Gemballa GTR 550 Evo

The vehicle in detail

The red exterior isn’t just painted to stand out. It resembles someone who’s been through two or three rounds with a heavyweight. The front is more aggressive and, like the rest of the car, optimized for aerodynamics. The side profile is dominated by swollen wheel arches front and rear — the front ventilated from the wheel wells and the rear with a more optimized intake to the engine. The 996 Turbo’s somewhat modest wing is of course gone, replaced by a larger unit that also helps with cooling.

BUT! you might ask, is all this fuss really necessary? Well, we think so. It’s no longer 420 hp sent through all-wheel drive. No — try 1,053 hp… to the wheels! TO THE REAR WHEELS! All through a sequential gearbox. It’s an easy number to write but harder to grasp in terms of the experience. There’s probably something faster, but it’s unclear if any of those also carry license plates. Nothing moves the ground like this car.

The extroverted exterior is of course not where it ends. You open the driver’s door with a rather shaky hand. It doesn’t take rocket science to see that a car equipped with racing seats, a roll cage, and hearing protection is a serious piece of machinery. Inside, the red exterior gives way to cream-colored leather. And it’s leather everywhere — from the racing seats to the half roll-cage, all trimmed in the same material. The driver’s environment feels earnest: a slightly smaller steering wheel with Uwe Gemballa’s signature instead of the Porsche crest, and just behind it a shift light to help show which gear the car is in. That detail is important because the car has a sequential gearbox, meaning the ordinary H-pattern shifter is replaced by a racing box where you pull the lever back to upshift and push it forward to downshift.

This is a super extreme build and although it wears numberplates it is being sold as a track car. The modificationlist is extremley long to long infack to share here so if you have any questions, contact us and we’ll tell you more in detail.