We Hereby Challenge Porsche's Factory One-Off Program To Build Our Deranged Dream Car
In the early 1950s, Porsche built a 356 that was covered in faux fur. As the years went on, they developed a sort of ad hoc personalization program to address the needs of customers who wanted, say, a street-legal 935 race car—which they called the 935 Street. It was possibly the coolest thing built in 1983.
In 1986 Porsche decided to formally name this in-house custom shop Porsche Exclusive. Today we know it as the part of the company that makes 911 Turbo build configurators so much fun. ("Do I want my dash air vents upholstered in yellow leather, or purple? Decisions!") Now, all of this customizing-slash-personalization falls under Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur, a name that implies higher limits. You want your own signature embossed on the leather of the center console? Well, sure, they can do that. But let's dream bigger, friends. Let's think about one-offs.
Because that's part of Porsche's customization ambitions, too. According to the company, its "Sonderwunsch (special request) program of the late 1970s is being reinterpreted too, making it possible to design individualized one-off cars—co-created by the customer and realized professionally by Porsche."
This is the Factory One-Off program, which is exactly what it sounds like: making your wild Stuttgart fever delirium come true. Porsche says that, "whereas Factory Re-Commissioning is all about individual colors and materials, the Factory One-Off service is a systematic, technical new development. Depending on the age of the vehicle in question, either the technical experts at Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur or the specialists at Porsche Classic will take care of implementation."
Which means whether your car is old or new, they'll figure it out. Porsche probably imagines it'll be Safari-ing 911s and cashing checks, and indeed Porsche Classic built a couple of off-road-oriented first-gen Cayennes to show what they could do. But we dream bigger around here, so allow us to explain the Factory One-Off we'd like to commission—if Porsche has the guts.
We'll start with a Cayenne. Since two-door SUVs are coming back into vogue, we'll shorten the wheelbase and nix the rear doors. Nice. Now we've got something that'll be handy on the trails and dandy at Cars and Coffee. But we're not stopping there, because we also want our two-door Cayenne to be a convertible. Not a regular convertible, mind you. That's basic. No, we want Porsche's iconic Targa top, as built for the current 911—where the whole roof pops off and slides back to store one little panel up top.
That's going to be a tricky feat of engineering, because we also love the swan-neck rear wing on the new GT3. H0w is the top going to clear the wing when it slides back? Hey, that's why we're the visionaries, not the engineers. The obvious answer would be to mount the wing to the movable part of the top but we're not allowing that, because we're difficult.
You may have noticed a charge port up front and wondered if our One-Off is electric and uses a Taycan powertrain. Indeed, it does. But it's a hybrid, with the internal combustion side using a mid-mounted air-cooled flat-six out of a 993 Turbo. Manual transmission, of course.
And that's about it. It's kind of a parts-bin special, we admit, and thus probably a piece of cake to throw together in the ol' werkshop. But it's what we want, and a two-door air-cooled hybrid Cayenne Targa is surely the kind of machine Porsche hoped to build when it announced this program. Oh, and one more thing: Let's cover it in fur.
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