KRAFT WERK

An old Porsche 911 with more power than a Bugatti Veyron? This isn't your average restomod...

- WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE

Around the corner together at a steady 30mph, pass the cones and press go. For a second we're level, then things go a bit blurry and I discover I’m not sitting in a car, I’m strapped to a shockwave. Through the vibrating mirrors I’m distantly aware the GT3 RS has apparently given up and slammed the brakes on while I, pinned back with eyelids flapping, forget to breathe for the length of gears three, four and five. Yep, that genuinely feels like a thousand horsepower. In an old Porsche 911. Crazy times.

The Gunther Werks F-26 is one of the most explosively fast cars I’ve ever driven. Chomping through gears like a Labrador through lunch, each a horizon-bound lunge of frantic flat six gnash and thrash. Inspired by the old 935 racers, it claims. More the living embodiment of them, I say.

I can speak with some authority here as I once drove Moby Dick, the famous Porsche 935/78 racer. First was good for 100mph. Turbo lag for days. Locked spool differential. Tricky to drive. A total adrenaline rush. It had 845bhp and topped 228mph on the Mulsanne Straight. I couldn’t fathom the abilities needed to race it. Now, 50 years on, here’s a Californian restomod with another 200bhp on top of that, that pretends it’s a road car? I mean, come on.