GT1 road cars and sell them to the public (except in the USA - no airbags) at around £550,000, depending on the exchange rate.

And should you decide to sell your car, house, all its contents and more to buy one, what you'll get is a racing car; one that hasn't been sanitised or compromised for street use. Yes, there's carpet and a choice of colours for seat leather and exterior paint, and the dash and instrumentation are of familiar 911 stock. The seat belts, too, are convenient three-point inertia reel items.

But the driving sensations, the harsh ride, the mechanical mayhem, are pure racer. Much more so than a 911RS, more so than a Diablo or even an F50. It's about on a par with a mid-'60s racing GT40, but less smelly. In other words, the GT1's a car that you're not exactly sorry to get out of. Nobody ever claimed that racing cars are pleasant places to be. They're not. They're built to win, not to cosset passengers. And here's the dilemma. Why put up with the noise, the absence of real oomph below 5,000rpm, the turbo lag, the restricted steering lock and outward vision, the awkward entry and exit, the sealed windows (though 'production' versions will have small sliding apertures), the near-zero ground clearance, the alarming tramlining on imperfect public roads, and the responsibility, risk and sheer all-round impracticality of it all if you're not going to don Arai, Nomex and five-point harness and race the damn thing where it really belongs, on the track?

So you may as well buy a pukka racing GT1. I tell you, the whole thing beats me - except for the obvious benefit for Porsche of winning at Le Mans.

Anything else? Well, yes. Unfort-unately, it broke. Worse, it broke while I was driving which, for whatever reason, makes a tester feel grim. Worse still, it broke before we'd finished our day of driving and photography.

Worse still, the cause was the left rear driveshaft, which costs almost £3,000, plus labour. Worse still, Porsche's race technicians would have to change the right-side shaft as well. And yes, you guessed, still even more worser again, Porsche say they have never had a driveshaft break on any GT1. Not in testing, qualifying, racing or on the road. That beats me too.

Tom Stewart