Porsche 911 restomods have become something of a cliché, with new firms popping up almost weekly with the promise of analogue thrills and retro-modern looks.
But Lanzante – the British firm known for maintaining many of the world’s McLaren F1s, as well as making race cars road legal – has produced one with a genuine difference.
Rather than upgrade the contemporary flat six, as is par for the course, Lanzante opted to retrofit a 911 with a genuine Formula 1 V6 from McLaren’s back catalogue.
Developed by Porsche and named the TAG after the team's contemporary sponsor, the turbocharged 1.5-litre powerplant is rumoured to have put out more than 1000bhp in qualifying trim.
It thrust McLarens to three consecutive drivers’ championships between 1984 and 1986 – at which point it was succeeded by the legendary Honda unit that delivered Ayrton Senna three titles.
Retrofitting such a potent engine into a classic is a tantalising proposition but, as Dean Lanzante told Autocar at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, it was never the original plan.
He simply wanted to purchase McLaren’s original TAG test mule, a 930-generation Porsche 911 Turbo, from the firm’s racing arm. Team boss Zak Brown politely declined the request, but Lanzante was undeterred.
“They had a load of engines. These engines had stood since the ’80s, but they were all crated up,” he says.
Sensing an opportunity, he began to assemble a business case for building a small run of road cars referencing that original mule. Cosworth was chosen to modify the engines for reliability and tractability on the road, but the costs quickly began to mount.
Lanzante explains: “We realised that doing two or three cars would be hugely expensive. Really, we needed to do more – a batch. Initially we thought to do as many as [the engine’s] race wins, 25, but there weren’t enough engines. We fixed on 11 cars, one for each driver for each year: the reason for the odd number was in 1985 they had three drivers – John Watson stood in for Niki Lauda.”
He was “adamant” that the standard cars had to appear as the mule would have in its day, so he forced clients to pick from Porsche colours and materials. “It wasn’t a ‘Pimp My Ride’ car,” Lanzante jokes, noting that the TAG Turbo 911 has a sunroof, electric mirrors and its original steering wheel.
