Moby Dick 500

The most extreme interpretation of the rulebook Porsche ever built. The floor was dropped, the bodywork extended until it barely resembled a 911, and the flat-six given water-cooled heads and two turbochargers. It was measured at 366 km/h at Le Mans in 1978.

Seven hundred and fifty horsepower in a thousand-kilogram car with no electronics of any kind. Below four thousand revs it does very little. Above them, it does everything at once.

• Named for its shape. Nobody at Porsche objected.
• 366 km/h down the Mulsanne in 1978 — faster than anything else that year.
• 1.37 kg per horsepower, in 1978, with no driver aids whatsoever.

Seven hundred and fifty horsepower, no electronics, and a circuit a mile above the sea. Below four thousand revs it does almost nothing; above them it arrives all at once. Learning where that line falls, corner by corner, is the entire experience — and at Kyalami's altitude the turbo matters more than it would anywhere else.

The boost is the thing you feel. A low pressure building through your back as the turbo spools, then a sharp release. Gearchanges land as hard mechanical strikes. The road surface is kept deliberately quiet so the engine has room to speak.

Every setting is configured before you sit down — force feedback, haptics, seat position, field of view. Select the experience, and drive.