FirstDrive/9ff TRC-91 Porsche:Crazy tuning has created the 9ff TRC-91 and it is already the fastest soft-top in the world, writes Nick Hall
At first glance this would appear a mildly tuned 911 Turbo Cabriolet: it isn't. This is the 910bhp 9ff TRC-91, created by Jan Fatthauer's company in Dortmund and it is the world's fastest soft-top already, as it has now officially broken the 380km/h mark.
This is tuning gone mad, as the 911 Carrera 4 Cabriolet, the softest car in the line-up, can now stay with a Veyron, Zonda and anything short of a Formula One car, but it is a weekend warrior rather than the everyday sports car it once was.
Safe to say that under the skin this is a totally new car from the rag-top that left the factory, and when it fires up, with the exhaust going off like a rifle on the overrun with each blip of the throttle, it sounded like a traumatic test drive in the making.
A car like this should jump all over the surface and provide a more frightening experience than juggling new-born children.
But as we cruised, this monster was as well behaved as you could genuinely expect. Yes it's loud and lets off gunshot waste noises until you get used to keeping off the gas. But it can drive on the fingertips and kept below the 4,000rpm watershed, when the F900 Turbochargers spool up and spit the car down the road, it's relatively sane.
Push the throttle that little bit further, though, and the world melts into some kind of Alice in Wonderland nightmare as the projectile missile with a vague Porsche profile tears off in a pure display of raw speed.
The four-litre engine with two blown turbos running an epic 1.4 bar of pressure, forged cylinders, new heads and just about every other component beefed up to cope with 910Nm of torque exploding through the four-wheel drive system. Even on rough, winding parts of the track I found 250km/h on the clock while the car cornered as straight, flat and true as its borderline race suspension could manage.
It truly is like warp speed, with the road narrowing in the middle distance as the scenery melts to streaks and the pulsating noise of a crackling, spitting Flat Six overlaid with twin turbines, that look near industrial in their application, spreads through the area with the force of a nuclear bomb.
The detonator pedal on the right always takes some thought, such is the reservoir of power available at the twist of a tendon, but on a gentle trailing throttle it will take the corners at daft speeds. In a straight line, it will tear through the 100km/h mark in little more than 2.5 seconds with the full fury of the turbos coursing through its veins and it should keep up with any car on the planet - Veyron included.
But it will serve as a track car as well as a Puerto Banus pose machine, and there it will be coaxed into all sorts of outrageous angles while the rubber slowly dissolves off the rims. Driven smooth it is an immensely fast car, as quick as anything in the world, driven hard it will be the livewire the owner always dreamed of.
At the Nardo test track, this car should easily break the 380km/h barrier and set a new benchmark for soft-top cars. When that happens, company boss Jan Fatthauer will do the driving. He loves getting behind the wheel of his own creations and will soon target the 400km/h barrier in his GT9 Supercar with an even more powerful version of this Porsche-based engine.
He set up the tuning company in 2001 after short apprenticeships at Brabus and Ruf. A record car based on the 911 blasted through 400km/h and created an instant stir, and since then 9ff has become synonymous with huge horsepower. It's not the most holistic car on the German tuning market, but it's fun.
Bar a lip-spoiler, rear wing and other aerodynamic tweaks, this soft-top has stealth appeal, until the artillery-style exhaust note bursts into life, and offers hypercar performance combined with wind in the hair motoring and a not indecent price tag. At his German base you'll hand over a brand new soft-top, €109,000 for the full engine conversion and another €30,000 for invaluable extras such as the GT1 Limited Slip Diff that should catch the slides that will become part of life with this firebreathing beast, and that's no exaggeration in this particular instance. With a mildly different map and some heat in the engine the TRC-91 shoots flames from the giant exhausts and the new owner Gavin expected the rear paint to be blistered by the time the car got home.Yet while the paint will be blistered, he won't.
Inside, the 9ff looks remarkably Porsche-like and despite the all round drop on the suspension and bigger tyres, it still rides well. It's always loud, although keeping the exhaust flaps closed via a switch in the cockpit keeps it the right side of the law. Now this is no longer the everyday sportscar that Porsche brought us just a few short weeks ago, it's a fire-breathing, warp driving monster on track and road.
Porsche has made a refined limousine, 9ff has turned the soft-top into a savage.
Factfile
ENGINE:4-litre twin turbo Flat Six delivering 910bhp and 910Nm of torque
0-100KM/H: 2.5 seconds
TOP SPEED:380km/h-plus
PRICE:€150,000 conversion on top of a 911 Turbo Cabriolet