Harm Lagaay’s portfolio is something of a mismatch, because over the past four years his pen has been responsible for the face-for-radio Cayenne and also the Carrera GT: surely the worst- and finest-looking cars to wear the Porsche badge in recent years. The GT is utterly beguiling in the flesh, with just enough Porsche DNA in those front lights and the alloy wheels to look instinctively Stuttgart, but suffused with a low-rider aggression that is pure supercar.
Porsche might have imposed its own standards on the supercar genre, but that doesn’t mean it can alter our fascination with the bare numbers. These are the GT’s: from 5733cc it develops 603bhp and 435lb ft of torque. Even at idle it produces 302lb ft of torque and the company is happy to admit that the 68-degree V10 is running at a relatively low state of tune; it sails through Euro4 regs and Porsche required it to pass the same reliability tests as a Boxster. Uncorked it will knock out 800bhp.
Its kerbweight of 1472kg isn’t especially light, despite the fact that the GT uses a carbonfibre reinforced plastic tub. That tips the scales at just 100kg, but the car’s twin and side airbags, lavish hi-fi and liberal use of cow hide smother some of the fastidious weight-saving. Each seat is fashioned from carbonfibre and Kevlar and weighs just 10.3kg. Carbon brake discs are used, weighing roughly half of the equivalent steel items, and the gorgeous single-bolt magnesium alloy rims are forged to shave further kilos in unsprung areas.
Porsche has remained true to its own R&D philosophy, too. The company has never undertaken this kind of exercise without taking advantage of the guinea pig facility and so, beyond the carbon tub, benchmark braking system and astonishingly clean engine, it has also used a carbon clutch: the first ever in a production car. It is just 169mm in diameter and carries negligible mass.
