The Porsche 9ff GT9-R, a priceless one-of-a-kind car designed to take the speed record for street legal car, crashed during hard braking at 217MPH on Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground in Leicestershire, England. It's said to be totaled.
Sure looks it to us.
The GT9-R's predecessor, the 9ff GT9, a sports car based loosely on the Porsche 911, is built by German tuning company 9ff. The base car is a Porsche 911 (997) GT3 extensively rebuilt and fitted with a heavily modified 4.0-liter H-6 producing 987 HP. One of the major differences with a normal 911 is the positioning of the engine. While every 911 throughout Porsche's history (except Porsche 911 GT1) has been rear-engined for maximum rear-wheel grip, the GT9 is mid-engined for better weight distribution.
That was good, but the GT9-R, offering 740 to 1120 horsepower, a variety of transmissions, and aero kits was supposed to be better. The GT9-R was designed to take the speed record for a street legal car with a speed of at least 258 miles per hour. With a reported 0-to-186MPH of 15.8 seconds it had a serious chance of taking the SSC Ultimate Aero out as the record-holder. Guess it won't be doing that anytime soon as this was serial number "0" of an expected run of just 20 units. (Hat tip to Amadeus_IOM!)
[Autobild]