A group of car designers and Porsche fans have envisioned an absolutely stunning, modern-day take on the 1969 Porsche 908 LH racecar.
The project, dubbed the 908-04, started out as a fun side project by a group of Chery designers. Inspired by the Vision Gran Turismo concept cars, they stayed at the offices of the Chinese automaker after hours to work on their modern-day interpretation on the classic Porsche Le Mans racer. One day, project lead Alan Derosier woke up to an email from Porsche in his inbox. Fearing some type of legal action, he was at first hesitant to open it – but Porsche wasn’t angry with him for his unlicensed creation. The opposite was the case – the German automaker wanted to let him know just how much it liked it.
“Dear Vision GT team, we have seen your project and find it very interesting,” the email read. “We are impressed by the enthusiasm for our brand that you express with your work. Would you be interested in ideas about how to tell your story together? Creating some kind of ”homestory” and share it on the Porsche social channels is just one first idea. Please let us know what you think.”
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Porsche later invited the 908-04 design team out to its headquarters in Stuttgart where it presented them with a 3D-printed, 1/6 scale model of the car. This was a special moment for the guys as they had previously only seen their creation in a digital form. The team also allowed Porsche to change some very minor details on the car and unveil the interior – which was a work in progress that still needed time to be finished.
The 908-04 is the modern-day Porsche Le Mans racer of our dreams. It appears to be based on the Porsche 918 but is radically different than the road-going version of the hybrid hypercar with a ‘long tail’ like the 908 LH’s and other Porsche Motorsport-inspired features such as a top-mounted engine cooler fan, a balsa-wood manual shifter and turbo-fan style wheels. This thing is achingly cool and we’re dying for Porsche to turn it into a real car like other manufacturers did with their Vision GT designs – even if it’s not an official Porsche project.
You can hear the full story of the 908-04 in the short documentary below.
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