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.