996 GT3: The Original
The 996 was the first 911 to carry
the GT3 badge. The development
work had mostly been done when
a young Andreas Preuninger came
to work at Porsche’s GT depart-
ment in 2000. Porsche’s R&D chief
at the time, Horst Marchart, had used
this particular car as his personal transport.
Preuninger then drove it for a couple of years
while he worked on the second-gen 996 GT3.996.2 GT3 RS: The Past Is Not Forgotten
The second-gen 996 GT3, with its special power-
train, suspension, brakes, wheels and tires, and
lightweight materials, set a template for the GT3
that’s still ver y much in evidence in the 992 version.
And as Preuninger walks me around the white and
blue 996.2 GT3 RS, it’s clearly still a car that holds a
special place in his heart.
“We never told anyone, but the first 200 we
built had specially machined cylinder heads and
polished combustion chambers,” he says. “We did it
so we could homologate those modifications for the
race cars, but we never told anyone. Most of those
cars had 400 hp or more, not the 381 we said.”997 GT3: Spin Cycle
Next, we stop by a first-gen 997 GT3. “Officially it had 415
hp, but some had close to 430 hp,” Preuninger says of
the 3.6-liter flat-six under its rump. He points out this was
the first GT3 engine that would spin beyond 8,000 rpm,
and that this was the first GT3 with what has become the
model’s trademark central exhaust.
The 997 GT3’s suspension was set up by Porsche race
car development engineer Roland Kussmaul, who once
took me for a wild ride around the Weissach test track
in the 964-series Carrera RS 3.8, tossing the 296-hp
widowmaker sideways before the crest on a blind left-
hander, bouncing both inside wheels off the curb on the
way past the apex so we’d drift on two wheels through
the corner exit. “I learned a lot from that guy,” says
Preuninger, who now occupies Kussmaul’s old office.
68 MOTORTREND.COM APRIL 2021